Show Transcription: 

Hello, I'm Tina Tower, and you're listening to her Empire Builder. So my first decade of business, I thought grinding and hustling and working harder than everyone else was my path to success. It was pretty successful by a lot of measures, but it led to burnout and adrenal fatigue. Then when I travelled around the world, on my family gap year, I discovered the simplicity and the reach of online business. And I completely fell in love. You have so much knowledge and expertise that's within, and I want to help you to package that. So you can also help to lift others up. So how do you build a thriving million dollar business based on everything that's in your mind, this is her Empire Builder, the podcast.

Hello, and welcome to Episode 101 of her Empire Builder. I'm so happy to have you here with me today. And today I'm talking about creating a winning lead magnet. So a lead magnet is vital to the success of a digital online business, it is usually that first place where customers will first come into contact with you. A good lead magnet or opt in can change the shape of your business, the size of your email list is going to be more important than any other vanity metrics. So you'll hear people talking about how many social media followers they have, and all of the different numbers in our business that we measure. But the thing that's going to make the biggest difference in the performance of the business is going to be the size of your email list. And the most effective way to build a highly engaged email list is with a gold standard lead magnet that is high value that your audience absolutely loves.

And I know that can sound so incredibly simple, but it can be a little tricky to get it right. And it can take some testing and measuring and experimenting to get that perfect lead magnet all sorted. And so a lead magnet to me is an exchange, it's kind of a way of saying “Hey, I'll give you this piece of beautiful value that I've created in exchange for your contact information so that I can market to you”. Now you're never going to say that in that language, we're going to say it a little bit more eloquently. But that's basically what it is, it's an exchange for something that you're giving someone that they want, and in return they’re giving you their contact information. So it's a really effective way to start building your list and to start engaging with the perfect customer there as well. Now, I will caveat this, if you're listening to this fairly quickly, when it's released, I do have a five day challenge starting next week on how to create a winning lead magnet. So you can go to tina tower.com/challenge to join that, it's starting on Monday 26th of October. So if you're listening to this after the 30th of October, then just go tinatower.com/101 and you can get the downloads that I'm talking about in this episode today because although I'm going to give you lots of gold juicy nuggets in today's podcast episode, there's only so much that I can tell you on a podcast.

And so taking that next step into the challenge allows me to show you things on the screen and examples and all of that good stuff as well as checklists and the beautiful systems and blueprint that you can use to actually create this. So when we're talking about lead magnets, and the size of your email list, now I have said that the size of your email list is going to be directly determinant to the volume of sales when you go to launch something. But not all email lists are created equal, there are good leads versus poor leads. And what I mean by that is, it's how those leads are acquired, the acquisition of those, that's going to make a really big difference in terms of how much cultivating of that relationship you're going to have to do to convert that person into a customer. And so, for example, if I give you a real world example, if you are speaking at an event, and from the stage at the end, you're sharing the link to a high value lead magnet that is perfectly designed for that audience, then your uptake is going to be quite high. And those leads are going to be high quality qualified leads because you know who's in that room, you know what they want and you can deliver them exactly what they want. Opposed to that, if you've got a lead magnet that you're promoting on Facebook and you're funnelling Facebook advertising into it, unless it's super targeted to warm leads, those leads that you get in from that Facebook advertising are not going to be as high quality. So when people talk about conversions of email lists into sales, it can sometimes be hard to go, you know, are you going to convert 30% of your leads, some people will have a 30% conversion of the list and some people will have three and some people will have one. And sometimes people can go, “Ah, how can I get my conversion up? How can I do all of these?”, but a lot of it has to do with where those leads were actually found, and how quality that list actually is. And it doesn't mean that trying to get the lower quality leads are going to be a bad thing because you can get that diamond in the rough of that person that's been looking for exactly what you have. So it's still totally worth it, but from a conversion point of view these are all things that you need to take into account when you're going through and you're measuring the effectiveness of what you're doing.

