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00:00:01
The 4 Mistakes Marketers Make With Lead Magnets (& How to Fix Them)
52 Plays1 year ago
Alastair McDermott, founder of The Recognized Authority, shared valuable insights about lead magnets and the crucial mistakes many marketers make. In this episode, we'll delve into the four mistakes Alastair highlighted and explore how you can avoid them to create effective lead magnets that drive sales and engage the right audience.
Timestamps:
[00:00:02] Deep dive on lead magnets, game-changing insights.
[00:04:29] Building a list is important, but not everything for lead magnets. Focusing on sales is crucial in B2B.
[00:08:35] Created various lead magnets with helpful info.
[00:09:50] Misalignment leads to disinterest and wrong audience.
[00:15:04] Process with steps and sub-steps explained.
[00:19:28] Give solution upfront, add supporting materials. Soft sales approach, limited offer later.
[00:21:35] Checklist guides action and provides momentum for success.
[00:25:07] Importance of feeling pain and taking action.
[00:26:53] Building personal brand, authority; urgency & momentum.
[00:29:54] High pressure marketing, love/hate relationship, Russell Brunson.
[00:34:35] Scheduled webinars and on-demand recordings pretense.
[00:36:16] Cohort challenges help with progress and alignment.
[00:39:27] Funny pain point: 12 lead magnets, split testing, voting.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Attention Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to The Attention Podcast, where you learn how to gain and retain the attention of our buyers to build an audience.
Introduction to Lead Magnets with Alistair McDermott
00:00:08
Speaker
I'm Dan Sanchez, and today I talk to Alistair McDermott about lead magnets. Yes, because that's the deep dive I'm doing this month. And he actually has written a whole lead magnet or a book on lead magnets. So it was a very timely conversation.
Common Mistakes and Frameworks in Lead Magnets
00:00:22
Speaker
He, in this interview, actually unpacked the four major mistakes that he sees people make with lead magnets. Of course, that he made himself numerous times before he got it right and his framework for how to unpack lead magnets and the formats that he's actually finding the most success in. And I was happy because I'm starting to find the same things myself. Like the format he likes is the format that I'm starting to fall in love with. If you want to find out what it is, you're going to have to listen to the interview, but make sure you stay around till the end.
00:00:49
Speaker
where I give my hot take on what was said and the things that I'm going to be testing now that I've learned from myself. So let's get into it.
Personal Insights on Lead Magnets
00:01:02
Speaker
So just like I mentioned in the last podcast that I did, that I'm doing this deep dive on lead magnets because, uh, Alex Hermosi, you know, a hundred million dollar leads, fantastic book and fantastic framework about lead magnets. I was like, holy cow. I've been playing like the JV level of lead magnets and, and Mr. Hermosi is playing the Olympic level lead magnet game. And I had no idea, but it makes so much sense. And it's funny bringing this into, uh, especially a B2B crowd that's been all about ungated for so long now.
00:01:33
Speaker
I've, I've never been in that crowd. I've always known you should probably gate something, gate something, you know, cause not, it's not that you need their contact information, but you need them to give a, just a step of commitment. You know, so you know that not who they are or what their email is, but you know who is interested.
00:01:55
Speaker
And that's the whole point behind a lead magnet. So now that Alex has kind of like wet my appetite for it, I'm diving deep first with this conversation with Alistair here who volunteered because I put out a post on LinkedIn and asked for, asked for anybody who knew had some insights on lead magnets.
Authority Building and Audience Targeting
00:02:12
Speaker
And I'll let you kind of give your backstory on how you got into this. But man, you just told me in this pre-interview that you've published probably a hundred lead magnets. You've wrote a mini book on lead magnets and that lead magnets has kind of been your thing for a long time.
00:02:25
Speaker
So, for the audience, tell me a little bit about, like, a little bit about who you are and then how you got into lead magnet specifically.
00:02:34
Speaker
Awesome. Thanks for having me on the show. It's great to be here. I'm really interested in lead magnets because I've been creating them for myself and with my clients for years. I've been in business for 17 years. You were actually talking to me about my previous business or my other business, which is called Website Doctor. I started that in 2007. I made a lot of lead magnets for that business. I recently started a new brand called the Recognized Authority.
00:02:59
Speaker
That's where I interview people all about how to become known as the recognized authority in your field because I find that authority building in band marketing really interesting. So that's where that's like the context for this whole thing. And I have created a hell of a lot of lead magnets.
00:03:16
Speaker
many many of which failed miserably and so that's the context is I've been there done that and made all those mistakes and what I realized was that a lot of the advice that I had read about lead magnets was was correct in the context that it was in but it was not just simply not aimed at me it was aimed at usually the b2c consumer market where it's like a commodity type business and and
00:03:43
Speaker
It just wasn't right for me in the market that I was in where I'm trying to sell expert services to other businesses. That was what didn't work. Give me an example of what you're talking about B2C. You mean like a lead magnet for dentists and chiropractors, like the professional service, the consumer market?
