Today’s episode of the podcast is all about how to grow an audience, using a lead magnet.
Lead magnets are one of the key ways in which you can get people onto your email list, and so they’re a really valuable tool for your business.
As always, I’d love to connect with you on my socials and hear what you thought of this episode!
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- How to get people on to your email list
- Types of lead magnets you can offer
- Whether PDF lead magnets still work
- How to know what format is best for your lead magnet
- How to make sure your lead magnet leads to the right things
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE
Your lead magnet needs to fix a problem and add value, if it doesn’t, you’ll lose them after they’ve downloaded it.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
My 5 Key Steps To Starting Your Email List!
Invest in my Build My List course
Teresa Heath-Wareing Instagram
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Teresa, as always. How are you doing? Okay. We've done a little theme these last few weeks, so if you've been listening, which hopefully you have, two weeks ago we did an episode on creating an online course, and the three things that I thought were key in order to have in place, if you wanted to think about having an online course.
So the first thing was content. So last week I did an episode around content and looking at the kind of long form content and how you maximize that content, especially if you've been doing it for some time like I have. And then this week I want to talk about the second thing that was on that list for an online course, which is an audience.
Now I have seen some unbelievably crazy, what is the word I'm looking for claims. That's the word I'm looking for around audiences and whether you need them and don't need them. One I saw on a webinar where basically they said that they sold an online course and only had an email list of a hundred and like 30 people or something, and they made 30,000.
That was the first amazing claim. Now, am I saying that's not true? No, I'm not saying it may not be true. What I'm saying in this case is they may not be telling you the whole picture, i.e. they could have had a Facebook group, they could have had a podcast, they could have had like any number of ways that audiences came to them other than on the email list.
They could have had a ginormous social media following. So I feel like you, you just weren't told the truth with that one. And then the second one I heard was that you should be getting 10,000 people a month on your email list, or you're doing it wrong. Absolute rubbish. Like I can assure you, I've been teaching this stuff for a really long time and no one organically is getting that many people on their email list.
Now, if you wanna put a ton of money behind ads, and actually this person who said it, obviously, as you may or may not know, you can actually view if anybody is running any ads, and this person consistently runs huge amounts of ads to their lead magnet. So yes, they might expect to get that, but God knows how much they're spending on it.
So organically you are not gonna get anywhere near that far, far from it. But I wanted to talk about lead magnets cause I haven't done an episode for ages, and that is one of the key ways in which you can get people onto your email list. I'm not gonna go into why you need email list. You are very smart.
I'm sure you know that by now. We do. Everyone does. Every business needs their own list of people and prospects, and an email list is that way. Social media is lovely, but we do not own it. We are marketing on borrowed ground. So. When we talk about lead magnets, we talk about things that are going to attract someone to get onto our email list, so what I call hand raises.
So basically something where they might have seen some content about something and then it says, do you wanna find out more? Or, those aren't the exact words, FYI or so for instance let's say I am talking about lead magnets, and I tell you, I have done a step-by-step how to create a lead magnet that you can have for free.
You just need to gimme your email address. Well, if you are sat here listening to this thinking, Actually, that's great. Could you, Teresa, then you would download it and you would happily give me your email address for it. That's what I call a handraiser. So I've introduced you to something, into a concept or a content or something and I've said if you want to know more, I do have something, but it's behind this wall.
And then to get past it, you've gotta give me your email. But I would make sure it's good enough that actually you'd be more than happy to give me your email address cuz you haven't gotta pay for it. I see lots of things out there that people are saying you know the downloading pdf, the five things doesn't work, and I just thought I would do an episode about lead magnets, but address that specifically, is it that PDFs don't work anymore?
Is it that we have got much cooler things and much more exciting ways in which we can get people on our email list so that actually the PDFs are a waste of time. So let's look at how you can get people on your email list for starters. These are all effectively lead magnets. These are all effectively ways in which people can go, yes, I want some more.
So it can be as I've already. You know, said it can be a PDF download, it can be quizzes, it could be challenges, and they can be email challenges as well as full on five day challenges in a Facebook group. It could be things like video series. It might be like a white paper or something a bit more in depth.
It might be things where you're getting them to sign up to a webinar or some free training or something like that. It could also be things like freebies, like a 30 minute discovery call or an entry to a competition. So there are lots of different ways to encourage people to get on your list. Also, if you're a product, it could be a discount off your first purchase, that sort of thing.
So when you look at all these cool and fancy things that we can do, does that mean that the PDF thing no longer works? Now. First off, I would say there's one thing more important than the media that you are using to give away your thing, because that's all it is. You are just using, I could talk you through a process, which I could do on a video.
I could do it via quiz, I could do it via a challenge. I could do it in a pdf. So really you are just looking at the medium in which you are using to get it out there. So the first thing to know and make sure is that whatever you are giving them in whatever format is good. I have just opted in to two lead magnets.
I used to do this all the time and I have it for ages, and now I'm like, well, one, I genuinely wanted to opt in and what I wanted to see what they were doing, one was by someone who's this huge, absolutely massive and it's an email challenge and it's like five emails over five days and it's rubbish. Like seriously, seriously bad.
