334: The Power of a Lead Magnet
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Summary:
What is a lead magnet and why should we be using them? Lead magnets are a way of getting information from your client, or potential client, in exchange for something valuable to them. There are best practices to be mindful of when implementing one, and things to avoid doing. We walk through the different types of lead magnets, how to promote them, and how to assess if they’re working for you or not. We also break down 5 easy to implement ideas for a lead magnet you can start using today!
Main topics:
What is a lead magnet
Why use one
What make a good one
5 ideas for a lead magnet
Main takeaway: No matter which method of lead magnet you choose, providing value to clients and potential clients will always be a win.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
lead magnet, pet, people, email, clients, potential clients, business, download, dog, important, information, company, put, website, guide, create, promote, person, pet sitters, work
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Colin, and this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. Welcome to Episode 334. Hello, thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for supporting the show today. We have Patreon members like Laurie Jan Julie Lucy Barbie Erica and Deseret Thank you very much for taking a few of your hard earned dollars every month and helping us to continue doing the podcast
Collin 00:41
or Patreon I see the value in the show and they want to give back value to help support and keep it going. So if you would like to do that, you can go to pets over confessional.com/support and learn about all of the ways that you can help the show
Meghan 00:54
today we're gonna be talking about lead magnets. So we currently have one for Funky Bunch our pet sitting business, but it's on our to do list to upgrade it and make it better, we just kind of slapped one in there and haven't really touched it since. So we want to make it better. And to do a little bit of refresh. So if you don't have one, if you don't know what a lead magnet is, or if you need a refresh on yours, hopefully this discussion will help. So first we want to talk about what is a lead magnet, what are they it's basically an offer to get someone to put in their information so that your company can continue to market to them. It can be an ebook, cheat sheet, there's you know, there's a lot of different types of lead magnets. So workbook planner, and E guide to your city, there can be one of full of pet care tips of maybe you have one specific for dogs or one specific or cats, it can be a challenge so that a lot of people do like a week long challenge of you know be the best pet parent, you can be something like that. And in order to go into the challenge, you have to give some of your information. It can be a quiz, which takes a little bit more time to structure and to
Collin 02:04
put together. But this would be something like take my quiz to figure out what kind of dog breed you are, or take my quiz to turn to figure out what kind of cat you are, whatever it is making it fun and engaging for that person to make them interested enough to give a little bit of their information to you.
Meghan 02:19
Or it can even be a giveaway, this can sometimes take a little more work than the simple giveaways you see I've like and follow and share. But if you really want somebody's contact information in order to follow up with them or so you can give them a little bit more information about your company, then maybe sending them to your website where they can fill that out or something along those lines.
Collin 02:39
Regardless of what it is though it has to provide value to the persons entering their information, they have to see something that's going to help them or educate them or entertain them in some way.
Meghan 02:50
And a lot of times when we think about somebody having a lead magnet, we think of somebody giving them their email address. But it doesn't necessarily have to be email based, although that is the most popular. If you want to do text messages. If that is your main mode of communication with your clients, you can ask for their phone number, or an address if you are wanting to do some direct mail. Obviously, that's a lot more costly than say, putting them on an email list. But it is another method where you can ask for their email and you can send them newsletters printed out or you can send them a monthly pamphlet or a mailer about your company.