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, and all of those businesses that are competing in a local market, like a local gym, for example, you know, where they're not competing on a global scale. And also they're selling to consumers, which is a very interesting but different market than selling to other businesses.
00:04:18
Speaker
It's funny because I found most of the lead magnets I consumed early on were like HubSpot's lead magnets or were bloggers trying to get you subscribed to the RSS feed back when that was a thing. But usually professional services like people who were aspiring in a certain career type like marketer, designer, videographer, I've downloaded a lot of those lead magnets, which are kind of B2B.
00:04:42
Speaker
You know, because career is kind of in that it's a business trying to help you do your career, which is kind of a mini business in and of itself. I actually haven't looked at the B2C market too much. I guess I've been in B2B long enough.
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the issue is a lot of the advice because the B2C market is bigger in a number of consumers versus number of businesses. I think that there's just
Optimizing Lead Magnets for Effectiveness
00:05:08
Speaker
more people out there talking about it. A lot of the advice that I've seen has been aimed at that audience and it's
00:05:13
Speaker
So the issue is quite often they're talking about a numbers game. So they're talking about, and the biggest issue I see is them talking about collecting email addresses. So the goal of a lead magnet is to collect leads in terms of building an email list and the whole build a list mantra. And I absolutely believe in the importance of building a list, but it's not necessarily the right goal for your lead magnet. I think when you start with that in mind,
00:05:40
Speaker
What happens is you create a lead magnet that is optimized for collecting email addresses, not optimized for making sales on the back end, and it gets out of alignment. I think that's particularly important in a B2B environment because it's not a numbers game. We can operate with very, very small numbers. In B2C, you may need 5 million people to consume your content or have a big audience.
00:06:09
Speaker
In B2B, you could have five people on an email list. But if those five people are all CEOs or CTOs of Fortune 500 companies, then those five people could satisfy your business and revenue for years if it's the right people. So I think that's where the numbers game makes a huge difference between those two different markets.
00:06:28
Speaker
It's funny because I think the B2C people are probably just putting the lead magnet out there as an indicator, like, Oh, they're, they have a pain, like it's a gym and they're doing like a how to lose weight lead magnet. And then they're like, Oh, they must be thinking about this. Cause they download a lead magnet. Let's throw a right hook, try to get them interested in our gym. Right. Cause they, but the lead magnet was no good. It was just basic information probably that they already know. Yeah. Didn't really build a lot of authority, but they used it as a mechanism to get the contact, throw the right hook and see if it worked.
00:06:58
Speaker
I mean, I've done it. I've done it with different employers that I've had before. So with B2B, it's a little different because we can already go and buy. We already know who the VP of sales is over at Adobe.
00:07:14
Speaker
Find out we just go on linkedin and find that we don't need their contact information we can just pay a service and go grab their email So how do you now approach lead magnets knowing that we can get their contact information their email their socials we know what they're about We don't need that but we need the lead magnet to accomplish something else
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, so well, I don't think about it in terms of account based marketing. So I'm not thinking about it in that context where we actually know who we're talking talking to specifically. But just in general, the issues that I see, I see four mistakes. And what number one is the wrong goal. So that's optimizing for email addresses. And so I think that you've got to think about this in terms of the business objective here is sales, not email addresses. And it is good to build a list. But ultimately, we want the lead magnet to be aligned with with
00:08:03
Speaker
our sales process. The second is the wrong depth. And the wrong depth is when you try and tackle too many problems in one piece of content, you lose the power to give them a quick win. And that's the issue. You'll see this with ultimate guide type approach to this where you're like with toolkits and things like that.
00:08:23
Speaker
And it's not that those don't work. It's just that you've got to be careful about how you position those and about trying to make it easy for people to get a quick win. You don't try and do everything because what happens is you trigger the, I'll save that to later procrastination. And once you get to the dreaded, I'll save that to my hard drive for later, you're dead. They're never going to open that PDF again. They're never going to look at that again. And so it's about making it something that's kind of easy enough to consume and hitting the right depth level.
00:08:53
Speaker
and you're not trying to show off everything that you know. The goal is to get them to solve this particular problem very quickly, not to demonstrate your knowledge about everything in the world about this that you know. That's the wrong goal, the wrong depth. The next one is the wrong problem. And this is much more subtle because at a surface level, it looks like you're going to make progress. You're growing your list.
00:09:17
Speaker
But if your lead magnet solves a problem that's not directly in alignment with what your service is, then you're going to end up building a list that doesn't result in sales because you don't have a direct link, a direct alignment. And I did this a lot with many, many lead magnets where I created useful information that I put out there and it wasn't directly in alignment with what I sell.
00:09:40
Speaker
And I'll give you a simple example of this. I have a sales questions sheet. It's like a it's like a cheat sheet. It's a
00:09:50
Speaker
It's a printout of a single A4 page or letter size page for you guys, where I have 25 questions on there. And when I go into a consulting type engagement, or I'm trying to sell a high-end website or something, I have this list of questions in front of me. And it's divided in two columns, the questions on the left-hand side and a space on the right-hand side. And I put in the client's answers. And that's what I use in my sales conversations. And in there, I have parts of the value conversation. So why this? Why then? Why me?
