There are various ways to generate leads for B2B businesses, such as email marketing or running Facebook ads. Lead magnets are probably the most powerful way to generate inbound leads at scale. They help you to attract prospects that are a good fit for your services or products while offering substantial value to them.
But what makes a great lead magnet? This blog post explores six effective lead magnet types that you can implement for your B2B business to capture contact details from your dream buyers.
1. High-quality content offers (guides, case studies, ebooks, whitepapers, and more)
Probably the most traditional lead magnet type are all kinds of content offers. This can be a valuable ebook, whitepaper, email course, or other high-quality content that your prospects enjoy consuming. Used in content marketing, these content offers are the go-to-tactic if you want to build an email list.
2. Webinars
Webinars are one of the most commonly used tactics. They offer a high-converting opportunity to attract the right audience for your product or service. Adobe Connect reported that landing pages for webinars offer an average conversion rate of 51%, with 36% of registrants attending the webinar. And with 19% viewing a sales pitch or product demo session at the end.
Webinars are also a great way to repurpose content. For example, you can reuse the recorded version as an evergreen webinar or upload snippets to your social channels such as YouTube.
3. Free trial or product demo
Offering a free trial or a product demo allows your prospects to explore your product or service. You have the chance to provide a free account with limited features and/or time or an interactive product demo (for example, with a product specialist). If your offer matches the needs and expectations of your leads, they will eventually buy or upgrade.
This is a commonly used tactic in the SaaS industry but can be applied to other sectors. For example, suppose you are selling physical products. In that case, you could offer free samples, or if you are providing some service, you could do a free trial period.
Content offers are also a low-risk and high-valued tactic to deploy. Simply because it is pretty easy to create a PDF file. You can get started with a first iteration without spending too much time on design (= minimum viable content).
However, keep in mind that your content offer has to offer great value to your prospective customers. If it helps them along their way to solve their specific problem, people will love it.
4. Request for quote (RFQ)
If you are selling some service, offering a request for a quote is a direct way to contact hot leads.
Mainly used by service providers, this technique requires prospects to fill out a form with their contact details to get a quote for any service they are looking for.
5. Free tools
Offering valuable, free tools is a great way to position yourself as an expert in your niche. It’s taking more effort to create any free tool such as calculators or quizzes. Nevertheless, those are a fantastic, automated way to capture (qualified) leads.
6. Free consultation
Commonly used in consulting and coaching niches, offering a free consultation (like we do) can help you demonstrate your expertise (not only in the B2B market).
Free consultations are usually cost-effective because you can assume a high percentage of SQLs among your free consultations. Therefore, you should offer real value to your leads and dedicate at least 30 minutes to convince them that you are an expert in your industry.
How to create the perfect lead magnet
When you are creating a lead magnet, try to keep the following three guidelines in mind:
- Be specific and not too general
Deal with a specific pain point in a realistic way rather than offering general solutions. - Know your prospect (and their buyer’s stage)
Sometimes an easily digestible PDF checklist can do wonders instead of a 30 minutes product demo. - Leverage customer experience
An outstanding experience can be a significant factor in the success of your lead generation strategy. Don’t be afraid of experimenting with new user flows or designs – but always be reliable and trustworthy!
This blog post was originally published on LinkedIn.