So the first thing that we need to think of when you're creating a lead magnet is; who are you creating it for, and being so super clear on your target market. And the purpose of creating that lead magnet is going to be vital to its success. And again, I know this stuff can sound super simple, but I see people try and do lead magnets that are trying to appeal to too many different people. And when it's too broad and trying to appeal to too many different people, it appeals to nobody specifically. So one of the most important things when you're designing a lead magnet is that specificity. Is going okay, how can I say exactly what it is so that when my perfect target market, and for me, I know if you've listened to the podcast I've probably like kind of mentioned this before, is I don't like the term like customer avatar because it just sounds so impersonal. And my customers are the greatest humans in the world. So I kind of have my technical customer avatar mapped out, I know everything about her and we call her Alice Carrington. So Alice is our perfect customer and we know everything about her. So every time we go to create something, we go, is this right for Alice? Would Alice love this? Why would she love this? What is missing from it? Why would she say no to it? All of the objections that she has, all of that sort of thing, and for me when I go to create things, I find it much easier to create for someone, then for an abstract kind of avatar, sort of thing. So that's a little tip, if you're that way inclined, as well.

So it's going out who you creating it for, and you want to know everything about them and then going okay, where are they at right now? So right now, what are their pain points? What are they sitting in every day and going, you know what this is, this is the problem that I have that I need to solve. This is what I'm struggling with. This is my pain point. If I just had an easiest solution for this, I know it would take me to that next step. So you know if it's health, can you do a recipe? If it's business, can you do a checklist? Can you do a video there's so many different types of lead magnets which we're going to get into shortly. But so much of it comes down to specifically outlining that pain point and then going okay, I have the solution for you. And going that next step that's what makes a really great lead magnet is being able to go Okay, here is the perfect thing that will take you to that next level and going everybody in my target market all my Alice's right when they are they going to find that helpful. I mean, at the moment I've mentioned my challenge that starting next week, that leads into my empire builders mastermind. So my empire builders mastermind the doors open next week. And so the challenge is designed as the customer pathway to lead people if they're the right people into my empire builders mastermind. And so for people that are going into the mastermind, they’re are women who are wanting to build their businesses, their online course businesses, they've got courses and memberships that they're building through content marketing, and publishing and podcasting. And for them, the first key is going okay, how can I build my email list? Because the bigger the email list, the more sales we've got, how can I create that perfect lead magnet? So of course, for my perfect customer, they're going to want to join that lead magnet challenge. And so a lot of it is going you know, what's that perfect next step for your customer that's going to allow you to start that relationship because then once they've got that lead magnet, you can then start that relationship. You can then start emailing and videoing and offering more and more value in loving them up more and more and more so that they get to know you. I know you've heard before they get to know, like and trust, and then once that is all built … I'm actually recording this very early in the morning. So my voice is a bit you and you record led voices that a little bit deeper, I can go do I can't do that in the afternoon. But I sound very deep and calm because it's like six o'clock in the morning.

Anyway, there's a lot going on, it's launchtime. And you know what, when I finished my launch, I'm going to do a launch debrief for you, because this launch is going to be really exciting. We're doing challenges and opt ins and webinars and application launches. And it's it's the most complex launch I've done in terms of a funnel map. So I'll tell you all about that in a couple of weeks. But anyway, focus Tina, enough of the segway lead magnets. So we're looking at how can we help them? How can we provide that perfect lead magnet for that next step in the journey. And so I want to before I get into that, I want to touch on funnel maps a little bit. Now, you'll hear people talk about funnel marketing all the time, you've probably heard about funnel marketing all the time. If you haven't, what is funnel marketing? It’s simply …imagine a funnel, and you've got a triangle that's kind of big side up the top point at the bottom. And then people are coming in and usually that entry point is around the lead magnet. So you're giving someone kind of an easy way to enter into your customer journey. So to enter into your funnel. And so that's what happens there. And then you've got your nurturing sequence. So it would usually be some emails or some video or something that's happening in there, that's going to increase that know, like and trust factor, and then you're going to present the offer that you have. And so when people come in, for example, if you've got, you know, 1000 people downloading your lead magnet, and you're converting at 1%, that would be 10 sales a month. And 1% is kind of like the standard, I guess. Now, if I had 1%, I would cry but that comes back to the reason that I said at the beginning is where your leads come from.