00:10:19
Speaker
all aimed at high-end high-ticket sales and doing that in a really effective way. The issue is I'm not a sales trainer so I can put that out there and make that something which people can download from me.
00:10:35
Speaker
my clients will find that useful, but I'm not a sales trainer. And so for me to put out sales, a lead magnet that is in that way, it's just not in alignment with what I sell, with how I help people. And so because of that misalignment, I ended up getting people on my email list, and they were interested in that sales cheat sheet,
00:10:56
Speaker
but they're not interested in what else I have to say or in the services that I'm offering. So you've got this, the wrong problem where it's out of alignment between what you're selling and what you're talking about. So that's the wrong goal, the wrong depth, the wrong problem. And then the last one is the wrong person. And this is where you get this only in a B2B environment.
00:11:18
Speaker
And that's because there's quite often a difference between the economic buyer, as Alan Weiss calls it, the decision maker, and the person that you're going to be working with. So what we find sometimes is let's say you're selling and you're going to be working with a dev team, software development team, something like that. But the person who makes the buying decision is actually the CEO or the CTO. And so what happens is all of your content is targeting the dev team, but they're not actually making the decision.
00:11:48
Speaker
And so the person who's making the decision, the decision maker is the person that we should be targeting with our lead magnet because they're the one who makes the decision. And so we need to describe the problem as the decision maker
Creating Effective Lead Magnets Based on Client Journey
00:12:01
Speaker
experiences it, and as they perceive it, because that might be a very different problem or
00:12:07
Speaker
that the way that they describe it might be very different from the person who you'll actually be working with like the tech lead or whoever that is. And so your lead magnet has to speak to the problem in the terms that the decision maker resonates with. And so those are the those are the four problems, the wrong goal, the wrong depth, the wrong problem and the wrong person.
00:12:28
Speaker
So with those four in mind, and I really thank you for outlining those super, super clear. It's funny, Alex Romozi hits a few of these. He kind of talks about a lead magnet being a complete solution for a very small problem. Right? Because if you can't, if you don't get them, can you assume it, then what's the point?
00:12:44
Speaker
It's not like you just get it to so they indicate that they're having a problem with something. You need them to actually consume it in order to build up enough trust with them that creating a sales situation becomes so much easier, right? You've lined it up. They believe you. You've helped them. You've already gotten them a quick win. And now they trust you much more as a result. That's the whole goal of a lead magnet.
00:13:07
Speaker
So now you've discovered these these four problems. Do you have like a method? Do you just kind of like reverse engineer these to make sure is this like your your framework? You're like, okay, first we set the goal, then we find the right depth, then we find the right problem, then we find the right person. Is that like your step by step process to building a good lead magnet?
00:13:28
Speaker
Well, actually the way I approach it is I first start with the client journey. So most businesses can think of their client journey in this sense of here's the before state, here's the after state of the transformation. So what do we see as the before and the after? And then your solution is somewhere in the middle there. So I think of that as three boxes.
00:13:48
Speaker
So we have the before state, we have the solution in the middle, which is your process. And then we have the after state or the dream, you know, in terms of the pain dream fix framework that copywriters sometimes use. The pain is the problem. The dream is the outcome and the fix is what's in the middle. And most people don't really care what the fix is in the middle that what they care about is getting that outcome.
00:14:10
Speaker
And there's also this really kind of iconic image that somebody created a few years ago, which was like the Super Mario character, which was the small Mario and then the mushroom and then the large Mario kind of stomping around. And the mushroom is not what you're selling. It's the large, it's the large Mario stomping around afterwards. That's what you're selling. And so that's, that's what we need to understand. This is also kind of thinking about, uh, features benefits and.
00:14:36
Speaker
people don't care about the features, they care about the benefits. So it's all in kind of talking about that. So I think of these three boxes and
00:14:46
Speaker
The outcome is what we need to talk, like in our marketing, we need to talk to the clients, our clients about the outcome that we're going to achieve for them. And we need to talk to them about the pain that they have in the language, in the specific language that they use to describe it. That's, that's really, really crucial. And then the bit in the middle, like we don't really tend to address that in a marketing and we don't need to because we can like really demonstrating that you understand the problem will imply to most people that, you know, the solution and you have a solution for it.
00:15:16
Speaker
But when you're creating the lead bank, I think that's where you go. You go to your solution. So you go to that middle box. And that middle box is usually like this multi step process because usually what we're doing as B2B professional service providers as experts.
