Ask Steph: How can I develop the right lead magnet for a particular offer, and do I need more than one?

How do I grow my business faster? What's the secret to success? How can design a business that serves me, not the other way around?

Your host, Steph Taylor, asked all of these questions right before she built a million-dollar online business from the ground up in just a few short years. But she made every mistake along the way.

Now, Steph's sharing the strategies she wishes she'd known when she was dreaming up her business plan from her corporate cubicle. The advice she wishes she'd had when she was juggling painful clients, answering client calls at 3 am and wondering if she would ever find financial freedom with her business.

If you ever feel like you're the only one who hasn't cracked the secret to success in your online business, this show is for you.

If you have big dreams but feel like you're not getting anywhere, this show is for you.

If you wish you could put your growth on 8x speed and skip straight to the good part, this show is for you.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips, and strategies to build a business that brings you more profit, more freedom and even more joy.

Prepare to walk away from every episode feeling inspired to take action. Because the secret sauce is Imperfect Action.

 

 
Today's question is, 

“What is a good strategy or method for developing the right lead magnet for a particular offer? Is it something that helps bridge the magician's gap or something else? Should I have multiple lead magnets for the same offer, even if it's the first time I'm launching it?”

 

What is a lead magnet really all about

We're going to touch on a few things in today's blog including the Magician's Gap concept slightly because I know that if you're new here, it's probably a new concept to you. It's something I talk about quite a lot. And it's one of the biggest things that I believe underpins marketing and sales strategy, regardless of what you are selling and how you are selling it.

So I'm going to kick this off with a little story about my most popular lead magnet ever and why I ended up retiring it.

So I created this free template where people could download a free photoshop file that they could use. And it got thousands of downloads and I was so pleased with myself because these people were giving me their email addresses to download the template and I was building this email list, but I pretty quickly realised that these people were not my ideal clients.

They were never going to buy any of my offers because I was teaching marketing to business owners, and those who had bought this template weren't interested in marketing, they were just interested in having a pretty Instagram feed. And it wasn't until I started creating more offers-specific lead magnets that I realised that the best lead magnets aren't necessarily the ones that get the most downloads, but rather they're the ones that attract the right people and move them closer to buying from you.

 

Mistakes that business owners make in creating a lead magnet

So where I see a lot of online business owners going wrong with their lead magnets is they go at it with this goal of I want to create the lead magnet that's going to be super sexy, super shiny, and it's going to attract as many people as possible to download it. Whereas, that's not going to attract necessarily the right people.

It might attract a lot of people and you might think you've got a massive email list, but then that list might not convert that well when you sell to them. 

Another place where online business owners go wrong is creating a lead magnet that is what they as the expert know their ideal client needs, but that isn't something their ideal client is actually looking for or actually wants right now. 

Another place you can go wrong is not communicating why someone should download your lead magnet. So on the landing page, there's no real emphasis on why should this person who is reading this page care enough about this lead magnet to download it.

The other place you can go wrong is jam-packing your lead magnet with lots of information. This is pretty overwhelming and it's probably not going to move your ideal client closer to buying. I know it feels really counterintuitive like the more information I can give them, the more value I will give them. And then they're going to be like, wow, if this is how much value is in her free stuff, imagine how much value is in the paid thing. But lots of info doesn't mean lots of value. We can deliver a lot of value without bombarding them with a lot of information. 

Another place where you might go wrong is not thinking about where your lead magnet fits in with your launch strategy or if you're not live launching, not thinking about how it fits in with your sales strategy or your sales process. If you're just thinking of it as, Oh, this is how I grow my list, but you're not thinking of it as this is how it's helping me to sell, then you're missing out on a huge opportunity there.

And then the final big mistake that I see happening a lot is teaching a lot in the lead magnet rather than delivering those key mindset shifts that are going to help your ideal client to bridge the magician's gap. And the magician's gap is the gap between where your ideal client is right now and where they need to be to be ready to buy.

 

Two things that really make a lead magnet effective

It's the ones that attract the right people and that move them closer to buying from you. So when I talk about attracting the right people, this isn't about attracting a number of people but it's about attracting those people who are the perfect fit for your offer. The people who will take action, who will get the desired results, who will become your raving fans.

And the very first step to attracting the right people is getting crystal clear on who your ideal client is and not just who they are in the sense of demographics. This is where, you know, people go to identify their ideal client and they're like, Oh, she's 35 years old and she lives in Australia, but that doesn't really mean that much because the fact that she's 35 years old and lives in Australia probably isn't a characteristic that's going to determine whether she takes action and gets results.

Instead, think about what is going on in their life. What are they struggling with as it relates to the offers that you are selling? What words are they using to describe their struggles? What else have they tried to solve this problem, right? Get really clear on who this right person is and what is going on in their mind and in their world.

And chances are there is some kind of small win that you can help them to achieve in your lead magnet. This a small win that's going to be really enticing for them to download and that will move them closer to buying from you at the same time. 

And then the second part is moving them closer to buying from you.

So, as I said, there's a gap between where your audience is right now and where we need them to be, to be ready to buy. So what I mean by that is there's going to be a bunch of things that your ideal client currently believes about the problem that your offer solves and about themselves and about the solution to their problem.

They have these beliefs around themselves, the solution, the problem. And there are things that they need to believe about the problem, the solution, and themselves before they'll be ready to buy. 

 

Should you have multiple lead magnets for the same offers

If it's your first launch, keep it simple. 

You can have just one for this first launch and then the next time you launch, you might experiment and try creating a different lead magnet and you can test the two. You can see which one performs better. And I just want to note here that I don't count a webinar as a lead magnet. It is there to sell your offer. 

Your lead magnet is there to grow your email list and nurture your audience closer to buying so that when they attend that webinar, or when you open doors, they are ready to buy. So I would still have a webinar as well as a lead magnet in that first launch. 

 

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