So I don't spend money on Facebook advertising, which means that my conversion is a lot higher, but it means my volume is a lot lower. And not one way isn't right or wrong for the other, it’s just in experiments. That's what I found works best for me and my customer base, because my programme is low quantity, high touch point. So I go I go, I just said look, yeah, low quantity, high quality, that's kind of what it is. When you do Facebook advertising, it works really well for not low quality, but high quality, but also high quantity and then low … you get what I mean by qualities of my quantities. So you've got like high touch points and low touch points. And so a high quantity, low touchpoint programme is going to work really well with Facebook advertising, which is not what mine is mine, you know, my absolute goal for my mastermind is to have 100 people and that's it that's kind of capped, so 100 customers is all I want. And so for a lot of people, they want an infinite amount of customers or want thousands and thousands of customers. So it depends on your goals as to how this is going to work for you.

So if I go back to the mass of a funnel, and I talk about 1000 visitors converting at 1%, that would be 10 sales a month. Now, if you can get 3% into your lead magnet, then that's a 3% signup rate, which would mean 30 new subscribers for that. So your follow up sequence is then really important. So this is what I'm talking about with funnel marketing is the follow up nurture sequence. And usually that involves three emails. So you'll have one email at the time people sign up. And then you've got one that's kind of like a credibility building of who you are because remembering when people first opt in, they usually don't know all that much about you. And then the second email is going to be like a customer story so that people can identify, you know what, people like me are also engaging in this, this is going to be really good. And so if you've got that, and then on the next email is when you're putting the offer in there. So if you can get that follow up sequence converting to convert 2% of that 3% then that's an another six new enrolments. So having a great nurture sequence allows you to start a relationship with people who aren't quite ready to buy yet, but need to get to know you a little more before handing over those hard earned dollars. And so if you can get that nurture sequence working really well for you after a lead magnet that's going to take that one person up and so it's going to be go from 10 sales a month, to 16 sales a month. So this is why this is so important. It's all automated and so you're not having to do any more work for that, it's just coming up with a really great lead magnet funnel so that it's all going to be really effective. Okay, so let's run through those steps nice and quick of what you're going to need in there. And as I said, if you want me to show you how to do this, you can go to tinatower.com/challenge, because we're going to be going through it in great, great detail over the course of five days.

So what would be a good lead magnet for your business? So when you're looking at designing your right lead magnet, there were tonnes there are tonnes of different ones. The simplest, is a simple PDF, like a checklist, a guide, a report, something like that. That is the simplest. And sometimes people go too complex with lead magnets, often the simplest ones convert the highest, because you want to give people a quick win. So like doing something long, like a three part video series, or a challenge or, or something that doesn't give people immediate gratification, is not going to convert as highly. But it's going to convert different people for different purposes. So if I was just doing list building, so I'm going, Okay, I'm not launching anything soon but I want to start growing my list on steroids, so that I can start to really form a relationship with people, then I would do the simple opt ins, like a checklist, a guide, report, cheat sheet, have some resources, maybe an E-book, a mind map, an infographic, a planner, a calendar, anything like that is what I would put in. Then I would put those people on and then they would get my email every week, and they would enjoy that kind of relationship and get to know me. If you're in launch time, though, you're going to take that next step. So your OPT in is going to be higher quality. So it's going to provide massive value to your audience but it's also not going to give a quick win. So it's going to be something that's like, like that three part video series or like that week long challenge, that's going to require a time commitment from people to actually opt into. Because by doing that, you’re kind of giving people a taste of what it's like to work with you long term. And so you're getting that commitment, which means that if people are willing to actually come in and do that challenge, and do that, like watch all of that video series, then it's likely that they are going to be higher converting into your programmes, because they've already they've already taken up what you're putting down, you know what I mean?