00:15:31
Speaker
we're doing is we're usually doing something, we're usually selling a service that's intangible, invisible, that people can't see. It's usually some sort of complex and expensive process that we take people through. And there needs to be a whole amount of trust. That's why trust is so important because we're selling these credence goods
00:15:52
Speaker
So trust is what we're selling based on, but we have to have some sort of process in the middle. And usually that's a repeatable step-by-step process that we take people through. Even if we don't expose that in our marketing, we still have that behind the scenes. Now, if you take your process
00:16:07
Speaker
and you break it down. You might have, I mean, some people will, if you've got it branded, you might say we've got a five step formula or five step framework or five step process or three steps or seven steps or whatever it is. Three, five and seven are good numbers to use from a psychology point of view for that. But so you have your process where you've got a number of steps. And then within each of those steps, you probably have sub steps. And you probably have sub steps within that as well.
00:16:32
Speaker
So you've probably got this process where if we broke it down and we expanded all the tabs, you'd actually see this huge process of step-by-step all the way through. And when we're experts, we tend to go through that really quickly and subconsciously, but it's a really good idea to actually get that out on the paper and write that down or put it in a spreadsheet. And no step-by-step, this is our specific process.
00:16:56
Speaker
So what I do with my clients and what I do with my own stuff to come up with a lead magnet is to think about that process. So that solution that we go through, that framework, and go to the top of it. And now let's look at the top step or two and the sub steps there. Is there something there that we can pick off and say, we can create something that will help the client do this one step by themselves?
00:17:24
Speaker
So it will help them solve that problem instantly. And so they're going to go and take that, take our process and we're not showing them the whole process. We're just showing them the top part. And we're saying, this piece here is a problem and we can help you solve that. And you give them the lead mind, which helps them to do that.
00:17:45
Speaker
And then once they've done it, once they've gone and solved that one part of the problem, what happens next is the next part is ready for you. So you've got the next step is clear and in your process, it's going to be right there, it's going to be step two, or it's going to be step 1.2 or 1.3 or whatever it is.
Integrating Lead Magnets into Customer Experience
00:18:01
Speaker
And so you have
00:18:03
Speaker
got them now in your process so like they're actually already in your sales process they're not even in your sales process they're already in your delivery process like they're already in that solution and so you can say okay the next step is for you to do um we've done x next step is for you to do y
00:18:20
Speaker
And so what you can do is you can tell them how to do that by themselves or and give them another lead magnet. Or you can say, look, if you want some support in doing this and the implication there is clearly we know how to solve this problem, here's the next step in talking to us. So that's it. That's how to actually take it from being your solution and taking your process and breaking it down and turning into something that's very much in and that's where I'm talking about alignment. It has to be in alignment.
00:18:50
Speaker
How do you usually sequence that? So they get their lead magnet. How long do you wait? Where do you introduce the next step? Do you wait for them to work all the way through the lead magnet first or do you offer it to them right away? Maybe you do at the end of the lead magnet and right when they download it or before they download it, where do you introduce the first sales step? Okay, so the way that I like to do this is I like to have an email sequence, an autoresponder sequence of about a week long.
00:19:19
Speaker
And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to email them every day at the same time that they downloaded the original lead magnet. So it's going to be like each one of each email is going to come 24 hours later. And so depending on what it is, and we can talk about formats in a minute about the different formats lead magnet, but typically it's been seven emails then.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, so seven emails, and typically they're going to be about different aspects of that first lead magnet. So maybe within that there's seven sub-steps, and this is going to be very dependent, but usually what I want to do is I want to record like a loom video of like a screen capture of how to use the lead magnet, and that's going to be the first thing that I send them.
00:20:08
Speaker
So it's going to be here's how to do this. And you're going to follow up on that. Now, you can take an approach like there's multiple approaches here, you can do one step by step all the way through. I like to give the full solution up front and not drip it. Because if you drip the solution, what happens is people can get irritated that they have to wait for the next part. So I like to give the full solution up front, and then add like supporting materials around that.
00:20:33
Speaker
So here's here's an example like an example or a case study or here's something else that might be useful for this and just keep adding value to that original but you've already let them get the quick win if they're taking action on it and so I take a very very soft approach to the sales pitch which is you know if you'd like some help with this you know hit reply.
00:20:53
Speaker
So, uh, some people will do, you know, scarcity, urgency type, you know, we're, we're, we've got a special offer or limited number of spaces or something like that. And that will be like further down the sequence, like, like day three, day four, something like that. Does that answer? Yeah, absolutely. Um, so you're breaking it down more by more one by one. Do you have like a PS to the bottom of the email saying like, by the way,
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's an old copywriter trick. I typically will always add a PS with a call to action because we know that people live. I do it. I do it even on LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's, it's just, you know, it's, it's just something like if anybody's not familiar with this, the PS is one of the most, uh, the most viewed or read parts of an email. Oh yeah. And because it stands out. Yeah. And so, so having a call to action in there makes sense. Yeah. So, so I would typically do that. Yeah.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah. Thanks. Giving me some great ideas. What formats do you find best for lead magnets? There's a freaking ton of them. Mini course.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah, white paper, ebook, checklist, outline, worksheet. I've actually literally I'm going through and creating a database of all of them. There's like over a hundred plus of them in my database. Now, as I went and looked through all the lead magnet lists out listicles out there and I've compiled them all into a massive database. Now, which ones are
Effective Formats for Lead Magnets
00:22:16
Speaker
your favorites? What do you go to?