Collin 03:25
And lead magnets fall into two broad categories of purpose. So you'll be using them for different reasons for your business. So the first one is a profit driven lead magnet, this does exactly what it sounds. This is a lead magnet meant to help you sell something or make more money or drive more business for your company. And the other one is wanting just to keep potential clients in the loop for your company. So it's more informative. And you do this in hopes that you'll get a sale eventually, or they will start following and build more brand loyalty to you through this process. So again, you have a lead magnet that's meant to drive revenue and immediately so think immediate discount off of a service. And then there's the ones where we're educating we're trying to build some loyalty here. So here you're giving away a guide, you're giving away a free ebook, you're giving away a free tutorial on something. And what's really neat is that you can implement one of these at a time, or you could do a series of offering one and then the other or offering them both at the same time. So your cat you're capturing different aspects of your market and people who are following you and your business
Meghan 04:28
regardless of which you choose. There are a lot of benefits to your company. They are very important because, you know we don't own social media. Obviously, you know, the algorithm always changes a lot especially depending on what platform you are on the algorithm is just it's it never stays constant. The only thing that's really ours is our website and our email list. So creating a lead magnet and getting clients contact information is very important because it is going to keep you and your company top of mind for clients and potential clients, it's going to allow you to update your existing clients, you know, in one fell swoop as opposed to fighting the social media algorithm. It's a way to control your branding. You know, email marketing is still the best tool to get directly in contact with your clients, even though they say, you know, I think it's like, around 10%, open rate for your emails, you know, we with both of our businesses, we consistently see well above that,
Collin 05:29
well imagine what you could do with your messaging with promoting things with just updating about your company, if you had an immediate 100 people able to open something, we have a lot of people who also use our emails as references to get back to other materials, save our booking link, or it acts as a reminder to them Oh, yep, I see that email, I've got to go in and book now. So it also we may have other we may have some purposes for the emails that we're sending out and the messaging that we're putting out there, but clients are going to use it for their own purpose, whether it's again, saving that booking link or using it as a reminder to book their next upcoming trip, you get direct access to them, without having to have them distracted by other social media posts or other engagements that they have going on. Yeah, and
Meghan 06:11
so if you print it out and mail it directly to clients, or potential clients, they may put it on the fridge, if it's very important with, you know, upcoming dates or changes to your services, they may put that on the fridge, if it's a text message, text message rates are vastly higher than even email rates. And so make sure that you know, you're getting you're providing value to people always, because with these things, we're always inundated with marketing messages and sales from companies. So whatever you are giving away in your lead magnet, make sure it is valuable, most importantly, and as far as what to put in your lead magnet, we've been saying this over and over, but give away something for free, that is super valuable, it packs a punch, maybe even consider giving away something for free that people are charging for that maybe even you are charging for, you know, your lead magnet should be so good, it should provide so much value, that people definitely want to give you their contact information and say, Oh, this is like, I can get all of this just by giving my email or just by giving my phone number. You know, make sure that it solves a problem for them. It needs to be it needs to provide a specific result for people. Some important questions to ask when you are crafting your lead magnet are what impact will it have had on them? You know what, at the end of this after they receive this information? What will they learn? Will they be educated? Will they be? Well? Will they get a laugh out of this because you know I put together something that's that's comical. That's funny, you know, maybe the the 10 silliest things that a pet parent may encounter of like, you know poop on the shoe or you know, whatever it is, but what transformation after they have this lead magnet in their hands? What transformation? Will it have for them? How will it make them be a better pet parent? And then another question to ask yourself is what does your ideal client need to understand? What do they need to be aware of? Or what do they need to believe in order to want or need your pet sitting and dog walking services. And then once you've answered that, once you know what your ideal client wants and needs, what problem they have that they're looking for a solution for, then you can create a lead magnet that would accomplish that solution. You know, it's not going to necessarily be a one size fits all. But if you know enough about your ideal client, you'll be able to craft something that will get them a solution to a specific issue that they're having.
Collin 08:38
And that goes right into what makes a really great lead magnet. And the first one there is kind of what you're talking about here is needing to make it simple. And so it's an immediate reward to them, we're not going to have them download 1000 page PDF, or an hour long video of us doing or showing something needs to have a ton of value in the shortest amount of time or space as possible. So they can get that quick win. And they can start implementing something new or learning something new. Immediately. If you are doing a workbook, an e book or something along those lines, make sure it's either super, super short, are filled with lots of really good photos and infographics to help people absorb that information. So it doesn't feel as over whelming to them. And again, we keep coming back to does this solve a problem for somebody? Is this going to help them when they're done with this, the one that we currently have on our website are our five tips to take the best photos of your pet. And it's a really simple short thing with Big Five numbers and a short description after each one of them and good infographics on the left that kind of describe and demonstrate what we're talking about. We know people love their pets, and we want to help them take better photos of them so they can have them for years and years. And so it's just something that I put together. It was actually something that we had done a blog on and so that's another idea that you can take a blog that you've written or a have a Facebook Live that you've done and condense it down into a few short bullet points and make that your downloadable and then ask yourself, Is this in a form that your ideal client would actually consume? Does it need to be printed off? Does it need to be a mailer? Does it need to be a video? Does it need to be a download? Does it need to be a text message? Think about how your ideal client would want to get in gain access to information and then produce that for them.
