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Episode 195 - How to Get Your First 1000 Email Subscribers!
1.2k Plays1 year ago
We cover simple ideas for lead generation, what makes a good lead magnet, and how to actually get people signed up for your list. It's easier than you think! Your lead magnet doesn't have to be 3000 pages long and professionally designed. You don't need more than one lead magnet either. This is something you can get started setting up today, more coming in this episode.
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check ‘em out at https://daveyandkrista.com/first-1000-email-subscribers/. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
Testing Hooks for Lead Magnets
00:00:05
Speaker
Yeah, in one pro tip, before spending time creating a lead magnet, I would recommend coming up with a few different hooks for lead magnets that you think would be popular with your audience. Then you go and you test them out on Instagram or whatever social media platform you use. If it gets a bunch of engagement, if that post gets a bunch of engagement, then you can take that content and turn it into a lead magnet. And that way you have an idea of what might work and how you can market your lead magnet before spending a bunch of time creating it.
Introduction to Lead Generation
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones. So how do you actually get people on your email list? That's the question we're trying to answer in today's podcast episode. We cover simple ideas for lead generation, what makes a good lead magnet, and how to actually get people signed up for your list. It's easier than you think.
00:01:03
Speaker
your lead magnet doesn't have to be 3000 pages long and professionally designed. You don't need more than one lead magnet either. This is something you get started setting up today. More coming in this episode.
Free Email Marketing Challenge
00:01:17
Speaker
Also, we're hosting a free five day email marketing challenge that will walk you through step by step
00:01:23
Speaker
getting started with email marketing and getting your first subscribers. Sign up for that over at davianchrista.com forward slash email dash marketing. That will begin on June 5th. It's free to participate. And even if you miss it, if you're listening to this after June 5th, check out that page for more resources on email marketing.
00:01:44
Speaker
And we have so many email marketing resources already, including step-by-step tutorials. So no matter where you are in your email marketing journey, if you have a question, check out the show notes, especially if you have a technical question. We probably have a tutorial. And if we don't send us a DM on Instagram and we'll point you in the right direction, or maybe we'll create a tutorial based on your question.
00:02:08
Speaker
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check them out at davianchrista.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts. Now, on to the episode.
Why Email Lists Matter
00:02:24
Speaker
All right, chatting about how to get your first 1,000 email subscribers. I know you were really excited about this topic. I love chatting about email marketing. So it's been on my mind a lot lately.
00:02:37
Speaker
And you know, it just seems like the perfect topic for this rainy Friday afternoon as we record. It's not raining right now. Stay positive. Davey might go camping this weekend, and so he is- No, we're going camping. It might be, the weather might be a little iffy, but we are going camping. Our four-year-old is very excited. He will tell you that he is almost five.
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah, I am almost five. Anyways, we are talking about how to get your first thousand email subscribers. We've talked a lot about building an email list on the podcast. We have a number of resources that especially cover the more technical aspects of building an email list. So this might be email marketing platform comparisons or YouTube videos on how to set up forms on your website, like how to embed forms.
00:03:24
Speaker
setting up landing pages, those sorts of things. So we're not really going to focus on that in this podcast episode. What we really want to focus on are, well, exactly that, how to get your first thousand email subscribers. So really what we're focusing on are ideas for what we call lead generation. Easy, easy ways to get started. So if you've never done this before, things that you could probably get set up in the matter of an hour or two of work.
Effective Lead Generation Tips
00:03:51
Speaker
and just some practical tips for getting people to actually sign up for your email list.
00:03:56
Speaker
Right. Because it's not enough to just say, join my email list, join my newsletter. If you just rely on that alone, you're probably not going to have a huge conversion. Right. Right. Exactly. And that's something that we tell our website clients all the time. Right. And we have placeholders for lead magnets on our website. Yes. And sometimes people say, well, can we just encourage people to join my newsletter? And to a certain extent, just having a generic spot on your website, maybe in the footer or something like that that says, join my newsletter. It's not the worst thing in the world.
00:04:25
Speaker
We have one somewhere, I think on our website. Yeah, that's just a place that we can point people to if they're interested in getting signed up. But at the end of the day, if you really want to build your email list, you have to do more than that. So that's what we're talking about today.
00:04:39
Speaker
And why do you think this is something that is important? Because I feel like, I mean, it's so much more flashy and relevant. I think sometimes to drive people to Instagram or TikTok, but I know that there are some major benefits of an email list. Can you kind of talk about those?