00:22:17
Speaker
checklist is my go-to checklist is my go-to because you can make it in order so you're giving people a process to follow so you're giving them the order
00:22:29
Speaker
that they can follow. And with a checklist, what you can do is you can give them a high level overview of the checklist item, and then you can get more detail with that. So what you can do is with the checklist, you could, for example, the original email that we talked about, sorry, the email sequence that we talked about,
00:22:47
Speaker
you can have one of those emails can be every item on your checklist or it can be every section on your checklist if you break it into subsections. So I really like a checklist because they're so actionable and because if they start to go through that, they can build momentum and they can get a quick win. And like ultimately what we want to do here is we want them to get to the end of this problem, having solved the problem. Like that's the key thing here, right? Because if they don't get a quick win, then they're not going to come back to you. So we want to get them that win.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, so that's that's why checklist for me probably number one at number two is possibly email templates. And again, it's because you want people to take action. And sometimes writing the content is the barrier. And so giving people pre written stuff really helps. So that's email templates or scripts of some type, you know, for to conduct the
00:23:40
Speaker
or any kind of template, any kind of script, especially if you can like, I imagine if you can have them fill out a simple form that gets a few pieces of data and then the thank you page preloads the scripts written with their name or their business name in it already, then they just really have to copy and paste it and it's done, right?
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah. And that's something that we could do with forms or with chat bots and things like that. We can generate that kind of thing, actually. That's an interesting kind of way to extend that idea, for sure.
00:24:12
Speaker
It's interesting. I've actually arrived at the same conclusion with checklists right now. So I was, I was hoping to, I was, it's, it's actually good cause it's confirmation. I'm like, okay, maybe I'm on the right track. You know, what's funny as I went through the database and finding all the lead magnets, a hundred of them, when I took the checklist, I'm like, you know what? A lot of these are really similar because in the checklist, what do you have? You also have an outline. You also have a questionnaire because a checklist is going to be a bunch of questions. It just has the functionality of the checkbox in it.
00:24:41
Speaker
You also have, there was a few other things baked into it, a type of assessment, right? So you can actually reposition it as all these things. It's kind of my goal right now. I'm like, Huh, I wonder if I took a checklist, and then just advertised it as all the different things and see which ones people respond to most and maybe questionnaire for some reason for this market for this thing, hits harder, people click on it and download it more. Okay, then I'll just change the whole down funnel to say questionnaire. It's the
00:25:08
Speaker
a checklist, right? Because it's pretty much the same thing. I'm just adding some functionality. And when you build a checklist, you can also pre-package it with a couple of videos. Now you have a mini course because, you know, a checklist usually needs a little bit of extra explanation, right? A couple of loom videos will take care of that. Now you have a little bit of a mini course packaged with it. But I like what you were saying about a checklist because
00:25:31
Speaker
Checklists are easy to consume in about 30 seconds. Yeah. And that's the problem, right? You can make a really well, wonderfully designed and illustrated ebook. Even if it's well broken up copy, it's only 20 pages, but they don't read that thing, man. We don't, we, none of us read those things. We look at it and it's kind of click through it real quick, but we don't read it. And that's the problem. We actually have to create something that's consumable. Otherwise, if they don't consume it, you can't build the authority.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, and that's it, like, I think, and for me, a huge amount of this comes back to, do people, like, does the person really truly feel the pain of the issue?
Client Motivation and Customization
00:26:15
Speaker
Or if it's not that, like, if it's, like, Perry Marshall calls this the bleeding neck.
00:26:19
Speaker
If they don't feel like they have a bleeding neck, then they're much less likely to actually take action on it. And most of the time, we are not competing with our competitors. We are competing with inaction. And that's the issue. And so we're trying to get them to take action by giving them that quick win. And that's why I think this is so important, is because we're competing with inaction. And it's so easy for people to just decide, you know what? I'm not going to do anything on this right now.
00:26:47
Speaker
I'm not really sure the way forward here. So the best thing to do is do nothing for now. Let it sit and I'll percolate, let it think about it and come back to it. And that's that inaction. And that inaction is very costly as well, because I've interviewed 130 people or so on my interview on my podcast so far. And the one thing that keeps coming up when I ask, you know, is there anything that you wish you'd done differently?
00:27:12
Speaker
is people saying i wish i started sooner you know so there is a cost of inaction i was talking to a guy who said you know i thought about getting into this blogging thing and i was i was looking at another guy who is doing a blog just started at around the same time and then i decided you know what i don't have time for that.
00:27:28
Speaker
The other blog that he looked at that was starting at the same time was Duct Tape Marketing, which is now this massive, massive brand. And so this guy could have started blogging about this topic around the same time and decided, nah, it's better to not do that. So the cost of inaction is massive. I think it's a big, big thing.
