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Welcome to Amplify Your Authority, the podcast where innovative marketing meets heart-centered entrepreneurship. Join Marissa Shadrick, an award-winning international speaker, Ray Edwards certified copywriter, and personal brand expert. You'll gain insights into the external strategies for business growth and how to navigate the internal journey of entrepreneurship. Now get ready to amplify your authority in the competitive digital world. And now is your host, Marissa Shadrick.

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Hello, everyone. Welcome, beautiful people. How are you doing? Today we're going to talk about lead magnets, how to start with the end in mind and reverse engineer your lead magnet. For those of you that might be meeting me for the first time, I'm Marissa Shadrick. I'm an online marketing consultant. I'm a certified brand expert and certified copywriter. And I live and breathe strategy. I love strategy. I think one, because I don't get bored, because I can get bored easily. And it's always a challenge. There's always something to solve, something to resolve. And two, because I help people understand that marketing doesn't have to be complicated, but it must be strategic. So here, I'm doing a solo today. This podcast is a hybrid. So occasionally I bring on guests, and once a month, I bring a wonderful friend of mine, Kathy Farah, who together we review copy live on LinkedIn. I'll tell you more about it at the end of the podcast. So stay tuned and I'll give you a link how you can submit some of your opt-in pages or maybe your home page for review. So I'm so glad you're here. If you're watching live, hello. I'm still kind of navigating with comments and so forth and trying to find everything correctly. Um, so bear with me. It's a process, but we're going to talk about lead magnets. Now, the reason why I thought this was a really good topic to cover is because I've realized one, people either overthink it and they lay and procrastinate creating a lead magnet. Or two, they create something that they don't really want to share because they kind of slapped it together and created it on Canva and downloaded some quick win, you know, checklist of some sort and it's really not converting. Or three, maybe they just have had trouble with the whole opt-in thank you page process bringing them in. Four, it could be traffic as well. They don't know how to get people to the lead magnet. There's a lot of different reasons, and so I've realized more and more that people struggle with their lead magnet and need the lead magnet. So why is it important? Well, first of all, a lead magnet is just a free offer, but some type of free resource for your audience to help them along on their journey, depending on your niche, depending on who it is that you serve, if you're a service provider or if you're a consultant or course creator, it's a great way to build trust by coming with gifts, right? Sometimes they call it an ethical bribe. And so what we want to do is respect their email when they give it to us and follow up with valuable content. And that's why email marketing is so important, which my my guest co-host, Kathy Farah, is an expert in that area. And uh that's why I partner with her once a month so that we can do a lot of the copy critiques together. So the lead magnet is important because you need to grow your email list. Your email list is your greatest asset. And I even had someone last week say, Oh, well, I'm on social media, or I want to do Google ads, and that's gonna help me sell what I need to sell. But you got to realize that at the end of the day, your email list is your greatest asset. It's much easier to sell to a list or a follow a following of some sort that you have, community that is already engaged with you, that already trusts you, that already enjoys how you deliver content or how you teach, and they are following you because they appreciate the weekly tips that you give them. And so, this community, when they're ready to take that next step, and you happen to share an opportunity with them, they will take you up on it. And it could take some time. Sometimes I join an email list and I don't buy right away, but I may buy a year later when I'm ready. So you never know. You want to continue to nurture this email list. So, what do we do when we're thinking about a lead magnet? What's the first step? Well, obviously, you need an email service provider, right? Hopefully, you have one. My friend Kathy, who joins me once a month, she is a convert kit expert. So if you ever have questions and you join my email list, and maybe that's a topic you want us to cover on the podcast, we can certainly do that and talk about convert kit and email marketing with your specific questions in mind. But you need some type of email service provider, and that way you can set things up and able to communicate after they opt in to your lead magnet. So I don't want you to overthink the lead magnet. I've got a lot of notes here, so I'm going to glance over at my notes to make sure I cover everything. And if you're listening to this uh replay of this podcast and you ever want to go to YouTube, say when we do a critique, you can always go to YouTube. And I always push this out audibly to all the podcast platforms, but I also push out the video to YouTube. But in this case, we're not going to do any screen sharing, so you're good to go. But you don't want to overthink the lead magnet, uh, because this could cause a lot of procrastination on trying to figure out what is it that they want. So many people start just pulling it out of the air. Well, I see this person do this checklist, or I see this person do this quiz, or I see this person do something else, and then we try to do the same thing and it falls flat. So here's something that I want you to consider that most people don't mention when they talk about lead magnets. I want you to think about what you're selling