In this post, your friendly neighborhood SaaS copywriting friend (me) shares 5 easy ways to market lead magnets to help my small business and entrepreneur peeps out. If you're looking for simple but effective ways to build your email list, this is the post for you!
Let’s start off with the basics…
What Is A Lead Magnet?
A Lead Magnet is a free piece of content you create and share online in order to build an email list.
Lead Magnets are also referred to as a ‘Freebie’, and they can be anything of value to your ideal audience that informs, engages or improves their life in some way.
A Checklist
A Guide… like my All-In-One Free Blog Writing Guide that you should download right now 😉
A Webinar
A Video
An Exclusive FB Group
The list is only limited by your own imagination. All that matters is creating a piece of FREE content that benefits your ideal client (it’s always better to focus on exactly the type of people you’d want to work with than trying to over-generalize).
It doesn’t have to be crazy complicated, and you can create really valuable and beautiful Lead Magnets/Freebies in just a few minutes (or find a designer to help you out, too).
A great free resource to make Lead Magnets is Canva, I use it all the time for my social media and Freebies. I use the Pro version, but you really don’t need to in order to make a killer-awesome Lead Magnet.
Why Do You Need A Lead Magnet?
If you follow my blog, you know that content = currency between your business and prospective customers. A Lead Magnet is an AWESOME way to connect with cold leads, and build a bustling email list that you can love, nurture and engage with more intimately than you will with a blog or even social media.
Every business benefits from a strong and active email list.
Your email list DOESN’T have to be huge to be effective- just ask the T-Boss herself, Tarzan Kay (my email marketing idol).
Establishing and engaging with your email list will turn cold leads into hot ones that’ll be excited to invest in any offers you might make in the future.
And, again, one of the most effective ways to build your inbox community is by offering a Lead Magnet.
How To Create A Lead Magnet | Tools & Software
There are a TON of tools and resources that you can use to create beautiful Lead Magnets, and all of the options I’ll be sharing in this section have FREE Versions!
Word or Google Docs
To start out simple, you can create an awesome and high-value Lead Magnet right in your favorite Word Processing app. Both Google and Microsoft have free browser-based word processors that work beautifully for creating things like checklists! But if you want to get a little fancier and really wow-a-crowd, these next two options are perfect.
Canva
Canva is an intuitive and brilliant little browser design studio. Its Free version has more than enough features to create BEAUTIFUL Lead Magnets, but I also use it to create blog cover images, social media, and website graphics (not logos, though, I strongly recommend hiring a professional graphic designer to help with your logo design)
I’ve been using Canva for years at this point, and I’ve made numerous Freebies/Lead Magnets. So if you want to create eye-catching Lead Magnets without investing the $$ or the manhours into learning how to use professional design programs, Canva has your back.
Visme
So I hadn’t heard of Visme until one of their awesome folks reached out to me recently! They let me try Visme’s Premium features for free– and asked me if I’d review and share it with you guys if I liked it. I told them that I’d be happy to check out Visme, but I’d only share it with you guys if I genuinely liked it. And, as you can see, I definitely want to share Visme with ya!
Visme is a beautifully fluid and easy-to-use design program with a plethora of features and a user-friendly UI.
But I have to say (as simple as it sounds) my FAVORITE feature is the ability to RESIZE YOUR CANVAS just by dragging out the edge of your canvas! Literally a game-changer for creating infographics (it blew my mind)! It also provides beautiful graphic elements, templates, images, and fonts (the whole 9-yards), so I am definitely a Visme fan.
How To Set Up Your Lead Magnet To Get Emails
There are many ways to make your Lead Magnet downloadable after someone enters their email address. My favorite way is to create a Landing Page (I use MailChimp, but I’m planning to switch providers- just doing research on who I wanna switch to.)
You can create a Landing Page on your website platform too, I just found it easiest to create an Email Subscriber Landing Page through my Email Marketing platform because setting it up was easier. I also think it’s nice to have a pretty Landing Page to link to.
Don’t overcomplicate a Landing page, and if you need some help (find a Copywriter-like moi– to give you a hand). Just remember to make it very clear what the Landing Page is for, and how the visitor will benefit from downloading your Freebie and joining your email list.
Important Tip: Make sure you enable secondary email verification. This is a good measure to make sure your subscriber is on board and know what they’re signing up for.
You’ll also need to write out a welcome email sequence for your email download. Your email sequence can just be one email welcoming them to your email list and giving them the download link, or it can be multiple emails that give you an opportunity to pitch an offer at the end.
That’s a whole different blog, so I’m not going to go into details now.