00:27:46
Speaker
And in the world that I'm in, I talk to people about building a personal brand, building authority, and not getting started is very easy because it's never urgent. It's a bit like it's never urgent to go to the gym. But every day that you let it go, every day that you go by, you will regret that in the future. But right now, there's no cost to it. There's no cost to not going to the gym today.
00:28:08
Speaker
And so, when we're dealing with that, so that's why giving people a quick win is so important is to get start that momentum and start giving the momentum to move forward with the problem because then they feel, oh, this is a problem that I can actually solve. And the momentum brings urgency within itself, you know.
00:28:28
Speaker
You know what's funny is I think I've thought of like an ideal lead magnet is, in my opinion, probably a checklist, but before you get the checklist, you get a quiz, like a five to 10 question quiz. And I've been looking for software to help me execute this, but I can't find it.
00:28:44
Speaker
There's lots of quiz software and there's lots of things that can help you build a checklist. Yeah. But I'm like, my idea, I'm like, cause I thought about, I'm like, well, wouldn't it be better if you could deliver them a custom checklist just based on a few pieces of information, right? That's what a consultant would do. A consultant would ask him like, Oh, okay. Like, you know, how, how, what's your revenue? Like, what are your goals? You know, like few basic pieces of information they can answer, but based on a few answers, you could produce for them a custom checklist.
00:29:09
Speaker
And how easy is that? But there's really, I can't find software for it, so I'm like, come on, there's gotta be a way to make a custom checklist. There's a couple of things there. Where maybe you have 30 questions and you whittle it down to seven. So now it's a highly relevant checklist, right?
00:29:23
Speaker
There's a couple of things just reminded me of there. Um, one of those is, uh, there's the old internet marketing thing of, um, you know, uh, we'll, we'll send you free guide to weight loss, but you need to answer some questions first. Are you male or female? And they say, if they're male or female, and then you send them the same, uh, you send them the same guide, but because they've chosen whether they're male or female, they feel now it's more relevant for them, even though the information is exactly the same. Oh, for sure. There's definitely a psychological trick, but even customizing it a little bit would help.
00:29:53
Speaker
But they're more likely to take action on it because you asked. And I think that Ryan Levesque with his ask formula really popularized the idea of segmenting audiences into booklets. And I know that he has software that is out there that will help you to do that.
00:30:10
Speaker
um yeah he recommends that you that you um you know the first thing you do is is you segment people so you figure out what your high level buckets are and then you segment people into that and then send them your lead magnet based on that so yeah that's i think that's that's what you're talking about there uh and it's it's it's a it's a good it's a good way to do it the other way is uh well everybody's in the same bucket because i'm only targeting this one bucket and then just address that
00:30:38
Speaker
So I've avoided people like Ryan and a lot of other people like him just because they feel a little bit too direct responsey for me, you know, where it's like, yeah. But wait, there's more like I'm going to give away this free other thing and then you can buy it. Those those people drive me absolutely nuts. And I sometimes like who's the classic guy? I've read his books, but only
00:31:04
Speaker
Uh, Russell Brunson, he's, he's my favorite to like love and hate cause he's got some good information out there, but I can't, I can't stand his webinars. I can't stand his pitches. I just can't stand that whole approach to marketing and sales. Cause it's too high pressure and weird for me, but Ryan kind of falls into that vein sometimes. I'm like, Oh, so I probably need to go back and just eat that. And those guys have made a hell of a lot of money, uh, from selling solutions to people and possibly solutions that maybe those people didn't need or couldn't afford, but went for anyway. And.
00:31:34
Speaker
So, I mean, I'm kind of in the same boat as you. You know, I haven't made a tenth or even probably one percent as much money as those guys have. So, who am I to denigrate their approach? But it's not for me. So, yeah.
00:31:51
Speaker
Do you want to talk a bit more about formats? Because there were some other formats I was thinking that are interesting. You got more format stuff? Tell me about it. OK. So one-pagers or cheat sheets. They're like a one-page guide. And you'll see these really often now with chat GPT. Here's a cheat sheet to chat GPT with all these prompts.
00:32:09
Speaker
Um, swipe files are, uh, like what you're putting together. It sounds like you've put together a swipe file of video backdrop, uh, things. I guess that's not really a swipe file, is it? It's like inspiration kind of an inspiration guide. I don't know. It's something you would expect to be able to get on Pinterest fast. And we're right now we're referring to it's cut little conversation we had pre-interview.
00:32:30
Speaker
About me creating a lead magnet around backdrop inspiration if you're not watching this on video you'll you'll realize we both have like professional video backdrops And I was frustrated over the fact that I couldn't find any even on Pinterest. There's hardly any podcast or video backdrops and
00:32:47
Speaker
That aren't like total garbage or like professional studio sets on like cbn, right? So where do you find the in-betweens? There's not a lot of inspiration So I just put together I pretty much opened up apple keynote And just took a bunch of screenshots of all the coolest ones I could find and put it together in a lead magnet I don't know what you call that but it's a little inspiration guide is what i'm calling it Yeah, that's that's cool. I like that
00:33:10
Speaker
Okay, so the quick guide. The quick guide is like the prototypical here's a quick guide to X and I have been guilty of creating a lot of these in the past but they're not necessarily the best quick win type lead magnet because a quick guide is
00:33:32
Speaker
It's something, it's effectively like a mini-ebook. And so if you're creating a quick guide to something, I think it's gotta be super narrow, the problem. It's gotta be, you've gotta be really careful with that format. But you're saying one-pagers are the best, and that makes a lot of sense. So that includes checklists, it includes cheat sheets. Yeah, I like a one-pager. Now, I've created a checklist in the past where it is five pages, but there's only five checklist items per page.