Meghan 10:26
Yeah, I think that blogs would really help you in creating a lead magnet, you've already written that content. And it would be so easy to just change a few words and repurpose it into a downloadable. What I would like to do for hours for our personal pet business is I would like to gather all of the pet resources for our community. So that means the local groomers, FETs, trainers, anything that we they would need to know the pet poison hotline and emergency vet number, all of the valuable information that they would need to know maybe they just got a new dog or are new to the area, anything that they would need to know,
Collin 11:04
it's interesting that you mentioned Yeah, we can reuse these blog posts, because we actually have blog posts for every single one of those topics. And so it's this natural progression of we've already made that content. Now we can pull out a little bit of information from each of them, or put them make them little one pagers with some nice infographics and have somebody download and boom, they're immediately connected. And they have access to this wealth of information and knowledge. So again, whether they decide to use our company or not, we are automatically viewed as a go to resource for them.
Meghan 11:35
Yeah, because the unfortunate part about blogs is they don't stay at the top of your website forever. Once you publish a new one, the next one goes down. It's like social media, right? You don't you don't, unless you pin it to Facebook, or pin it to Instagram, those things just fall down. And nobody really ever sees them anymore. But a lead magnet is a great way to resurface that again and say, Hey, this is all of the great stuff that I've already done. So just give me your information. And you can have all this
Collin 12:03
well, and that gets into the idea of making this seasonal. If you have topics and information you have things going on in your community that you want to help people get access to having a seasonal lead magnet will will not only keep them fresh and new and exciting. But we'll also be speaking to particular clients who are reaching out to you or who are interested in you at certain times of year. So somebody who's reaching out to you only at Christmas, that's the first time they search for a pet sitter, they come on, they find a lead magnet that has to do about pet safety tips around Christmas. Now all of a sudden, you're a much more attractive company, because you're helping them before you've even conducted a service for them.
Meghan 12:40
Yeah, so it's a good idea to not just have one and let it sit there, which we have been guilty of doing. So don't do that. But create a few and change them out every few months. And then promote them on your social media and your website banner. So say, Hey, I've got this, I've created this free thing, you know, go here, click here. And you can have it as well.
Collin 13:01
That's important to remember, that's also not just if we have a website, it's not just digital stuff. We've talked about mailers, we've talked about these physical things that we're giving away to people. But if you're hosting an event, you can also create a lead magnet, if you're going to events or social gatherings or other things like that, where you can do a giveaway, say, hey, enter to win this prize XYZ, all you have to do is put your email address in this fishbowl and you could be entered to win, you can use those email addresses for follow up emails after that event.
Meghan 13:30
And like I just mentioned, you can share it as a popup on your website or a banner on your website. You can also share it into Facebook groups, those are great as well, because pet parents always need more resources, they're always looking for ways to you know curb their cat of this bad habit or curb their dog, you know, from leash reactivity, or whatever it is. So sharing it in Facebook groups is a great way to get more reach as well. On Instagram, when you have the bio link, you can even use that as well. So if you have a specific webpage that you want people to visit to download, whatever it is you're giving away, you can just put it in there as well. And you can say, Hey, we are giving away this great free resource. Go here, click click the link in our bio to download it right away.
Collin 14:12
Regardless of how you decide to promote the link or how they're that you have this lead magnet, there's a very important step in this entire process. And that's to make sure you go and test it once it's live to make sure that it
Meghan 14:25
works. Yeah, because ours didn't for a very long time. And so until somebody and fellow petsitter had reached out and said, Hey, I was not able to download this. And we went Oh, well thank you for letting us know, because it's been up there for a long time. But nobody's ever told us that. So make sure you go through the process of signing up through your own lead magnet, getting your own email, which sounds silly but in downloading the item to make sure all of the steps are functional and work appropriately. Something that works every single time is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you Be able to care for their furry family members, pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today. At pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com.