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And we've talked about these at length in other episodes and other places, so I won't spend a lot of time here. My guess is if you're listening to this episode, you already know the benefits of building an email list. Something I've said repeatedly on the podcast is that if I had to give up either my social media platforms, all of them,
00:05:13
Speaker
or my email list, I would choose to give up my social media platforms every time. Because I think that our email list, and I think this is true, if you go talk to 100 business owners, I think most of them are going to say that their most valuable asset in their business is their email list or whatever comparable list they're building. So that might be text message marketing, that list.
00:05:37
Speaker
But this is a list that you own, right? In social media, you could be, you know, your account could be hacked. You could be de-platformed. Well, I mean, if you've had a business long life, I feel like most of us will remember when Facebook pages were it and you could get like hundreds of likes and shares by posting something on your Facebook page. And now there's like nothing happening on Facebook. Like in that, you know, all of a sudden most of your organic reach is throttled, right? And you have changes like that across social media.
00:06:07
Speaker
Now, I'm not saying that there's no comparable changes in email marketing, right? But I would say that email marketing has been a really valuable asset for businesses over a longer period of time than any individual social media platform that I can think of. When compared against Instagram, when compared against Facebook, when compared even against TikTok. I think there's a lot that's special about email. I mean, it's a direct communication, right? You are reaching somebody's inbox.
00:06:36
Speaker
And who doesn't have email? Everybody has email. And I know over and over again, we've seen, oh, email's dead, email's dead, it's not dead. And it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Yeah. And maybe you can answer this from, because you also own an ad agency, but it's probably a lot more cost-effective to do a mailing list than it is to get right into people's inboxes than it is to run ads to them, correct?
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I would say the two go hand in hand. For the ad agency, what we're always telling people is to focus on lead generation. Yeah, of course, we're going to add straight to people's offers, but we also want to be generating leads as well because that's really what's going to create sustainable results over time.
00:07:14
Speaker
So, I mean, there's just so many different benefits to building an email list. The higher ROI we've already mentioned, but retention, I think, and just building loyalty with people through nurturing them with some of your best content, increasing the traffic to your website. One of the biggest sources of traffic to our website is via our email list. We send out new content every week.
00:07:40
Speaker
And then I think that ownership and control aspect is important too. It's an asset that you own. If you decide to use a different email marketing platform, you can take your email list to that new marketing platform. With Instagram, if you decide to leave Instagram and go to TikTok, you have to build your audience again over at TikTok. You can't just download your list of followers and bring them over to TikTok.
00:08:03
Speaker
But anyways, moving on, right? You can get me really going on the benefits of an email list.
Understanding Lead Magnets
00:08:09
Speaker
But what I really want to focus on are the ideas for lead generation. And I feel like you've mentioned lead magnets a few times. Just for anybody who isn't familiar with that term, do you want to clarify what that is? Yes. So a lead magnet is whatever you're giving away in exchange for somebody's email.
00:08:29
Speaker
Okay. All right. And does it have to be like a physical like PDF download? Could it be something else? No. And we're going to talk about a number of different examples of lead magnets in a minute. And so it doesn't have to be something like a download, like a PDF, but we're all familiar with lead magnets. Chances are you're on somebody's list because of a lead magnet, right? They offered you something and in return you gave them your email address so that they could stay in touch with you, right?
00:08:53
Speaker
So I think most of us are probably familiar with what a lead magnet is. And what I want to go through are just some ideas for lead magnets. Many of these you could get set up, you know, again, within a few hours, if not an hour. Some take a little bit more work than others. But hopefully at the end of this episode, you know, if you don't have an email list or you've never really created a lead magnet before, hopefully you have a clear idea of which idea you want to implement.
00:09:19
Speaker
Okay, yeah, that sounds good. First thing I wanna talk about here though, are when you're creating a lead magnet, you want to make sure that your lead magnet checks these three boxes, okay? The first thing is that it needs to qualify your lead. There's plenty of things that you can give away to somebody that they would be interested in.
00:09:42
Speaker
Like an iPad. Yeah, like an iPad. If all of a sudden you were doing a giveaway for an iPad and people were giving you their email address in exchange for that iPad, that's great. But is it relevant to what you're doing? Just because somebody's interested in an iPad, are they also interested in buying a website template? Maybe, but maybe not. So you want to make sure that it qualifies your lead. So somebody who's going to be interested in potentially buying your product or service down the line.