Okay, so, not all lead magnets are created equal. But usually, the ones that work the best are the simplest ones. So you've got that quizzes are working really well, at the moment, video is working fabulously. So if you've got a short video, get that and you get a short instructional video with how to do something in your business. Templates, anything that can save people time, I mean, let's be honest, our most valuable commodity is time, so if you can save people time and solve a problem for them, that is going to be absolutely amazing. Could be a free trial, a demo, a book, a call is a good one. So if you've got a business that is like low … I’ve gone into it again, I'm talking too much low and high here today. If you've got a business where you know, you don't have a high volume of customers, you've got a low volume of customers, and they're paying a higher price point. So you're serving less people at a higher level, then a call can be really great if you set up a lead magnet funnel that “goes download this”, and then the next step is booking like a free 15 minute call. And that can go to something like a calendly link, it can be all automated and just added to your calendar in there. Because with those, you know, high touch point programmes, if you're doing one of them, then when you get people on a call you're able to really get to know them, get to know their goals and get to know whether or not what you've got is going to be the right solution for them. And then it also answers any questions for them in a one on one capacity as well. So that can be really great.

We've got assessments, we've got webinars. Webinars, I love! I read a thing the other day saying webinars was dead, hell no, it's not! Webinars are absolutely fantastic. They are a great way to be able to teach a little bit of your content to give people a little bit of a taste or a little bit of a trial. And then, you know, at the end, then you've got your perfect opportunity to go, "Hey, if you want to take the next step, here's what I've got available”. So it's a really kind of simple, clean transition for people to go through and then decide, you know what, yes, this is for me, or no that's not what I want. And that's fine. It just gives you a way to qualify those leads and to offer something of really high value in there as well. If you're unsure, a really great tip is to ask your audience what they want. So if you're on Instagram, this is a fabulous tool to use is to use the question sticker and go “Hey, I'm creating something new for you guys. What do you want?” Like just a simple thing. I'm thinking of creating a template or a checklist or a webinar or something like that, what could I create for you that would make your life easier? Ask the question, and I bet you, you'll get some fabulous results. So that's a really good one to keep kind of top of mind. Now, they don't need to be lengthy or complex or incredibly time consuming to create, the simpler they are, the better they usually convert because people are getting a win. So as I said before, it's not general. Lead magnets that work and not general, they're super specific and targeted. So you want to talk directly to your audience, and provide them with something absolutely irresistible. If you get that irresistibility right, then you will get a really high conversion on that lead magnet page. So I talk to people all the time that go, you know, there's 100 people have come on to the opt in page, but I've only got 2% that have been converting. So you want to have your lead magnet page converting at about 30%. So when you look at your analytics, and you're seeing how many visits that page has had, you want to kind of get it in around that 30% fill in the form. Now I always go, why are people clicking on it? If they're not filling in the form, I don't understand, why click in the first place? It always confuses me that 70% of people that are going to the page that are going actually On second thought now, I don't want you to think anyway. Every time I say something, if I click, I just fill it in straight away. But you're I think some people are more well thought out.

So when you want to when you want to do that you want to make it irresistible so that people go there and they go yes, I definitely want to fill that in. If your page is converting at less than 30% play with it. Look at the page … we're going to go through this in the challenge as well, but you want to look at the page and go Have you got too much copy? Have you got not enough copy? Is it easy to understand? Is it really specific, is your call to action buttons high enough, easy to say on a mobile and a desktop? Are too many other options on the page like you want to keep it so specific and so simple. It used to be for opt ins, you know, you'd have these really long pages now the ones that are converting really high are the really short, simple punchy ones. Like people are jumping in it off social media, usually on their phones and going Actually, I could use this to help me. Yes, I'll take it first name, email address, done. The more things you ask people to write, the lower that conversion is going to be. And that's not always a bad thing. But I wouldn't do it at the top of funnel. So what I mean by that is if it's your first step, I wouldn't ask anything more than a first name and an email address. I know, my application page, for example. So when people apply to join my ‘Her Empire Builder Mastermind’, the application is quite lengthy. There's 15 questions that we ask and we're asking some personal questions. So we're going to get a lot of people clicking off on that that are going Hang on a minute, maybe I don't want to fill all of this in. So that's going to convert much lower, but you know what I want it to convert much lower because it's the type of thing that I go, if people aren't willing to fill that in they're not going to be the right people for the Mastermind. And that is so important. So whenever you're thinking of an opt in, think about what your goal is, as well as what those results are and how you can kind of tweak it and experiment with it to make sure that it is working effectively for you.