and then reverse engineer that. So, what is the product that you ultimately want to sell? Obviously, you're not going to promote it right out the gate and try to get them to buy because they don't trust you yet. They don't know who you are. You don't know. If you're new to my podcast, you don't know who I am. And so it takes time to build trust, it takes time to build relationships. But think ultimately, what is it that you want to sell? So, say you're a photographer and you um are able to go to conferences and do professional headshots, you also maybe dabble in video production and you can do some of that as well, and you're trying to figure out you know, a lead magnet for someone. Well, ultimately, what do you want to sell? Do you want to have opportunities at conferences, or do you want to try to book appointments locally? What is the the end in mind? What is the goal? And then once you figure out ultimately what you want to sell, work backwards and figure out well, what's something that maybe in the resources that I provide with the product that I sell that I can extract and use as a lead magnet that could be really helpful. Maybe it's in the case of a photographer, how to maybe prep for headshots, like what colors to wear, what washes out, should we have a busy background? Should we have just a white-gray background? How to prepare for the best headshots so that you can use it on your website in other places. Maybe on that lead magnet, you talk about white space, how you should have not your photos centered, but maybe off-center to the left, to the right, so you have some white space to put text like on a website. All of those tips are helpful. And so maybe something like that would be a great resource, and then it would make sense to bring them along through an email campaign or on your thank you page for a call or to find out more. Maybe there's a training that you do. As a photographer, maybe you train other photographers again. What is the end in mind and work backwards? But you have to realize that the lead magnet is that first real step in working with you. And we want to earn trust and not lose trust. There are things, and I'm sure that you've opted into them as well. Maybe not on purpose, maybe because they're just beginners, but you download a resource and you think, What? What is this? I mean, it just is not very um informative, it's not really helpful, and you almost feel like you've been duped, even though it's free. And so to just say, Oh, just throw something together, a quick win, don't overthink it, just make it, you know, really simple. You really have to reverse engineer and make it so valuable so that person wants to access it. And then it aligns ultimately with the product you want to sell. And then the communication that follows can be about tips when it comes to photography and photos and what photos you should have on your website. Some people do overkill with their photos. You can tell they just had a photo shoot because all their photos are blasting all over the pages on the website. Maybe you can give them tips about it. Maybe you can give them tips when they're older, like myself, and say, what are the best ways to showcase you as a brand when you're saying over 50, right? Things like that that people would be interested in. So don't overthink the lead magnet, think and in mind, and always think of building that trust because the lead magnet is that first step, it's those microcommitments, right? They're saying, okay, I'm gonna trust you. I'm gonna give you my email list. Let's see what you have. Wow, this is really helpful. And then you get a welcome email, and then you get maybe a subsequent email that kind of expands on the whole idea of the lead magnet, and you go, wow, this was really helpful. I had no idea. I didn't know this. And all of a sudden, your buy-in is greater, right? You're trusting this person, and you're thinking, I want to keep them coming in my inbox because I trust and I love the value that they provide. So that's what we're trying to do. And trust is so important. Um, I think today most people are skeptical. They're tired of being duped, they're tired of hype, they're tired of gimmicks, they're tired of automated tools, the bots that are talking to you and pretending that they're a real person. They're tired of maybe um automated webinars when you try to pretend it's live and it's not. I mean, our audiences are pretty savvy, right? They weren't born yesterday. They know, and we just need to be really honest with people, but people are a little skeptical, and we don't want to jeopardize an opportunity to build trust. I was listening to a video, um, it's actually a podcast, Colin and Samir. I don't know if you've ever heard that podcast. They're really great at interviewing, and they were interviewing Tim Ferris, who is the author of the Four Hour Work Week. And one of the things that they said really struck me. It was one of those highlight moments, and together they were they were talking and mentioned this, but it was that credibility is a scarce resource and not renewable. I'll say it again because it was so powerful. I had to rewind it and write it down because obviously I can't highlight on my iPad on a YouTube video. So, but they said credibility is a scarce resource and not renewable. We don't want to jeopardize trust. That's the first step is to earn trust and maintain our credibility. Once we blow that, once we compromise, it's really hard to earn it back, and people are already skeptical. So what do we do with our lead magnet? Consider this microcommitment as an opportunity to showcase who you are and what you do in an incredible way. Look at your lead magnet as if now this might shock you, but look at it as if it was a $5,000 product. What would it look like? What would it say if you were actually charging for the content that you're giving them? What would the lending page look like? What would the thank you page look like? Because oftentimes