00:34:00
Speaker
And so there's a cover page, five checklists for four pages, I think, and then then a call to action page at the end. So it's like a five page or six page ebook with it with the content in the middle. So it's almost like a LinkedIn carousel, you know, in that sense.
00:34:18
Speaker
um let me see what else uh okay so those are the super quick ones the check the checklist and email templates and one pagers and swipe files those are like the really quick ones the more in-depth stuff um well workbook kind of straddles the the the line between
00:34:35
Speaker
Getting stuff done like interactive workbooks I've created that for podcasting so your podcast launch workbook is one of my books that's up on Amazon and so it's it's to help people walk through the process of launching a podcast obviously and so that's like something that people can feel in printout and fill in or you know.
00:34:54
Speaker
So you're getting them to take action. The problem with the workbook is if it's standalone, you really do need to give supporting information around that. And so I've created like a video guide of how to use it. And then that becomes almost like a mini workshop, a mini training workshop. But I don't advertise it like that. I just advertise it as the workbook so that when they get that, it's like an extra bonus and it makes it easier for them to take action.
00:35:17
Speaker
Yep. Some people love the webinar as a lead man. Can't handle them, hate them. It's in my database, but I hate webinars. Yeah. When they're scheduled webinars and they're going to be live, then it's an event. And you've got to get people lined up to arrive at the right time. And then if it's on demand access to something that was previously recorded,
00:35:45
Speaker
I don't know, a lot of people kind of treat those and pretend that they're actually live, which I don't really like. Here's access to this, and we're going to pretend it was live even though it's starting in three minutes from now, which is a real coincidence. I don't know. That doesn't feel right to me. I guess you can do that in an authentic way, but you've got to be careful about that. But because you're asking people to commit to a huge amount of time, like an hour or 19 minutes or whatever, and then they know that they're going to get a horrible sales pitch at the end. Yeah.
00:36:12
Speaker
So, um, another one is the email mini course, and I've used this myself. And one of the reasons why I do like this is because you're automatically kind of setting up for them to access it through email. And so what that's going to do is that's going to increase your open rates and it's going to, it's going to train the person who's receiving your emails to open and read your emails. So that can work well because that's what they're doing. So,
Testing and Evaluating Lead Magnets
00:36:40
Speaker
um,
00:36:40
Speaker
That's something that I use. I use that at the moment on the Recognize Authority. I have an email mini course called The Journey to Authority, which helps people to basically walk us through the steps of how to build authority and personal brand. So then what else? We have toolkits, which is a bundle of stuff together. The problem with the toolkit is it's kind of too disparate and not necessarily fixing one particular problem. And so I don't really like that.
00:37:09
Speaker
let me see, there's challenges that could be a good option, you know, where you've got a cohort and you say, Hey, we're doing a, here's a five day challenging launching a private podcast, for example, or here's a seven day challenge on creating your first lead magnet. So you could run that and bring a cohort of people through that. And at the end of that, then you've got some sort of offer, which is directly in alignment with that, you know, where you work within one to one, maybe.
00:37:37
Speaker
So that can work well, particularly when you've got that direct alignment with the follow-on. I mean, obviously with all of these, you want that direct alignment, but challenges I think are good because what happens is people start to make progress, but they also see how hard it is. So you've got a bit of both, you know, you've got progress, but you're also seeing, right, this is difficult. So
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah, so those are some of the other formats that I can think of offhand. I don't know if there's anything else. That does seem good, but it seems like if you want to win, start with the one pager. And in fact, probably create multiple one pagers, split test them, and see which one works best before diving into these bigger ones, because these ones take more time. And the one pager, honestly, is probably going to do most of the lifting. Well, that's it. Now, what I like about this is the ones that are quickest to consume are also the ones that are quickest to create.
00:38:27
Speaker
And because of that, it's easier to go and take the time and create something really good, but it's also created really quickly. So, I mean, that's an approach. I think that you're better off in keeping it short and just trying to go really tight on solving that one problem.
00:38:47
Speaker
With these one-pagers, are you usually doing it via PDF? Is that how you're delivering it? Yeah. I think you'd be crazy not to just throw together a PDF in Canva to test it. Now, one thing I should mention is I think that, and I didn't get this when I started out, but I think that you should create your marketing for the lead magnet before you create the actual lead magnet.