So the first thing that you want to do is decide what is going to be that lead magnet and what your audience wants. The next thing you're going to do is design the funnel itself. So I've kind of touched on this already with the email sequence, but you're going to do the opt in page first. And then when someone opts in, what do you want to have happen next? So where do you want them to go? So usually, it's to a thank you page. Now the worst is if you just have a generic thank you page, and it just kind of pops up and goes, thank you back to home. Don't do that. Don't be that person. So you want to go What do you want that next logical step for people to be? So is it Do you want them to join a free Facebook group that you've got so you can stay engaged? Or on that thank you page, do you want to take them to the next step in your funnel? So is the next step a low price offering? Or is it to join the waitlist on your high price programme? Or what is that next step? Make sure that you're taking advantage of that thank you page to invite people to continue on that customer journey with you and take that next step. So use that one. Then you've got your email sequence. So again, like I said earlier, you've got your email straight upon downloading, then you've got one usually a day later, a day after that, and the day after that. And then they can go into kind of your normal programming, whether that's weekly or fortnightly or whatever whatever is happening. They're making sure that you're using automations. So I use Kajabi for all of my emails and funnels and programmes and my whole website is all run on Kajabi and weave that way. People when they fill in a form, so we always want to tag where they came from, so that if I ever want to email a certain segment of the market, I can email people based on where they entered into my customer relationship. So that's always a really important tool to have. If it's something like a webinar or a challenge, or something longer than you want to automate subscribing them to that event as well.

Keep your actions to a minimum in terms of what you're offering people as the next step. So where I see funnels stop working, is where it's kind of like, okay, so thanks for opting in, you can do this, or you can work with me this way, or you can work with me this way, or you can work with me this way. And I know logically, it sounds like you're giving people an option to do a whole lot of different things. And you don't want to offer the person the wrong thing. But usually, you give too many options, and people will just click off because we're decision fatigued as humans. We make way too many decisions in the day, and we want to find something simple. So when you are offering those next steps in your email, and your thank you page, offer what you think is going to be perfect for whoever you're Alice Carrington is. So whoever your perfect customer is, go, what does she want next? Or what did they want next? Not everyone says women like I do.

So be specific. Okay, so then we want to write your copy. So when you're writing copy, there is a lot of copy to write in. In a digital online business, gosh, do I spend a lot of time writing copy. Whether it be for email sequences for web pages, for social media captions, there's a lot of words, you guys, I know you know that. But when you're writing copy, you want to be specific. Again, I've said this word like five times already, but you want to be specific about your transformation promise. So going, Okay, if you get this, or if you do this, this is what you will get in return. So be really clear on that promise so that people know what they're going to get. keep things nice and short. So dot points. Again, we're decision fatigue, where time for the long, long copy no longer works for most audiences, keep it short and sweet. So dot points, no huge blocks of text, and what problem are you solving. So really focusing on the problem and how you can fix that in a simple, easy time effective manner.

