We talk about lead magnets a lot here on our blog. It is one of our favourite services to offer because when used effectively, a lead magnet can be a very powerful tool to turn your followers into coaching clients. The effectiveness of your lead magnet is determined by two main factors: the quality of your lead magnet, and how you market your lead magnet.
Our lead magnet hub provides information about promoting your lead magnet and the marketing assets you need for your coaching lead magnet. Let’s take a look at how to market your lead magnet more effectively.
The 2 Factors of Lead Magnet Marketing for Coaches
We’re big fans of the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule here. If you’re not familiar with it, the principle states that 80% of results come from 20% of the work. There is a lot of strategy involved in marketing, but if we were to look at what drives 80% of the results, the two key factors of marketing are:
- Marketing your product or service in the right place
- With a message that resonates with your target audience
Once you have that in place, the rest are small tweaks to improve the results your marketing is already achieving. These are the two things we will focus on today.
Where to Promote Your Lead Magnet
If you want people to download your lead magnet, you need to promote your lead magnet in a place where your ideal coaching clients hang out. That’s super unhelpful, blatantly obvious advice.
Instead, let’s look at how to make a list of places to promote your lead magnet and how to create a plan to promote your lead magnet in those places.
Promote Your Lead Magnet to Your Current Audience
Start by promoting your lead magnet to the people who currently follow you. The goal is to identify the warm leads in your follower lists so you can build a closer relationship with them via email.
Let’s start with social media.
Most coaches will automatically promote their lead magnet on social media. They just don’t do it effectively. You can’t just put a link to your lead magnet on your social media profile and call it a day. You need to actively talk about your lead magnet in a way that is appropriate for the platform.
If you’re on Instagram, that means talking about your lead magnet in your stories, creating reels, and feed posts to promote your lead magnet. Try to tailor your lead magnet promotion to the type of content that people on the platform expect. For example, you could do a “story time” reel to share your experience with the problem your lead magnet solves. Alternatively, you could share a case study in the “story time.”
Let’s say you run a blog or newsletter.
Create engaging content related to the topic of your lead magnet. This could be a case study, a break down of the impact of the problem your lead magnet solves, anything that would resonate with your blog readers. Then, promote the lead magnet in that piece of content. You could use a combination of banner ads, CTAs throughout the body of the blog post, and a pitch at the end of the blog post. Your freebie should be positioned as a free way to get actionable advice about solving the problem.
Continue this exercise with every type of marketing you currently use in your business. You should have a plan for the month you launch your lead magnet. (The content you create to promote your lead magnet should represent at least 20% of your usual content. It is up to you whether you just replace 20% of your content with lead magnet promotion content or if you create that same amount in addition to your usual content.)
Promote Your Lead Magnet to New Leads
Next, look at ways you can promote your lead magnet to new leads. This doesn’t have to be through advertising. It is up to you to decide whether there is enough ROI for you to spend money promoting your lead magnet. There are plenty of places you can promote your lead magnet to new leads for free.
A great place to start is by joining communities on Facebook or LinkedIn. These don’t have to be directly related to your coaching expertise; they just need to contain your ideal coaching clients. For example, you could join local community groups, groups related to your interests, etc. Being active in those groups without promoting will help people get to know you and build trust. Then, when appropriate, you can soft-sell your lead magnet. “Hey, I created a free guide to X for my business, I have seen a few people discussing this in the group recently, so thought it may be of interest to some of you. It’s free to download on this link.
You could also use guest posting or podcast appearances to spread the word about your lead magnet to a wider audience. A lot of people won’t allow guests to pitch on their podcast or blog content, but you can usually mention that you have a free guide on your website. Make sure your lead magnet is easy to find on your homepage.
Copywriting Techniques to Increase Lead Magnet Downloads
Now that you know WHERE you’re going to promote, let’s take a look at HOW to promote your lead magnet.
We want to promote your lead magnet in a way that your ideal coaching clients are excited to read your lead magnet right then and there. That means that instead of tracking downloads to determine the effectiveness of our promotion, we are tracking click rates. There will be people who sign up to receive your lead magnet and then never actually download it. We want to create excitement around your lead magnet. Let’s take a look at some copywriting techniques for coaches that will help you to do that.
Pain, Agitate, Solve
You may have already heard of this copywriting technique. It provides a really simple framework to build rapport with coaching clients while helping them solve a problem.
- Pain – Identify the problem or pain point that your lead magnet addresses (if there are multiple, focus on one in each piece of content or marketing)
- Agitate – Delve into the impacts of this problem for your ideal coaching clients. What emotions do your ideal coaching clients feel? Why? What are the wider impacts on this area or their whole life?
- Solve – Explain what the solution is to this problem. Then, discuss how your lead magnet can help them to implement this solution and the results they can expect to see if they follow your lead magnet. (You can use expected results and/or results past lead magnet downloaders have received.)
Speak Your Ideal Coaching Clients’ Language
Your marketing becomes 1,000x more powerful when you use the words that your clients use when they describe the problem they face. Think back to your discovery calls and first sessions. What do they say when talking about the problem your lead magnet solves? What are the exact words they use?
It can help to trawl forums and membership groups to see what your ideal coaching clients are saying about the problem. Look at reviews for coaches in your niche or frequently asked questions too. Copy and paste the words and phrases they use.
Using the exact words your ideal coaching clients use has the same effect as mirroring. It helps your ideal coaching clients to see you as one of them – someone who fully understands the problem they are facing. This builds trust and likeability.
Frame Your Lead Magnet Effectively
How you frame the results or resources your ideal coaching client needs to expend is key to increasing your lead magnet engagement. What is the alternative option to your lead magnet value that your ideal coaching client is currently using?
Most meal prep or cooking delivery options frame their services in terms of monthly costs, but people usually will calculate groceries on a weekly basis or a daily basis if they are comparing to the cost of takeout.
For a lead magnet, you won’t be comparing the cost of the product because lead magnets are free. Instead, you may be comparing time, effort, or money saved. Think about your ideal coaching client’s current reality. What are they currently using? Then write down the cost and how your ideal coaching client sees the resource spent.
Regular activities will be considered per day. Weekly activities like grocery shopping would be considered per week. Subscription services would be considered per month.
You want to use similar units when framing the benefits of your lead magnet to help your ideal coaching clients make a like-for-like comparison. Don’t just rely on “less than your daily coffee” – that’s an unhelpful comparison because people’s budget for coffee is different from their budget for fitness. You want to compare the cost/time/effort to what they are currently using.
Establish Your Authority
Depending on your niche, there is a high likelihood that your ideal coaching client been burned before in trying to achieve their goals. They need to see why you are the person who can help them. For your lead magnet, you can share:
- Your credentials
- Results you have helped clients achieve
- Testimonials from past lead magnet downloaders
- Years in the industry/working as a coach
Your lead magnet will further help you to establish your authority. The results that your lead magnet helps your ideal coaching clients to achieve will be your authority. It will help to sell the lead magnet downloader on your coaching program or other services in the future.
Need help promoting your lead magnet? We offer Pick Our Brain Calls for £199 per hour and we would be happy to help you to create a marketing plan or messaging for your lead magnet. If you have yet to create a lead magnet, we also offer lead magnet creation services.