How to create a lead magnet.

Below, you will find an unedited excerpt from my new book about building a content based online business, The Content Marketing Equation which is available on Amazon.com.

In the last section, I talked about the importance of a good lead magnet and how it can dramatically increase your email subscriber opt-in rate.  I gave some general examples based on my own experience, but I thought in this section it would be helpful to walk through the details of one of my own successful lead magnets from beginning to end to give you a blueprint to follow for how to create a lead magnet yourself.  Here is the example along with some general steps to follow in order to create a lead magnet that works.

• Research – Firstly, do research to try to determine the biggest challenge that your audience is facing. I will use our podcast The Stem Cell Podcast as an example.  We determined through talking with stem cell scientists that it took them a lot of time to keep up with trending research.  To do so, they would have to read the newest research papers soon after they were published, on top of their already busy research schedule.  So we identified this as a big pain point that we could help remedy.
• Solve – Next, brainstorm different ways that you could help your audience solve their problem.   As mentioned earlier, potential lead magnets could include writing an e-book on the subject, an audio file, a simple PDF, or even a series of pre-written emails delivered over time.  I have found that currently, easily digestible lead magnets are more desireable.  For example, people would rather scan through a one page PDF, then sign up for a 20 day free email course.  Back to our example, we thought that we could solve stem cell scientists research paper problem by providing audio summaries of the most recent papers on The Stem Cell Podcast.  This was a huge hit, and it was one of the reasons the podcast grew as quickly as it did.  Not only did we summarize the research papers on the audio podcast, we provided written summaries in the podcast show notes (also known as episode summaries) on our website.
• Develop – Next, package your solution into one of the content examples I have given you, or another one that fits your audience. This step may include shooting a few videos in your office, writing a valuable e-book, or creating an mp3 file.  In our case, we focused on crafting engaging paper summaries on the podcasts and in written form on our website.
• Capture and Deliver – This final step usually consists of creating the components needed to deliver the lead magnet to your subscribers and collect their email addresses. There are many different ways to do this, but the most common way is to upload the lead magnet to a landing page on your website, collect the subscriber’s email address, and then immediately email them the link to the landing page that contains the lead magnet.  A landing page is typically thought of as a page which only allows for one action by the visitor, in this case, download or consume the lead magnet. As I will discuss later in this chapter, you must be aggressive in collecting email addresses and consider using a pop-up opt-in form on your website.  In our stem cell example, we added an aggressive pop-up box to our website that said, “The Stem Cell Podcast makes the lives of stem cell scientists easier by summarizing the latest research papers on the podcast.  Enter your name and email below to receive new episodes as soon as they are published.”  This approach increased our email subscriber rate by 100% in the first few months.

I realize that creating a productive lead magnet can be time consuming, but when you are thinking in an 80/20 mindset, this is easily one of those 20% tasks that can generate 80% of the results in your business.

It is time to create a lead magnet that can help you build your online business.

Anthony Fasano
Author of The Content Marketing Equation