00:10:09
Speaker
So for instance, right, you might come up with a lead magnet that provides three easy to implement strategies for booking a high end wedding venue at a discount. You know, that might be a great lead magnet for, you know, if you're trying to reach couples who really like nice things, you know, maybe even they would be considered a luxury level client.
00:10:29
Speaker
They want to save money. Yeah. They always want to save money. And I have a friend like that. I have a friend. He, I feel like, you know, from high school on, he always did the best out of all of us, right? But he was always looking for deals, right? So, I mean, that kind of person exists. But point being is if that might not be a great lead magnet for somebody who's at a luxury level, right? Or trying to reach a luxury level client who hands down wants the best things all the time.
00:10:54
Speaker
Right. And also if you qualify them, they're going to want to score a deal with you, which is just kind of ironic, you know? Sure. Sure. But you might, I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're paying cheap prices. Right. They're just paying prices that aren't full price. Yeah. Right. But point being is you can kind of start seeing how you can use a lead magnet to attract a specific kind of person, right? So you want to make sure that your lead magnet qualifies your lead.
00:11:18
Speaker
Right. The second thing that it needs to do is provide a quick win. Like it shouldn't be merely informational. OK. So basically you want to make sure that you're including actionable content. I mean, all content at the end of the day should be actionable on some level. But you know, more informational type content
00:11:38
Speaker
is better for, let's say, a social media post or a blog post or a podcast episode like this, right? If you're going to put content behind a wall of some sort, whether it's a paywall or whether somebody has to give you an email address in order to get that content, you want to give them actionable content. So what I mean is this.
Designing Effective Lead Magnets
00:12:00
Speaker
For instance, a comparison post of Flowdesk versus ConvertKit. That's a blog post we have on our blog. Or answering a question like, is show it good for SEO? All of that kind of stuff makes good blog content. I mean, that's important information for somebody, investigating maybe EML marketing, investigating what website platform they want to use.
00:12:23
Speaker
but a good lead magnet is going to make that content actionable. So it's going to allow them to take the next step. So for instance, a good lead magnet for the SEO content might be a step-by-step guide to show at SEO. Like, so how in depth do you need to go for that? Because I feel like, I mean, you have an entire course on this, but like how in depth do you think that an actionable content for lead magnet needs to be?
00:12:46
Speaker
The key is that it delivers a win, right? Now, a step-by-step guide to show at SEO is probably not going to comprehensively cover SEO, right? You would have to do that in a course or that would just be the longest lead magnet ever, right? But you could probably give somebody a quick win, right? Teaching somebody maybe how to, I don't know, optimize their homepage.
00:13:09
Speaker
right, using the show it tools or just showing them how to use the built in show it SEO tools. Likewise, you know, same thing for, you know, going back to that flow desk versus convert kit blog post, you know, maybe a good lead magnet that extends that content would be like copy and paste email sequences for flow desk. So do you think that a lead magnet could be too in depth or too long?
00:13:30
Speaker
Yes, I definitely think it can be too long. I think that's actually a big issue with a lot of lead magnets out there. One that we've made in the past too. I think if you do too much with a lead magnet, then all of a sudden it becomes so much information that it overwhelms people, that they never actually get through it. So think about the quick win that you wanna deliver, potential clients, and really focus on that. Because as soon as people experience that quick win, all of a sudden their mind is starting to open to, oh, what are the other possibilities here?
00:13:59
Speaker
So I would much rather, I mean, I think this is true for courses too. I used to think that courses, oh, they have to be 80 hours of video content and you get all this stuff. But when I'm looking for a course now, I'm looking for something that's just going to get to the point. Like tell me how I can get results.
00:14:18
Speaker
And that leads me into that third box that lead magnet should check. And it's this, it should begin to seed the sale. And what I mean, again, is that somebody's mind should start to become open to, you know, the bigger possibility. Do you have a good example for that?
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think, for instance, like going back to the show at SEO example, if you give somebody an actionable tip they can implement on, let's say, their Google business profile, and all of a sudden, their Google business profile is showing up, it's getting more visibility in what we call the local pack. Again, I think that opens somebody's mind to the possibility of, oh, okay, you know, maybe the SEO thing isn't too hard. And if I learn a little bit more, I can start showing up in the organic results as well.