Like these emails are saying nothing, absolutely nothing, and the thing that they are saying is not that good. It's like, yeah, no, I got that in email number one. Now what's next? So that's really disappointing. And the other one I opted into was a quiz, and I am a fan of the quiz. And again, the quiz was rubbish.
So basically it was like, tell me which of the following you prefer to do. So I said, which of the, I can't give away what the subjects were, but I was like, this is what I prefer to do. So then at the end it went, Hey, the results are, you'd prefer to do this. No shit Sherlock, like honestly, sorry, I just swear, yeah. Really?
So that was completely ridiculous and a waste of my time. So that's one of the problems with lead magnets. It's when you opt in and they're pants. It's not about the, the format. It's not that like it's a boring PDF, it's that it's just not very good. So that's the first thing. It really does need to fix a problem.
Now let's say, okay, let's take my course, Build My List. Lovely course. If you've not done it, do go check it out. And where it teaches you how to go through this whole lead magnet process, literally from start to finish. Now I have this very detailed, very good course that literally shows you like what your headline should be and how you should make it exciting sounding, how you should structure your pages.
I give you like Canva templates for it. I write your copy for your emails. I give you the onboarding stuff like. Literally everything, including the tech. Okay? So I go into all the detail. Now, obviously, I want to help you solve a problem, and that course solves every single problem you will have in creating your email list.
However, if I'm going to do a lead magnet, if I'm gonna do a handraiser running up to that course, then. I can't give you the hold of that course, but I have gotta make it good. So what I could do is look at that whole course section and I could take a section of it where I could, let's say I today kind of the terms that we use and what they mean, so I could explain what a lead magnet is.
I could explain what I mean by tagging, I could explain by what I mean by an onboarding like email sequence. So I'm helping you and I am answering a problem. However, I'm not giving you everything because otherwise how would I sell my course, or that's kind of across the whole thing. Or I could just take one section and I could say, okay, the section where the layout of how a lead magnet should look.
So there is, in the course I give you a template of the actual lead magnet. I give you loads of different templates and there's certain ways to lay it out that helps our eyes like want to read it. Often when people lay out lead magnets, they've got great information in there, but it's too much on a page and it's just big blocker text.
So I've created these templates to go, look, this is much nicer looking. This is how you break it up. So I could do a lead magnet about the fact of how to lay out a lead magnet. God, this is getting confusing, but I could show you in that. So I'm not giving you the whole course, I'm giving you that one section, but again, I'm answering a problem.
So I'm saying this is a problem people have. Here's the solution. So that's the key thing. Most people are so focused on. I just wanna get people on my list that they're forgetting to actually give them some value. Now, once you've got 'em on your list, if your lead magnets rubbish. How well received do you think your emails are then gonna be?
Not particularly like. I'm literally waiting until, I think I've got one day left on this five day challenge, and then I'm unsubscribing because it's been an absolute waste of my time. So I'm half thinking, well, what's the flipping point? Because I don't wanna get the other emails if they're all gonna be like this.
So like I said, the key thing is, Do you really fix their problem? Are you really helping them? The other thing I want you to think about with the lead magnet for you, and I've kind of demonstrated it in my example, is what is your next natural step for you and your customer? So having a lead magnet's great.
So this would be here, if I'd had a lead magnet for this episode, this would've tied it up just beautifully. So I've done an episode, I've done content on what is a lead magnet. You are listening for free to this episode. You have an act to opt in. You have an act to tell me, I don't know who you are, and then you could be going, this is brilliant.
I really want some more on this. So then I could have given you a lead magnet. I have actually got a lead magnet, which is the basics of starting an email list, which I think. I'm gonna check what that URL is. Okay? By the power of recording things, I've got the url, even though I've been paused for like five minutes finding it.
So if you go to teresaheathwareing.com/startyouremail, your email, then that gives you the link to get my five key steps to start your email list. Okay? So that's not a perfect lead magnet for this episode. However, it's, it'll give you the example. So I've created the content in terms of the free episode. I've created the lead magnet in terms of here's a natural next step, and then my lead magnet naturally leans and goes to my course.
So I knew when creating that lead magnet, where's that leading to? Now I'm actually in the process of creating a new lead magnet around visibility, which by the time this episode comes out, it may or may not be out, but at this point. Yeah, as I'm doing it, I'm not entirely sure what the natural next step is, and I've gotta make sure that's clear cuz otherwise I am bringing people into my world.
I'm attracting them onto my email list and then I've got nowhere to send them. And it doesn't always have to send them to a sale. It doesn't always have to go, okay, now buy this thing, because some people getting new to your email will not wanna immediately buy a thing. So understanding that next step.
So in all that being said, Do I still think PDFs still work? Well, if you've got those things that I've just talked about, if you're really fixing the problem, if you're really helping them, if it's a quality lead magnet and you understand what their next step is, I don't think the medium matters that much.
The reason I am not averse to creating PDFs is because they're one of the simplest things to create. It's one of the easiest ways to get started. Now, I have done quizzes. My quizzes currently paused, but I have done quizzes. I've done challenges. I haven't done a video series as such. I have been in lead magnets of video series, and they are immense.
