The Ideal Lead Magnet Topic for Attracting, Nurturing, and Converting Leads
You know you need to create some new gated content — also known as lead magnets — but you aren’t sure where to start. A lead magnet is a piece of content that a visitor to your website downloads or receives in exchange for their business email address, title, name, and other key demographics.
There are multiple ways to format your lead magnet; so many that it can be a bit overwhelming. Ebooks, webinars, quizzes, events, and even pop-ups that ask you to spin the wheel and test your luck… the options are endless. If you want something to be both effective and on-brand, it’s essential to choose the right topic.
If you’re looking to decide on the best topic for your next lead magnet, follow the steps outlined below— you’ll generate quality leads in no time.
Curious What Your Audience Wants? Ask Them!
The easiest way to find out what kind of content your audience would like to read is by asking them. For a lead magnet to truly succeed — and get customers to continue to consume your content — it needs to be genuinely educational and helpful to those who fill out the form. Whether it helps solve a problem, educates on a new topic, or takes a different approach, your gated content needs to serve a purpose other than selling.
Figuring out what your audience wants can come in many direct (and indirect) forms:
Engage with customers and followers on social media. By practicing social listening, you’ll keep an ear to the ground on the latest hashtags and conversations happening between your customers or people in your industry.
Send brief surveys. Send out an email to your customers with a quick survey, incentivized or not, that asks about their day-to-day work — where they struggle, what they wish was better, and where they excel.
Conduct customer interviews. Interview a handful of your existing customers over a 30-minute video call. Prepare your questions in advance and come to the calls ready to hear what they have to say with an open mind. Don’t forget to offer some sort of incentive for the customer, whether it’s company swag, a $10 gift card, or something similar — they set aside a significant portion of their workday to talk with you.
Review customer data. Take a look at the data you already have on existing customers. See where they’re spending the most time in your app or service, where they have the most issues, how often they talk to customer service, and so on.
No matter which method you choose to learn more about your customers and audience, take the research you’ve gathered and use it to make a list of possible topics. For example, if multiple customers mentioned experiencing frustration with losing track of missed phone calls, consider that for your lead magnet topic.
Ask Yourself: What Do You Want This Lead Magnet To Achieve?
So you want to create a lead magnet — but why? What kind of leads do you hope to get? How many?
These are all questions you’ll need to answer to truly get the most out of your lead magnet. Your desired outcomes can significantly impact the topic you choose, too.
Here are some example goals you can use when thinking of your own:
Provide 500 marketing qualified leads (MQLs) in one quarter
Increase usage of a specific product by 20%
Upsell existing customers to purchase more of our products
Grow email subscriber list by 15% in one quarter
Schedule 50 product demos
As you can see, some of these goals are dependent on specific industries, product types, or company sizes. Take these things into consideration when choosing your topic — you don’t want to create a lead magnet for your customer service product when your goal is to increase the number of customers using your email marketing product, for example.
Match your Content to Your Ideal Customer Profile
When it comes down to it, you can only get so many leads and reach so many people. Because you can’t reach everyone, you’ll need to narrow things down and focus on quality over quantity. To do this, try creating an ideal customer profile, or ICP.
Some things to consider when creating your ICP:
Company size
Industry
Seniority/job title
Age
Education
Biggest challenges
The tools they use
Their job goals
Once you figure out your ICP, you’ll be able to select the right topic for that profile — and you’ll be better equipped to present your specific, unique value proposition.
Ready to get started on your own lead magnets but don’t quite have the time or bandwidth to get it done? Comma Copywriters can help. Our expert writers save you valuable time, creating content that builds your credibility as a thought leader. Sign up for a free consultation with our team today.