00:15:02
Speaker
Right. You know, so I mean, the idea is that you're just giving somebody that quick win, that quick transformation so that they start to understand, okay, yeah, a bigger transformation is possible for me. Could it be as simple as like a discount code? I know. I feel like I've signed up for so many clothing sites because they give you 20% off with the email sign up.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. That's definitely a way that you can build your list. Somebody who's downloading a discount code is probably somebody who's already about ready to buy. There is going to be a fraction of those people who maybe wouldn't have otherwise bought, but decide to give it a chance because they can get 10% or 20% off or whatever it is. I would say that having lead magnets like that that are focused a little bit further down the funnel
00:15:52
Speaker
are good to have. But the lead magnets I have in mind are more top of funnel lead magnets. And so if you're not familiar with the funnel, you can Google it. But the idea is that the people that are towards the top of the funnel are less aware of you or they're researching and considering different options. People further down the funnel are closer to making a decision and actually purchasing, right?
00:16:15
Speaker
we want to fill our funnel, right? So we want to get as many people on the top of the funnel as possible. And I think creating a lead magnet that can help you do that is going to be one of the more effective ways to build your list. Right. And I guess if you're like a service provider, you may not want to give 20% off. Like it might just make sense for like clothing stores, more sense for them.
00:16:35
Speaker
Yes, exactly. You're going to want to think about whether this makes sense for you. Again, if you're a luxury level provider and you're reaching the type of clientele where money's really just maybe not an issue and they're willing to spend a lot of money on things, then maybe offering a discount actually turns those people away. Whereas if you're offering something, certainly like a product that's going to be bought repeatedly, I'm thinking supplements just because I was just on a
00:17:02
Speaker
I was just on a supplement website, right? And you're just like, oh, it's kind of expensive, but I can get 20% off and try it. And if I like it, that's great. And if not, not a big deal. That sort of thing, that's where it might make more sense to offer a discount code. Yeah. So what are some easy things that people could do to create lead magnets?
00:17:21
Speaker
Yes, I think that people make this more complicated than it needs to be, okay? Again, I think if you can deliver that quick win, that transformation, then things like the design, for instance, are secondary, right? I don't think that it has to be the most beautiful PDF download in the world. I know that probably hurts your designer heart a little bit.
00:17:44
Speaker
Well, yes, a little bit, but I also always tell people like if we're working on their website and they're just, they're new to lead magnets that they can just do it in like a Google doc and expert as a PDF. Also, I know with lead magnets, like if you're specifically delivering a PDF, you want it to be fairly small because email browsers might block larger files from being delivered. I think you want to make sure it's under like 25 megabytes. Otherwise it hurts your deliverability.
00:18:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's great advice. And I feel like, you know, we've sort of tried to get away from things like PDF downloads a little bit. We have a few. Yeah, we have a few and we certainly over time, I mean, over 13 years, you're going to create a few. But there are definitely others that maybe don't require as much design
Innovative Lead Magnet Ideas
00:18:29
Speaker
skill.
00:18:29
Speaker
So let's get through sort of a list here. And I just want to go through this list. And we can talk about a few of them, I think. But the first one might be a checklist. So just creating a simple actionable checklist. The second one might be a template. So pre-designed templates, these could be like a spreadsheet, maybe to help you track inquiries. That's something that we've offered in the past. We have a blog post, for instance, on how to send follow-up emails that people actually read and respond to.
00:18:58
Speaker
And, you know, as a way to extend that content, we have an inquiry tracking spreadsheet. And it's pretty much just access to a simple Google spreadsheet. Correct. Yeah. A resource list. So if you have like, we have one of these actually as a page on our website, so it's not behind an email wall, but it's just a list of resources that we have found helpful and think that others would find helpful as well.
00:19:23
Speaker
software that we use to build the site, I'd run our business, books. I think we have your podcast gear on there, et cetera. A mini course. And a mini course might sound like it takes a lot to set up, but what I have in mind here is a short email mini course. So the course is actually delivered over a sequence of emails.
00:19:43
Speaker
And so that doesn't require any core software. It doesn't require all that much setup, you know, you have to have an email marketing platform. And what's great about this is that you're not designing PDFs or anything like that. You're just using, you know, whatever email template you've built in whatever email marketing platform you're using, and you're delivering the content over, let's say, like a five day challenge, right? Are you, can it be like video or text?
00:20:07
Speaker
Yeah. You know, and that's the great thing about an email course is that there's a lot of flexibility in there. You know, if you wanted to offer like video lessons in those emails, you could embed videos from something like YouTube or Vimeo or wherever else you host videos, but YouTube, it's free to host videos there. Well, then people might see them on your YouTube channel.