And then it comes down to marketing it. And now I could spend like a whole hour talking about marketing, which is what I'm doing in my challenge. Have I told you? I'm doing a challenge, you guy! But no, seriously, though, you want to market your lead magnet everywhere. So there's no point in having it and then hiding it. You want to put it on the announcement bar on all of your web pages, you want to put it on your homepage, and you want to have a standalone opt in page for it that you can share on all your socials. So whatever social media you're active on, you want to make sure that you sharing it out there and not once, not twice, not three times, but many, many, many, many times. Put it in your Instagram bio, link to it in stories, in posts in everything. You know, a lot of people that I talked to when they go “I shared the lead magnet, it just hasn't got much uptake” and like how many times did you share it? Now I can tell you for the challenge that I'm promoting at the moment, it's going out to my email database twice. It's going on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, every day, for a week. On Instagram Stories it’s multiple times a day. And so you've got to talk about it a lot. Because although you know I can get into the stage where I go, oh my gosh, I'm banging on about this so much, am I gonna annoy the crap out of people and people are gonna go we get it, Tina, you're running a challenge, which this is probably the moment in the podcast, you may be thinking that. But the thing is, a lot of people don't see what we post, because people's lives are busy. And you have to be right at the time when they're first clicking onto their social media to be there when when they're seeing that before you get buried in the feed. So by talking about it multiple times a day for a week means that your Alice Carrington might see it once or twice. She's not going to see it all day every day. So don't worry about doing it too much, because not everyone sees what we put out.

So really focus on the marketing of it because you put the effort into creating it. Don't shy away from then putting it out there in lights and putting it everywhere and getting other people to share it with their audiences as well. If you can do some sort of reciprocal relationship there and share one another's things and then it's down to reviewing. So then we go Okay, once it's out there, what can we test? What can we tweak? What can we experiment with? So it's looking at like I said before the conversions of those web pages. If that is below 30%, how can you get it up? What can you test to measure because what will work for one business will be slightly different for another one, because all customer bases are going to be slightly different. You’re unique, your customer base is unique. So there's always going to be similarities. You can always follow a blueprint perfectly, but then you're going to have to experiment for yourself in your own audience and going, Okay, I know, this is what works for my people. And so it's looking at there it's looking at, then what was the conversion after people opted in? So what were you sitting at in terms of who took that next step, and who opt in into the next step in your customer journey, whether that be another opt in, or whether that be into a sale of a low price, or into a sale of a high prize, or booking a call? It's measuring each of those steps so that you can go Okay, I'm converting at this percentage, or if it's a webinar, how many people showed up on the webinar, and then from the people that showed up? How many people then booked a call, how many people then booked your purchase your product? So it's measuring all of that and then reviewing at the end of every week, looking at all those results? And going okay, I'm pretty pleased with that, how can I make it better? So we're constantly reviewing and refining to improve things and to make it better and better.

Okay, so hopefully, that has helped you with creating a fabulous lead magnet, there was a lot of things I said in there. And so as, as I said, if you want me to show you all of this in detail, we've got one day for each of those things in the challenge, tinatower.com/challenge. Or if you're listening after the 30th of October, you can go to tinatower.com/101, which is Episode 101. And we’ll have some resources there that you can download for a checklist and different things that I've talked about. Alright, everyone have the most fabulous, greatest day. I hope it's beautiful where you are. Yesterday, it was pouring with rain at my house and I just wanted to stay in tracksuit pants. But today, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, it looks fabulous. And I just can't wait to get out there. So I also want to say thank you for last week, we celebrated 100 episodes, and it was so much fun celebrating that with everybody. We went live and we had a little bit of a party. I love podcasting. And so yeah, thanks for listening, you guys. And let me know how you go with your lead magnet when you create your lead magnet, if you've done it off the back of this episode, tag me on Instagram when you share it @tina_tower and I'll share that for you as well. Thanks so much. Have a great day!

Thank you for listening to this episode of her Empire Builder. If you loved it, please share it on Instagram and Facebook for your friends. And if you really want to deliver me smile, you can pop a review on iTunes. I'd love to hear from you. So if you have any questions, email me at [email protected]. And if you want to know more about what we do, head over to tinatower.com. Now I truly hope this podcast gives you so much value and you can use it to dream big, plan well and take massive action in building your very own Empire. That’s just for you.