The production that goes behind those other things is way bigger. So if you are getting started, I would much rather you got a PDF out there, A S A P, than spent forever trying to work out how to do a quiz or a challenge or a video series and recording all the videos and coming up with all the stuff.
So for me, I still think there's value in it. It more comes down to what you are actually giving them in it. If I said to you, I could literally tell you, how, to make a million, if I knew that I'd have done it myself, but if I could, you wouldn't give a hoot whether I said it was in a video or whether it was on a pdf.
You just like, give me the information, tell me now. So I think. Yes, there are fancier, more interactive ways of doing these things, but if you are getting started and even if you're not getting started, that is a PDF I've just sent you to like, I've done many different types of lead magnets. I still think there's no problem with doing those things as long as the content is good and as long as you download it and go, yeah, nice one. That really helped.
I don't think they're going out of date. I do think that if you can do other things, then they can be cooler. Quizzes gives you lots of information back, but I'll be really honest, one of the reasons I paused my quiz is there's a huge cost involved because my quiz is very technical. I couldn't have the basic version of the system that I used and therefore I have to have the more expensive one and I have to weigh up and go actually for the amount of leads I'm bringing in.
Is it worth me paying that money out? The new lead magnet I'm doing is an email challenge, which is just basically five emails over five days. And actually that's pretty basic. That's a good one to start with. When I say basic, the content isn't basic. The content's amazing, fyi. If you wanna be more visible and grow your audience and become bit more of a go-to expert in your industry, it's gonna be a phenomenal lead magnet for you.
However, the process of creating it, Is not that difficult. You know, you can just do five emails over five days and you don't even have to create a pdf. So like I said, it's not so much about the medium, it's more about the content and the quality of the thing you're putting out. So don't be disheartened when you see people going, PDFs are boring and they don't work.
They do work. They're only boring if you put boring stuff in them. One other thing I wanna say. So you might be listening to this thinking, yeah, great, I've got pdf, I've got a few lead magnets. So great. We're onto the next stage. So the next stage for you to think about is the customer journey. So you might have one or two lead magnets, but now it's time to think about where do people come into you in your world.
So for instance, I have people come into my world when they're just getting started, but I don't have anything at a Just getting started cost at this point. So my membership is $222 a month, or $2,220 a year. My executive club, which is my mastermind, is $444 a month. $4,440 a year, you get two months free when you sign up for the year.
And my one-to-one work is, well, that's negotiable on a conversation. But if you were to have the standard 90 day package that's around the $10,000. So I don't have anything that is a getting started price. So for me, when I say that some people come into their business with a chunk of money and that's fine, and they're willing to invest from day one and amazing go them, but lots of people normally have to wait until they bring some money in.
So for me, I need to think about my customer journey. So if all my lead magnets are set up for getting started, ie. You know how to come up with content, how to do your email list. Well, that's not gonna target my people because my people are more developed than that. My people, the people who work with me are probably creating consistent content already, or they know they need to do it and they wanna do it fast.
The people who are with me are probably looking at when, where they are in their business and how they can bring in more residual income or how they can do less of this and more of this, or how they can bring in systems and team and that sort of thing. So the people who are ready to invest at my level tend to be people who are a bit further on.
Like I said, that's not that. If you're just getting started, you shouldn't be. Absolutely. If you're happy to invest. Great. So my lead magnets need to reflect the journey of where my customer is. Now I am more than happy to still help. I have a huge amount of resources, which I've gotta work out how I help people or how I get these out.
I have a huge amount of resources for people who are getting started. So, How do I make sure that those lead magnets lead them to those things and then the other lead magnets lead them to those things. So it's thinking about whereabouts on their journey are they? And have you got something for them? So it's more about having almost like a portfolio of stuff.
The other thing you wanna be thinking about, if you are going to be the go-to expert and you wanna be seen out there is every time you speak, every time you're on a podcast, every time you are putting yourself out there, what lead magnet have you got that you can bring in in those times and does it nicely match up to it?
So in an ideal world, and not everywhere that I speak will be keen on a lead magnet. They're normally all right, if I'm on honest. There obviously, there's lots of no sales, and to be honest, I don't think I've ever properly sold on a speaking gig. I don't think I'm brave enough. But you know, have I got a lead magnet that naturally follows on from that talk?
And I know where that next step for that customer is. So, like I said, it's more about looking at, okay, where am I trying to bring people in from what are the next steps and having more different styles, and then you can bring in the different mediums, then you can do time and you know, it took months for me to do my quiz, you know, then you can think about recording video series and doing challenges and all that.
And I've done it all. I literally, there's not much I haven't done. But once you've got that base, then you can start to look at those other ways of bringing people in. So I really hope this has helped. This is a bit different from the first lead magnet episode I did. We are a bit further on. Like I said, if you are just getting started, then do go check out that a PDF.
And fyi, I will suggest that you buy the course at the end of that PDF, and it's a great course. So do take a look at that too. If you're getting started. If you are ready to take the next step, then why not come and have a conversation with me about either joining the club or working with me one-to-one, and let's accelerate that a little bit faster.
Okay? Have a wonderful rest of your week, and I will see you next week.