we we are so busy that we think this is enough and we gloss over the fact that people are inundated with all kinds of offers. And a lead magnet is an offer. It may be free, but it's still an offer. You have to sell the offer, even though it's free. You have to sell the idea that this is helpful and useful, and they can download it for free. And that's the bonus. Oh wow, this resource is so valuable, it addresses my pain points, it has all these benefits, and it doesn't cost me a dime. Wow, this is really helpful. We have to look at it that way and improve what we're doing as far as the promotional side of our lead magnet and make it look really, really professional because it is a process in the customer journey of microcommitments, and that first commitment, that first impression, we don't get a second first impression. So it's really important to dial that in as best as we can with the resources that we can. Sometimes our best is our best, but three years from now, our best is better. My best five years ago, I would not even share what I did five years ago because it's not my best today, right? I've improved with time. But do your best wherever that is. You know, do your best in providing the best type of resource that you have and consider it like a product because you're selling the idea to download this for free, even though it's free, it's still an offer. So, one of the things to consider too is some people think that one lead magnet is enough. Why stop at one? For example, at the end of this podcast, I'm going to give an opportunity to sign up to be part of my podcast community because we have a lot of things going on. I have a Monday marketing memo that I send out on Mondays. You get replays of the podcast on Wednesdays with show notes. And when I offer content upgrades or worksheets, you have access to those and you can download them. And we do copy critiques once a month. So I try to encourage my listeners to be a part of my podcast community. And guess what? They'll be added to my email list. And so there's an opportunity since I'm creating free content already, to have them opt in, and there's really no um type of risk in joining because they're getting everything for free, and they'll even be able to get more things for free, like the marketing memo and like the free critiques. So you consider that. Now, if you're doing something else, say you're on YouTube, you can do the same thing. You know, have people maybe join your email list because you will send out the latest YouTube videos. Now you might say, well, people can just go to the platforms and go to Apple and listen to the podcast, they can go to YouTube. Here's the thing I sign up for convenience. I don't want to be hunting YouTube or hunting all the different because on my phone I have tons of podcasts and it's like miny miny miny mo, which one should I listen to this week? But if I see something in the inbox and you're telling me what this podcast is about, I'm gonna be more inclined to listen to that episode than go into my library and figure out which one should I listen to? I don't know, miny miny miny mo. And so what we're doing is providing not only great information, but convenience. And today in our busy culture, convenience is a big thing. So I want you to consider what you are already doing that I can turn that into a lead magnet. And I gave you the example of a podcast, right? Sign up to be part of my podcast community. What else are you doing? If you are sending out a newsletter, and there's different types of lead magnets, right? If you're sending out a newsletter of some sort, and by the way, newsletters are not dead, they are not. I'll read some statistics here in just a second, but they're not dead. Why not consider what else can I do with this newsletter that would be so appealing that will now become a benefit to get other people to join just to get my newsletter? See how that works? Because we have to still send out emails to continue to nurture them. So why not give that communication a name? Like mine is Monday Marketing Memo. What can I say? I like alliteration, right? That's my newsletter. And I just give marketing tips, it's a quick read to start the week. Why not give it a name and see how else you can improve it? I had a conversation with a client yesterday and they're writers, and I said, why not have opportunities to have them engage maybe on a call once a month where they can ask questions about writing, or maybe on a writing session where people can come in and blow up time, especially if they've had a hard time, you know, finding the space on their calendar to write, why not create it for them and say, you know, once a month we're gonna have, call it whatever you want to call it, you know, a writing workshop or a writing opportunity where everybody just shows up and you ask everybody, what are you working on? What are you working on? Okay, we're gonna set the timer and we're gonna write. And combined, you come up with a huge word count that everybody's completed, or have a call that is now a QA call, and you're finding out more about your market, you're finding out more about what their struggles are, plus you're you're adding to this newsletter. And so now you can offer it like a lead magnet. We have an amazing newsletter. Not only do we give writing tips, but we also once a month we gather together and we work on our projects, and we work on it for 30 minutes. We compare notes, who's working on what, we write for 30 minutes, and then after 30 minutes, we tell each other how many words we've written. And not only that, we also have a QA call. That could be such a wonderful setup to test, add it as a lead magnet, but then if there's great activity, guess what? You can potentially turn that into a membership. See how that works? What are you already doing that you can perhaps maybe improve a little bit and then offer it as a lead magnet? Now, obviously, lead magnets come in every size, shape, and form. A