00:20:25
Speaker
I think you can make them private, and just share a link. I'm not quite sure, but even if they do exist elsewhere, people sign up because they're getting consolidated information. Convenience. Yeah, convenience, exactly. I've bought courses from people where I know if I spent enough time on that person's blog, if I read that person's book, if I watched all their YouTube videos, I'd probably be able to piece together the same content, but I pay for the course because they've put it all together.
00:20:53
Speaker
So it doesn't really matter whether something's visible on YouTube or not. It's all put together on or through the email sequence. I mean, I think that's real low hanging fruit. If you're like, I don't want to design PDFs. I don't want to put together, you know, any sort of complicated downloadable, you know, do email mini course. And when I say mini course, I mean, you can expand that to other ideas to like a five day challenge or a three day challenge or 10 day challenge.
00:21:18
Speaker
Anything more than that. I mean, you know, you want to keep it again, just going back to things that are too long and people that never finish. Yeah. Webinar or video training. Okay. And so this is something else that you could deliver over email if you wanted to. So, you know, maybe you have some sort of video that you recorded. It doesn't have to be long. You can embed that in the email or you can link to it from the email.
00:21:41
Speaker
and that's how you deliver it. And it doesn't require really any design. Yes, you have to record the video and maybe edit the video, but other than that, pretty simple to get up and running. Yeah. A case study, you know, I would say case study isn't, I mean, this is going to work for certain industries more than others. You know, I'm thinking like our ad agency, for instance, occasionally people want to. You have case studies. Yeah, because people want to see results that we've gotten for other businesses, but that wouldn't work for like a wedding planner.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what you're case studying. Yeah, exactly. Same thing with like ebooks or white papers. But like you can create it. What is a white paper? So white papers, you know, if you're into crypto, you've probably seen white papers.
00:22:20
Speaker
We're not, well, I am not into crypto. Yeah, I'm not really either. I've just, yeah, anyways, you can look up more information about exactly what a white paper is. But creating an ebook, again, something that you could do in a Google Doc if you wanted to, or you could use Google Slides and then just export it as an ebook.
00:22:40
Speaker
free consultations or audits, I would say that that's another way where if you're not worried about scale too much, then it's something that you can do. The thing about free consultations and audits though is that you can only serve so many people at once. So it's not as scalable as some of these other options.
00:23:00
Speaker
Quizzes and assessments. So everybody's probably seen like the, what Disney character are you? Or, you know, something like that, right? And then you should put in your email together as the result. We have a quiz on our website to help you figure out which website might fit your brand's personality. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, quizzes are
00:23:17
Speaker
I think can be really effective. You know, the quiz that you just mentioned, for instance, again, that's a quiz that's probably for somebody that's a little bit further down the funnel. You know, somebody who's maybe they have even decided on our templates, but just want to figure out maybe which one they match, which with the best. Yes. But you can use quizzes for more top of the funnel, you know, lead gen.
00:23:36
Speaker
Would you say that they need to be affiliated with what you do? Like, which Disney character are you? You might get a lot of interest, but it doesn't really help if you're a wedding planner. It might not help you sell your service, unless maybe you're like a Disney wedding planner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It definitely has to be, you definitely want to tie it back to whatever it is that you do, right?
00:23:56
Speaker
And then exclusive community access. So it might be as simple as like creating a Facebook group and giving people access to that Facebook group,
Setting Up Lead Magnets
00:24:04
Speaker
right? You can do this with Slack channels as well. For those of you who use Slack, you can create the Slack channels that people from other organizations can join and just giving people access to you in a way that they wouldn't otherwise have.
00:24:16
Speaker
So I've definitely done this for different Facebook groups where it's like you can go and be part of this community and they're discussing a certain topic all the time. And again, think about how much setup that requires next to none. I mean, you have to create the Facebook group. That could take about 10 minutes.
00:24:34
Speaker
And then it's just a matter of, you know, giving people a link in an email to join that Facebook group. So, I mean, those are just 10 ideas. You could probably come up with a hundred more ideas. And from there, too, there's like variations of those ideas, countless variations of those ideas, as we just discussed, you know, one of my favorite that sticks out in this list is a mini course just because it can be delivered over email.