Okay, now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s move on to my favorite ways of advertising Lead Magnets!
Big Mama Pinterest is wonderful for a plethora of reasons, but I especially love it for building traffic and sharing Lead Magnets.
Many of us will often visit Pinterest nowadays if we have a question or are looking for tips and tricks, right? That includes your ideal customers, so I strongly recommend getting familiar with Pinterest tips and techniques and using it to market that Freebie.
Important Tip: Pinterest is a very visual place, and it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the fray. Make sure that your Pinterest image is eye-catching and pretty- videos- especially– are really great at grabbing attention on Pinterest.
Facebook Groups
Facebook is still one of the biggest players in the digital marketing space. Practically everyone has an FB account, and that includes your target customers. There’s an FB group for everything under the sun, so take some time to look into groups where your target customers are hanging out (or start your own group) and connect with them.
FB Groups are also a great place to do market research even before you create a Lead Magnet, as you can get a good idea of their pain points/struggles, and create a Lead Magnet that helps solve them!
Important Tip: Always read the Group rules. Groups often have strict rules about self-promotion and spam. Oftentimes they’ll reserve a specific day of the week for businesses to share their content.
If you’re not respectful of these rules, your post may get deleted or you could even get kicked out of the group. If you’re not sure whether posting your Lead Magnet is okay, then just reach out to a Group Admin and ask!
Blogs
Blogs are a great step one in a Lead Magnet funnel, and they’re great because every business needs (should have) a consistent blog.
And with a few free plugins (especially for people who use WordPress like me), it’s super easy to incorporate your Lead magnet form right into the post.
The best part about blogs is they can serve double duty with a consistent posting schedule, and here’s why:
You can post the same Lead Magnet on multiple blogs without it being pushy
A Consistent blog draws and drives more traffic
Having a blog relevant to your Lead Magnet already establishes your expertise, so folks will be more likely to want a free resource you have to offer
With plugin subscriber forms, your reader doesn’t even have to leave your blog page to subscribe
You can create a Pinterest Pin for every blog you post, driving traffic to your website and your Lead Magnet
Cool, right? As I’ve said before: if you don’t have a business blog, you need one.
(again, here’s my All-In-One Blog Writing Template & Guide one more time to make it super easy to write your own blogs even if you’ve never written one before)
Put It EVERYWHERE
Make sure you have a link to your Lead Magnet on all of your business accounts and pages. On your website, in your Instagram bio, in your Facebook profile, your Twitter bio, absolutely everywhere your business exists online.
And there’s nothing wrong with posting weekly about your Lead Magnet to build engagement and drive traffic. You’d be surprised (and probably a little discouraged) if you knew just how few of your social media followers actually saw your posts on their feed, so don’t be afraid to sing from the mountain tops.
Guest Posting & Networking
Another way to build your audience is to connect with an industry colleague’s audience! Guest posting on someone else’s blog or being featured on their podcast (etc) not only makes you look SUPER AMAZING and professional, but it opens you up to a whole new world of viewers who’ll love YOUR content too.
Obviously, it’s smart to connect with other entrepreneurs and content creators in your niche, so take a look around at folks in your industry to see if they’re interested in collaborating!
Don’t Get Discouraged
Don’t get discouraged if it feels like your email list isn’t growing as fast as you’d like. Organic marketing takes time, patience, and consistency.
And don’t be afraid to try out different Lead Magnets, or different ways of wording your copy when advertising to see if that helps boost growth.
Ask your friends and family to join your email list for crying out loud (you bet your ass my mom is one of my first email subscribers). It’s a great way to practice writing emails and building connections. Not to mention, our family and friends usually don’t mind sending us feedback to help us improve!
Last Tip
Make sure you nurture and stay consistent with your email list. Once you actually build an inbox audience, don’t leave them hanging. There’s no point in subscribers if you’re ignoring them.
Email marketing can be as frequent as you like, but try to send at least one nurture email a week. It doesn’t have to always be about selling, your email list is not only a wonderful place to build a unique and personal relationship with your customers, but it’s also super therapeutic to be your honest self, too.
Always be yourself, and the people you want to work with will LOVE seeing your emails in their inbox each week.
No joke, they’re my favorite part of the week.
Alright pals, that’s it for today! I hope this post gave you some information and inspiration to integrate Lead Magnets into your B2B SaaS Content Marketing Strategy!
Feel free to comment below if you have any questions, I’m happy to help!
Don’t forget to check the free DIY stuff I created to help you develop awesome copy and content that helps build your audience, establish your authority, and make sure every piece of content is the best it can be!