webinar, master class is a lead magnet. There's um PDF documents could be lead magnets, a workshop, you know, could be a lead magnet. There's different things that could be a lead magnet. But you have to consider what am I already doing that I can use? I don't want you to do more. See, that's the whole problem. People are doing so much, they're burning out. So consider what am I already doing? Can I turn this into a lead magnet? It doesn't have to be a PDF document. And I'll tell you, I got a folder on my computer that's, you know, free resources. And I download it, I put everything there, and then I don't really go back and look at it. So why not create something that maybe will continue the relationship, grow the relationship? You give value, create opportunities to be able to talk to your community, even if it that's a one-on-one call. So microcommitments, little baby steps. And you can then, whether it's a newsletter, and some people say, Well, what do I put on a newsletter if I do a newsletter? Let me just give you some examples here. Um, I pulled up some examples here. I think I'm going to turn this into a newsletter for LinkedIn because there's a lot of content here. So you can give industry updates if that fits, right? If you're someone that reads and and maybe you get um a Google Alert in your niche and you stay kind of On top of your game, and you are very much in the know of the news, you're curating information for others. That's very helpful. You do all the work and you're saying, Hey, I did all this research, I'm gonna pass it on to you. So it could be industry updates, it could be resources, maybe a review of a resource, a review of maybe an email service provider, a review of a tool that you use that would be helpful for that audience, right? You can do something like that. You can um also do practical tips for success, which most people do that in the newsletter. They give like some kind of practical tips, some kind of practical insight in their niche. I'm not saying do all of it on the newsletter, that's overwhelming. If you're not doing one already, consider what you could do. You can also share occasional case studies and explain why something was so successful. And they don't have to necessarily be your own client. You can just, you know, maybe do some research on an individual and show maybe the before and after and why you admire them, and probably some of it might be speculation, but your overview or your take on why they're so successful maybe was a book that they launched that you know became a bestseller. So you can share stories like that that are very effective. You can also, and this is super simple, share quotes, encouragement once a week. Uh, we need encouragement. So it could be as simple as that if you're thinking, I can't think of anything. I used to do that way back when I was blogging, and I before I pivoted and totally rebranded, I would send an image with a quote, and that's all it was once a week. And people really appreciate it, and they would respond back and say, Oh, that was exactly what I needed to hear today. So don't limit yourself, don't just do what everybody else is doing. Break the mold, break the boundaries. Think what would my audience appreciate? And then beyond quotes, um, you can continue to curate content and do it that way as well. Or you could even have somebody write something and feature someone on your newsletter as well. So I have newsletters that I um read and I appreciate. A social media examiner is one, they have some great stuff. There's one called Very Good Copy that I appreciate. And I also subscribe to Pod News because it tells me a lot of what's going on in the industry of podcasting. That's just a few examples. Now, here's some statistics here on newsletters, and we'll move on after this. The preferred form of content marketing for 81% of B2B marketers is email newsletters. That's from HubSpot. Incredible, right? 95% of Gen Z I can't even pronounce it, millennials, thank you, and Gen X each receive newsletters compared to only 84% of baby boomers. Wow, 84% baby boomers, that's not bad, right? So you're seeing that, and that's from Story Doc, a lot of people are reading newsletters. My husband reads newsletters, right? And so newsletters are not dead. So that's just an example. I mean, we're talking about lead magnets. So don't just think, I'll just go on Canva and create this checklist. You know, there's so much more you can do. And if you're already communicating, already creating content every week for your audience, why not promote that and make that the lead magnet? Right? It's all about those microcommitments. So let's talk a little bit and then I'll end here because I know I'm downloading a lot of stuff. And if this is helpful, let me know. Otherwise, I'll scale it back and I won't give you so much content on these podcasts. But the opt-in and the thank you page, um, depending on what you're using. Sometimes the email service provider provides the opt-in and can provide a thank you page. Sometimes you have to do a combination and maybe set up something on your website. I use WordPress, so I have one thank you page that I use for all my opt-ins because I'm I'm driving traffic to a certain thing and I'm giving them some options, like welcoming them to whatever it is that they decided to, you know, subscribe, doing some kind of welcome. And here are your next momentum momentum moving steps. I can't talk today, sorry. And so I give them three steps, and one of them is to make sure to check their inbox because I give them more information. Another is to join me on LinkedIn and let's have a conversation there because I'm there all the time. And the third one is very subtly asking them if they'd like to be part of my private community. And that thank you page is the opt-ins, regardless of what the opt-in is. I could have say I have five different lead magnets, they all go to that thank you page, and that way, if I update it, I know that all of them