Collin 15:36
After you've tested your lead magnet, the next thing we need to do is just focus on ourselves for a minute and make sure that we are setting proper expectations for what's going to happen with this. Everybody starts out with ends with zero email signups on their email list. So that's fine, everybody, everybody will be after remember that every one that we add to it creates more and more visibility for your business and your messaging. So don't be discouraged if nobody signs up for it initially. Or if it's really slow growth, be appreciative and recognize that every single person that signs up for this, I have another chance to speak to another person in my audience who's interested in my messaging from there. As long as the lead magnet is aligned with what you're selling, what your goals are, and who you're selling to, it will work and people will be attracted to it over time.
Meghan 16:28
So recognize that people may not be ready to buy your services right now. But they may be in the future. You know, we always heard about that person on Facebook who's been stalking your page for years, but they haven't, they don't have a pet or they don't need you just yet. They're just looking out for their friend who was maybe looking for a pet sitter or they just may need one in the future.
Collin 16:49
It's the same with this every time we get one person, it doesn't mean we're going to get one more service booked immediately the next day, it means we're building that relationship. And that's really what lead magnets help us do. They help us get in contact with our clients with potential clients start building that brand loyalty to us and build a relationship with them. So it's more sticky that relationship and they're more likely to keep returning to us.
Meghan 17:12
Yeah, it's a great way to get that one person closer to your business, just one step closer to buying your service using your dog walking or your pet sitting. You know, visibility is still good for your business. Even if you have as many clients as you possibly can, you know, we don't we never know what the next week is going to bring. And so continuing to get your name out there is always beneficial. It's important
Collin 17:35
to remember that you don't have to do anything with the emails, or the phone numbers or contact information right away. But don't wait too long to get back in front of that person. Because they may have forgotten about who you are, why they signed up or where this email is coming from. So still stay fresh and Top of Mind with it. And because you went through all of that time and energy and editing to actually make the thing, don't waste it, put it to good use and start implementing it at least a little bit at a time
Meghan 18:02
when you go to promote your lead magnet, even if it's on your website. Be it's important to be crystal clear and concise as to exactly how it's going to help that person just like when we talk about our dog walking and pet city businesses, you know solving that problem? How can I? How is my service going to be able to help you know? How is this lead magnet going to be able to help that person? What problem is it solving the more you can distill it down to basically as few words as possible, especially if it's going in your Instagram bio, because there's very few words there. But the person giving you their contact information needs to know exactly how this is going to help them and provide a lot of value to them. Otherwise, they're not going to want to give you their information.
Collin 18:41
Our our text for our magnet says Download our top five tips for taking better photos of your pet, level up your pet photography today. And then there's a little space that says enter email address and then get the guide as simple and straightforward as possible.
Meghan 18:55
It is a little cheesy with level up. But so we feel like we can do. We could do a little bit better with the language there. But exactly how you're going to help them in what way and exactly what it actually is what they are going to be downloading because a lot of times you go and you sign up for this thing, and it's not exactly what you thought it was going to be. So it's important to not be deceitful about it. It's a great way lead magnets are a great way to get in front of people's eyes more on a consistent basis. But it can you know, some people tend to use it in a sleazy way to just get the emails and try to promote as much as possible. So be legitimate about it. Don't try not to be deceitful. Yeah, you
Collin 19:37
could lie about the item and say download your free guide to solving world peace and become a billionaire doing it. And then you could spend them multiple times a day about your business and selling and pitching more things. Or just be straight up be truthful about what it is download this free community guide to the pet friendly places in our city. And then use that email list to update them once a month about upcoming events and specials that you're running in your business and reminders about booking
Meghan 20:03
Well, and that's an important part that we didn't even touch on what to do once you get people's information, which is a whole other discussion. You know, how, how do you get people to stick around and not opt out of your content. But once you have gone through all this process of figuring out what exactly you're going to create than actually creating the thing, and then putting it out there into the world, it's important to assess if it's actually working. And what your conversion rate is that in
Collin 20:25
the simplest form, what you're doing is you're asking for an exchange of information for their information, you're saying, Hey, I've got this thing, give me your email, give me your phone number, give me your address. And then I will hand this over to you. So the simplest form of tracking is just how many total pieces of contact information am I accumulating over time. And so when if you have this on your website, what you do is you have a little text box that somebody enters their email in, that gets stored in a spreadsheet, or a Google sheet or a back end email server software, you can go in and check that on a daily basis on a weekly basis and see how many more people have signed up for this since I last checked. And then you can compare that to how much promoting of it that you're doing, you can compare that to your website traffic, you can compare that to how many people are booking your services, you can also use more sophisticated tracking technologies in emails these days. But that's on an individual basis level about which email program that you're using for that and what statistics they can offer you. I like just tracking and monitoring how many people what's the rate of signups which is number of people per day. And that tells you how it's doing and whether you need to refresh or not. Or if your messaging is getting across people, it's attractive to them. So we've walked through why they're important. We've walked through best practices with them. And we've talked a little bit about how we can track whether they are successful or not. But what are some What are five ideas that we can use as a lead magnet in our businesses to start getting in touch with people that we want to be talking to?
