Create a Lead Magnet ? Ok!!! it’s time to think about creating your offer, which many people refer to as your “lead magnet”. It’s kind of like fishing, where your leads are the fish, and your lead magnet is the bait that lures them in.

Remember, this offer should appeal directly to your chosen demographic. You can’t expect to catch a catfish with a flashy lure meant for bass. While it’s possible, it’s not likely, and you’d stand a much better chance of catching a catfish with something that is known to appeal to them—such as chicken livers, or earthworms, or stink bait.

Try to think about what might appeal to your target audience. What would they be interested in learning that they don’t already know? What would they be interested in getting a discount on?

Most people create a special report as their lead magnet. It’s usually 10-20 pages, but may be up to 50 or so, depending on how much you want to say. Longer reports are more appropriate when you have a complex subject and aren’t selling information on the topic.

For example, if you’re in real estate and selling houses, you can give away a 50-page guide on how to find the perfect house, including information about stuff like zoning regulations, homeowners’ associations, utilities, road frontage, home inspections, etc.

But if you’re selling a course on SEO, a shorter report, say 20 pages, on a small segment of the topic would be much more appropriate, because you don’t want to give away all your information for free.

You can always outsource the creation of your lead magnet, or purchase a high-quality PLR product that you can use. This will save you a lot of time.

You might also consider just offering a hefty discount coupon to leads, especially if you have a product that is in demand in your niche. This is especially useful if you have a recurring business model or a sales funnel with upsells that will allow you to use the initial sale as a loss leader and make more money on the back end later.

Once you have your lead magnet ready, be sure to add a link to it to your autoresponder service as a follow-up after people opt-in. You don’t want to have to send all those freebies out manually!

Check your autoresponder’s help files to find out how to set up a follow-up email that contains a link to your lead magnet. The process will be slightly different for each service, but it’s not difficult. It’s about as easy as sending an email.

Then it’s time to create the squeeze page to promote it!

Create a Lead Magnet – The Squeeze Page –

Your squeeze page is your lead generation page. This is a web page created specifically to collect information from people and once they do, your autoresponder will direct them to the page where they can download their freebie.

This page should be relatively short. It’s not like a long sales letter. People don’t need that much convincing when something is free, but they do need some. After all, they don’t want to give up their personal contact details unless they really think your lead magnet will benefit them.

For this reason, squeeze pages should have just enough information to entice the reader into taking action. If it’s too long, people will get bored and leave before they opt in!

Generally speaking, a squeeze page should consist of:

• Headline – This needs to immediately capture their attention and persuade them to continue reading.
• Sub-headline – This provides a little more information and works as your headline’s supporting agent.
• Bullet points – Quick, digestible highlights about how your prospect benefits by subscribing to your newsletter, or entering your funnel.
• A call-to-action – A direct prompt that instructs your prospect how to complete the process of signing up for your free offer.
• Your lead generation form – usually generated by your autoresponder service or lead generation service with various form fields and a button to submit the information.

Quick Tip: ELIMINATE YOUR WORKLOAD
You can sign up to a service that provides monthly lead generation packages that include squeeze pages, high quality content that you can send out to your list, and everything else you need to start collecting leads and building your backend system.

Information to Collect

Most people collect only the name and email address of their leads, but you might need more information than that, depending on your niche market, and whether you wish to further segment your lists and identify potential customers through demographic based data.

The name and address of potential customers is probably enough information for general marketing purposes, but what if you’re selling a higher-end product or service like real estate or legal services, or something that requires one-on-one contact like coaching, you’ll want to begin collecting as much information as possible to help you better connect with potential customers.

In cases like this, it’s probably a better idea to ask for name, address, telephone number, and email. You might even need additional information, such as date of birth (if you’re selling something for adults only, for example) or even more detailed information, such as the breed of dog they own, or their income. You don’t want to ask for too much information—which will just cause people to get frustrated and leave without filling out your form—but you want to get just enough information to make sure they’re qualified.

In other words, what information do you really need to know upfront, and what can you gather later in the selling process?

Once your squeeze page is set up, and you’ve added the lead magnet to your autoresponder service, it’s time to start sending traffic to your squeeze page!