00:24:55
Speaker
We're talking about email marketing anyway, so this is just an excuse to send more emails and send some of your best content. If you're looking to get set up with a lead magnet quickly, I would say, think about maybe a three-day challenge you could put people through. Think about some sort of mini course you could put people through and deliver it via email, and it limits the amount of tools you have to use.
00:25:17
Speaker
Okay. So once you've figured out what you're going to give away, how do you actually get people to sign up for your list? Yes. And this is sort of the key question. There's two different ways that we could answer that question. One is focusing more on like the technical logistics, right? You know, and I'm just going to briefly mention those because like I said, we already have
00:25:35
Speaker
YouTube videos and blog posts that explain these things. All right. Yeah. I think last year, maybe the year before now, I wrote a pretty in-depth blog post and made some YouTube videos teaching you how to create a lead magnet. Super simple and deliver it via flow desk, which I think is one of the easiest to set up. Yeah, for sure. And you know, even though it's specific to flow desk, basically, I think I have convert kit too.
00:25:58
Speaker
basically the principles could be applied to most email marketing platforms. But point being, we have resources on that. So check out the show notes for those resources. But in three easy steps, you want to create the lead magnet, only create one lead magnet. I think that's the other thing is people like promote a lead magnet for one week, and then they think they have to create another one the next week.
00:26:16
Speaker
One lead magnet can be your source of your first thousand subscribers, your first 10,000 subscribers, your first 50,000 subscribers, right? So really focus on refining and perfecting one lead magnet. Don't feel like you have to create 30 or one for maybe every single product that you have. Step two, create the landing page. And we have a template for the landing page.
00:26:41
Speaker
We put together a free landing page template for show it and for Elementor. And it kind of walks you through just the different elements that you should have. So a headline, if it's like a physical download or something that could benefit from a photo, it's helpful to put a photo of that on there. Even if it's like a mock-up of
00:26:57
Speaker
You know, your free challenge and a phone screen. And then it talks you through some of the benefits and then you can embed your mailing list signup form. You'll need to sign up for a third party mailing list. Platform like float ask or convert kit or MailChimp, et cetera.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, and then the step three, of course, is share about it. And we have a template for that too, our Canva social media templates, which download, you had a little video that shows you how to use them and you can use that to share your lead magnet. So a lot of the hard technical work already done. And we'll put the links in the show notes. So let's talk about practically though, how you get people to actually sign up for your lead magnet. So really what makes for a wildly popular lead magnet? And I think it really comes down to this.
Communicating Subscriber Benefits
00:27:43
Speaker
being able to communicate the result, transformation, or quick win that a subscriber is going to experience. So basically, you want to be able to answer this question. When you download or subscribe, what are you going to get so that you can do what? So basically, you're filling in this prompt.
00:28:05
Speaker
when you download or subscribe, you will get X so that you can do Y. Do you have a good example for this? Yeah, and one thing before I get to the example, I just wanna emphasize that a lot of times people forget to explain what somebody's going to be able to do as a result of what they're getting, right? So when you download or subscribe, you will get X so that you can do Y.
00:28:30
Speaker
When you subscribe, you will get our five step guide to optimizing your Google business profile. All right. Now, if you stop there, that sounds pretty boring. It does. Unless you as a subscriber already understand the benefits
00:28:46
Speaker
of setting up a Google business profile and optimizing. That sounds pretty boring. However, if you finish the sentence, right? And you say that so that you can show up number one within a week, right? And I don't know, like if you're offering that, that's a pretty bold promise. So maybe you want to refine that a little bit, but all of a sudden now the benefit is clear.
00:29:08
Speaker
Right. So if you can really focus on being able to communicate the result transformation or quick win that the subscribers going to experience, that's what makes I think for a successful lead magnet. And I think that's the difference between people subscribing and not subscribing. Right. So what we need to separate too is the title of our lead magnet or the, you know, really the content of our lead magnet and the hook of our lead magnet or what our lead magnet is promising.
Titles vs. Hooks in Marketing
00:29:39
Speaker
And so the hook of the lead magnet is not the title, correct? Yeah, so like how you market your lead magnet, you don't necessarily have to use the title of the lead magnet. Does that make sense? Basically, what you should be thinking again is how you can convey that statement. When you download, you will get X so that you can do Y. Right. Really focus on
00:30:03
Speaker
what you're communicating there. The content of your lead magnet is then maybe a little bit secondary. I don't want to say irrelevant, but I think it's sort of secondary. Again, the guide might be around a five-step process to optimizing your Google business profile. But if that's all you're telling people, here's my five-step process to optimizing your Google business profile. Again, I don't think that's going to be
00:30:26
Speaker
the most successful lead magnet, right? Yeah. So you really want to focus on the hook and the hook is how you're going to answer that question. The hook is how you're going to answer that question of what the result transformation or quick win is.