00:39:11
Speaker
So what I mean by that is write up like the title and the features, benefits, like create the squeeze page, like create a fake squeeze page, squeeze page, sorry, it's such a terrible term. That's the email landing page. Yeah, the landing page. So create that first and then show that to a few people and say, and like be honest, but like say, I haven't made this yet, but if I made this, would you be interested in it?
00:39:38
Speaker
and actually test that against the market. And don't waste your time actually putting it together if they're not interested. You want to see that they're interested in it. And I say that after having done it the other way around for years and made all those mistakes of creating stuff and putting it out there and then finding that it didn't resonate with people at all. So don't do what I did.
00:40:01
Speaker
So create the marketing first and then once you've got you've got people saying hey, yeah, that sounds really Interesting like that sounds like something I would actually pay for if you get that like you want people to feel oh, wow Yeah, that's super I would pay for that like I would pay 50 bucks for that or 100 bucks for that Like that's when you know that you're hitting that bleeding neck the Perry Marshall talks about it, you know Yep, the pain point, you know, it's funny. This is where I
00:40:26
Speaker
where right now I'm like, maybe I just come up with 12 lead magnets, because that's what her Moses is doing. And then he's just split testing them on Facebook and letting the clicks vote. And seem it's funny, because I'm like, you probably don't even have to develop them. If you just have a you don't even need to develop the landing page if they just click the ad.
00:40:44
Speaker
for it, that's the vote. And then you send them to maybe like a generic page that says, Hey, we haven't developed this yet. But if you, uh, just curious, why, why did you, I don't know, you could probably try to get them to subscribe to your newsletter or something. That's the old Tim, Tim Ferriss approach. Yeah. Yeah. Like create an empty offer just to try to get the vote and see what it is. Right. Yeah. Cause he did, he would do that with products on Google app. You can do this on Facebook and just test the headline in the image.
00:41:08
Speaker
You know, kill, kill the eight that didn't work as well. Keep the, keep the four to three to four that performed well on the clicks and then actually develop those. Then you, that way you've tested 12, but you only had to make three or four seems like a viable way to go. But, but the problem with that is you got to dedicate some ad budget
Value in High-Ticket B2B Transactions
00:41:26
Speaker
to it. You're probably talking like a few thousand bucks, but I'm like, ah, I mean, probably 3000 bucks well spent. Cause one per one performing, one well performing lead magnet can make you a lot of money.
00:41:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, it depends on the economics of your offer, you know, and it doesn't, and this is the nice thing about working in high ticket B2B is it doesn't take many clients to move the needle a lot, you know? Like my business is doing great if I have six or seven clients. That's all I need for a year, you know? So I don't need, it's not like I need to get hundreds of clients in the door. So yeah, it really does depend on your own economics and, you know,
00:42:04
Speaker
what level of profit margin you're running at and all sorts of different things. But I think it's worthwhile experimenting with these things. Well, I've learned a lot from this conversation. Is there any final thoughts or advice you'd have for the audience around lead magnets?
00:42:18
Speaker
Well, I think testing, I think the most important thing ultimately is having conversations with your ideal client because those conversations, they will tell you what they care about, what is truly important for them, the language that they use, because like you want to repeat the language they use specifically back to them. Those words are gold. So that's what you want. You want to get the way that they describe the problem that they're having.
00:42:44
Speaker
and you want to take that down, like ideally record the calls so that you can get that, you know? Whoo! Man, that was a good one. I know it's good when I'm leaning in trying to learn as much as I can from somebody so that I can actually go and apply it myself. And there was a few things in this interview, some that I knew, some things that I knew, and then there were some things that I'm like, huh. Like, how come I didn't think about that before? And that particular one that I'm like, huh.
00:43:10
Speaker
is the part about lining up the problem that you're tackling in the lead magnet to your sales cycle. It's like trying to find the things that they have a big problem with that also aligns with what you sell is kind of where you have to use discernment as a marketer or someone who's trying to grow an audience.
00:43:30
Speaker
So eventually you can get revenue from it, right? Trying to find that sweet spot is the key, right? Because if you miss, if you don't get that thing right, then you're probably going to, you know, you'll probably earn revenue if you're a little bit off, but the more off you are, the more revenue you're going to miss out on. So trying to align that to the thing that you do is I think the biggest key that I had an unlock for in this interview. So I'm even taking up some lead magnets that I've already made that I'm like, oh, I should probably go back and rework some of those.
00:43:59
Speaker
The other thing was just the confirmation around consumption in lead magnets. You definitely want to create something that's easy to consume. The checklist thing, I think I was on the right path with that one. Like I said in the intro, I was glad to get some confirmation that that's probably a good way to go. That's where I've been leaning and ultimately packaging a checklist until like maybe like an ultimate checklist bundled with some videos and some extra goodies in there to really make it robust, but still making it highly consumable. If they only have five minutes, this is going to provide value in and of itself.
00:44:29
Speaker
So I like where I'm going with that. He gave me some confirmation I'm gonna keep digging deeper on that and fix some of the process I'm dealing with at the front end by lining up the problem with the sales solution So I hope you liked this interview and I'll see you on the next episode