Meghan 21:52
Well, I'll start with the one that I really liked the most, and which I just mentioned a few minutes ago is the guide to the city that you live in the pet friendly guide, I think that just provides so much value. Even if somebody already has a pet and they've lived in the city for years, you know, they may want to know what Pet Pet Friendly restaurants are there, maybe there's some on there that they don't even know about. It's just such a great way to not only promote other local businesses, but to really provide so much value.
Collin 22:20
I like the idea of a downloadable 10 tips for a new puppy guide, or what to do if you have a new puppy. And you can give tips on leash training on biting on potty training on feeding on learning to sit, you can give a lot of information about a puppy in a very condensed nature, and have that up there. For people who are interested in that, again, we have this idea of we need to have multiple lead magnet so that we can be capturing people at different stages and different interests and how our company can help them. So this isn't one that you're going to have up there for years and years. You can put up there every now and then and say okay, here's my puppy guide. If you're interested, go here and download that
Meghan 22:56
if you are into videos and you love being on camera, I think a great idea is to physically show how to handle a dog that has maybe leash reactivity, or some minor food aggression. You know all those pandemic puppies that were caught inside for a couple years, they're now being released basically into the world and having to learn a lot of things. And if you have any sort of trainer background, or you are wanting to implement training into your existing business, this would be a great way to show your expertise, and to allow your clients and existing clients to know more about how to handle this.
Collin 23:34
I like the idea of putting together a guide for five toxic plants to avoid in your home and what to do if their dog consumes a toxic item.
Meghan 23:43
You could also do one about different types of collars and harnesses and when to use them, which ones not to use. And it's a good way to say hey, my company promotes positivity. And this is what we use. This is what we believe is best for your dog as well.
Collin 23:59
If all of this seems daunting to you remember that Done is better than perfect. And we talked about that a lot on the show. But it is really true Done is better than perfect. Start small just to get something out there and start trying this. And the more you do that, the more confident you'll be, the more ideas you'll start to come up with. And the more you'll be able to put that out there to start helping people, you can always change it and refine it later. Again, it's not permanent, we don't want it to be permanent. So we can put up there, try it, get a new idea and keep that iterative process going. And again,
Meghan 24:31
if you're already doing blogs, those are going to be a huge help into whatever lead magnet you want to create. The simplest way to figure out what you should put in your lead magnet is to ask your clients what their biggest struggle is when it comes to being a pet parents. This is going to help you know how to better serve them and also kind of get a feel for what they need help on and maybe what other potential clients need help on as well. If you already know the answer to what their biggest struggle is, then great. You already know what you're going to Create. But no matter which method of lead magnet you use, whether it's a cheat sheet a week long challenge, and E guide to your city, you need to provide as much value as possible to your clients and potential clients. Because every single moment, we're consuming so much information. So if they can go, I got so much value. And so I learned so much from this thing that this company gave me, I want to use them. They are the experts and I want to partner with them and my pets care.
Collin 25:28
Let us know how lead benefits have worked for you some of the trials and errors and things that you've learned along the way. We want to thank today's sponsors, pet sitters associates and our wonderful Patreon members for making today's show possible. And we really want to thank you so so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to the show. We can't tell you how much it means to us. We appreciate you
Meghan 25:47
bye