00:30:38
Speaker
one of our free downloads is the Canva graphics that we mentioned earlier. And at first we were calling them launch graphics. And then we realized that if we called them social graphics and our hook was stand out on social, they performed a lot better. And we tested that on Instagram before we ever really started pushing it out. Yeah. And we should like back up a little bit and really explain that for people because basically what you're saying is that we launched a lead magnet
00:31:07
Speaker
Right. And we just shared about it on Instagram, like in Instagram stories at first, I think. Yeah. We're sharing about it across Instagram stories. I think we're sharing about some other places as well, but we're calling it, you know, a free download for launch graphics, right? Because we often create them for our clients, for their launches. And we always get asked how we put the phones and the screens. It was a popular tutorial on YouTube. And so we thought, well, we'll make these into graphics that people can do on Canva.
00:31:34
Speaker
and then they can share about them when they launch their website. And guess what? Not a lot of people downloaded it. Because, well, we probably for a few reasons, like if you're calling them launch graphics, people really only need launch graphics when they're launching their website, which probably doesn't happen very often, but social media graphics, people need all the time.
00:31:52
Speaker
Exactly. And so we didn't change the content of what we were sharing at all, right? Like we didn't change the actual content of the download at all. But simply by making a tweak to the hook, all of a sudden, these became our probably most popular lead magnet ever and by far.
00:32:11
Speaker
Right. Yes. So imagine though, had we just decided, ah, no one's interested in this and then we stopped there and then tried to come up with a different lead magnet. Right. Yeah, sure. Maybe we came up with a different lead magnet and that one ended up being successful too. But you know, by making it just a simple tweak to how we were marketing that lead magnet, we are able to get way more subscribes. Right.
00:32:32
Speaker
So another example, the title of your download might be something like the couple's guide to creating a unique wedding hashtag. Interesting enough, maybe that's top of mind for an engaged couple, I don't know. But the hook might be something like the two-step formula to creating an unforgettable wedding hashtag. And again, one of those, I think the latter, what it does well is makes it apparent that this is easy. You follow this formula, you're going to get a certain result.
00:33:02
Speaker
So some examples of hooks that you might use to market your next lead magnet. And we have an episode on creating marketing hooks, so you can check that out as well. But I just want to go through a few, and this is how we'll wrap up the episode unless you have any other questions that you think we should cover. But some examples of hooks, steal these scripts so that you know exactly what to say to book your next inquiry. Swipe and deploy these Instagram captions to get 1000 more followers.
00:33:31
Speaker
copy this exact strategy to fill your pipeline with leads and book more clients. Copy and paste SEO strategies to rank number one for your desired search. And again, you could probably even go a step further and talk about the end benefit of booking more clients or selling more products or whatever there. Another, this is not a full hook, but like the beginning of one, replicate our results with XYZ, whatever it might be. Pro photographer posing secrets for stunning photos in any location.
00:34:02
Speaker
And the ultimate shortcut, and there's a million variations of the ultimate shortcut, getting to the result more quickly than if you were doing it yourself. But all those are examples of hooks that could apply to, I mean, a countless number of types of lead magnet.
00:34:20
Speaker
And so I guess if there's one takeaway here, what I want to emphasize is that in order to get people to actually sign up or subscribe to your mailing list, how you're marketing your lead magnet is of primary importance and of secondary importance is the actual content in that lead magnet. And that is not to say that you should skimp on the content in the lead magnet.
00:34:43
Speaker
That's not to say that you should not put a lot of thought or effort into that, but in terms of actually getting people to sign up, you want to make sure you're marketing your lead magnet well. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Closing and Future Insights
00:34:55
Speaker
All right. Well, that's it. As always, if you have any questions, then drop those in the comments of the blog post that's associated with this podcast episode, send us a DM on his scram at Davey and Krista, or send us an email and let us know.
00:35:09
Speaker
we would be happy to answer your email marketing questions in another podcast episode. And we have more email marketing episodes coming out soon. Yeah. And we actually do turn your questions into episodes. We are working on a new blog post or podcast episode based on a question someone submitted recently. Awesome. Thank y'all.
00:35:31
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.