are updated because I'm only using one thank you page. Some people don't even have a thank you page, they just let their email service provider, as soon as somebody submits an email, say, Thank you, it's submitted. Don't do that. Create a thank you page and leverage that opportunity. You can also put a video if you want on the thank you page, welcoming people. Leverage that. That's another step of building relationship. And it's another micro commitment. If say they do, you know, put you on the safe list or they do, you know, maybe follow you on LinkedIn or whatever platform you're on. It's another micro commitment that they're doing, they're taking another step, and so leverage that. And your opt-in page should have something on there so they know what they're signing up for and what benefit they can get from it. So you can just make it really simple, or you can break it out with bullets if you want. It just depends on what it is that you're offering. Obviously, if it's a webinar, it's going to be more detailed. But if it's maybe for a newsletter, you just want to simplify it. And same thing if it's for a podcast community, join my podcast community, you might want to simplify it. But you want to be able to have something that's attractive that they can go to and sign up for so they know they're signing up for it. And then that redirects to a thank you page. Once they get there, they see the thank you page, then you have a welcome series and you begin to welcome them into the community. And so each step of the way is building relationship. So the question of the day is how do I get people to find my lead magnet? Right? That is the same problem paid offers have. And that problem is traffic. It's not enough to build it and they will come. It's not enough to put it on your website and they will come and take it. It's not enough to put it on your social media platform and they'll go ahead and opt in. If you've done this for any length of time, you know that doesn't work. You have to be very intentional how you're going to promote your offers free and paid. You have to. You just can't. And I often tell people this type of business online, it's not meant to be alone. Don't do it alone. Because frankly, you're not enough. You're enough to be loved, respected, valued, appreciated. You're enough to be given opportunities, you're enough to be heard. But when it comes to building an online business, we are not enough. You need a network, you need to get out there, you need to talk to strangers. And I I talk a lot about this. This is my Amplify Your Authority program, it is all about that, about prospecting. We have to prospect, and this might hurt, even when we're giving free offers. We can't just expect to lay back and they're all gonna just sign up. We have to learn how to get in front of established platforms. We need to learn how to get in front of other audiences and offer our free lead magnet. I did an article for people that want to engage even on social media with direct messaging and so forth. They think, well, what do I say? Um, don't do what people do with bots. That doesn't work. But I do have an article on LinkedIn that you can check out. It's Authentic Growth Mastering Relationship Marketing to Boost Leads and Sales. And I will put a link in the show notes. And if probably after this broadcast, I'll put the link after because I still don't know where this stuff goes when I put it in here. So, but in any event, I'll put it there so you can take a look at it. Because the bottom line is you create a lead magnet and you you work through from the very beginning to end, you create this wonderful opt-in, and you can you treat it as if it's something that you're gonna sell. And guess what? Surprise, it's free! And so they're ready to download it and they're ready to receive your emails, but traffic is always a problem. So, my suggestion would be how are you prospecting and consider a new way to prospect? Check out that article on LinkedIn, that might give you some ideas. You can always reach out to me if you want to know more about my programs, I can help you with that too, or I can just maybe hear what your next step is. Maybe your next step is not a program, maybe your next step is just one thing that could help you or position you for the subsequent things that you're gonna do. You need to have a lead magnet. You know, if you have an opportunity and say someone says, Oh, we want you to be at our conference, there's going to be a thousand people there, and they're exactly your audience. Do you have something you can offer them? Do you have something that makes sense for that audience and what is a logical step toward that ultimate offer that you want to provide for them? And so um, this is really important. It's like the beginning part. And so we can't get sloppy with our lead magnets. We have to always see how they are performing, check analytics and so forth. How do we promote it? And so hopefully this helps. So if you want to join my podcast community, well, you will be in the know. You'll find out things that most people outside my community don't know. You'll receive the Monday marketing memo. You'll receive the all the show notes and the replays of the podcast. You'll be uh in my community to be able to reach out to me, ask questions. You could submit copy for critique, you'll get an email explaining how to do all that. If you want to be part of my community, all you have to do is go to Marissa Shadrick.com forward slash listen. L-I-S-T-E-N. Marissa Shadrick.com forward slash listen and you will be in the know. So hopefully this was helpful for you and you enjoyed this podcast episode. Be sure to leave a review, a five star rating. That would be super, super helpful. I would so appreciate it. And if you have any questions, be sure to ask questions. Uh, maybe I'll create a podcast episode answering your question, and I'll give you a shout out as well. All right, until next time. Thank you so much. Take care.