Rob Da Costa [00:00:00]:

You'll often find me discussing the sales funnel and how to move people from just discovering who you and your agency are right the way through to the point where they buy from you. Now one of the key mistakes I see agencies making is not focusing on building that no like and trust because let's face it no one is gonna ever buy from you until they know you, they like you and they trust you. And instead, they go from, for example, connecting with someone on LinkedIn to asking them to buy from them. And, of course, this isn't gonna work. All it's gonna do is actually harm your brand and get people to disconnect from you and stop following you. this isn't going to work. So in today's episode of the podcast, I want to share with you one strategy that builds credibility shows your audience that you know what on earth you're talking about and helps you nurture them, and that is by using a lead it. So in today's episode, we're gonna talk about what exactly it is, how to create 1, and how to use it in the best way as a significant part of your sales process.

Rob Da Costa [00:01:04]:

So lot to discuss, so let's get started. I'm Rob Acosta, and this is the agency accelerator podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes having started growing and sold my own agency, and adjust how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests' experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable sustainable and enjoyable business. So let's kick things off by defining exactly what a lead magnet is. So, basically, it is a free offer, a resource of some kind, a PDF or a guide, a quiz, a video, or a free podcast, indeed. that is used to entice people to subscribe or opt into your email list. And so it's a really useful tool for generating leads and building up your audience.

Rob Da Costa [00:01:56]:

And, of course, once you have got them in your email list, then you can then follow them up and nurture them to the point where they're ready to buy. Now I spoke many times about why it's really important to build your email list much more so than building your social media following, mainly because you own your list whereas you don't own your social media following. You you're renting it if you like. And the owners of that social media platform can change the terms and conditions or something else or close down indeed, and then something you've lost that massive audience that built. Whereas if you of building an email list, you own that list, and you get a chance to build a one-to-one relationship. So I'm not gonna go into too much detail about why email marketing is so important. But I have a lead magnet for you, which I'll put in a select show notes all about email marketing, so that will teach you about how to go about building your list. But the lead magnet is a great way to build that list.

Rob Da Costa [00:02:51]:

It's kind of like a transaction that says, I'm gonna give you something of value, and in return, you are gonna pay for it with your email address. Now the key here is to genuinely give something of value. I think a lot times, people feel very reticent about giving a lot of their value away for free because that's what they hold back for. They're paying clients. But trust me, you want to put your best foot forward when someone first learns about you. So you want to put some really detailed value into your lead magnet. I always feel like the lead magnet explaining the why and a bit of the what. And then when clients buy from you, they're learning the rest of the what and the how.

Rob Da Costa [00:03:28]:

So don't be afraid about giving value away because that's gonna keep people engaged with the emails that you send after they've downloaded your lead magnet. So Just to kinda summarize those benefits, it helps you grow your email list, and it builds your audience of potential customers. It allows you to collect contact information from those interested prospects, and it enables you to provide some value upfront and build trust that important part of the know, like, and trust journey. And once you've got them in your email list. You can then segment that list based on the lead magnet they requested or the behaviour that they've done after the lead magnet or indeed some of the information they gave you when they requested the lead magnet. So I hope that gives you clarity about the benefits of producing a lead magnet. And I'll talk in a moment a little bit more about what that lead magnet could be. But first, let me share some misconceptions about creating a lead magnet.

Rob Da Costa [00:04:21]:

And the first one I wanna share with you is that it doesn't have to be long. No one is judging the quality of your lead magnet by how many pages it is. Indeed, you wanna make sure that your lead magnet delivers value really quickly because most people are time-poor, so first of all, it doesn't have to be long. And the second misconception that I wanna share with you is that you don't need of lead magnets. In fact, if I could go back and give my younger self 17 years ago just starting out in this business, this is the advice I would say, which is Rob, you don't need loads of lead You just need one really good one and really double down on focusing on promoting that far and wide to get as many downloads as possible. Don't think of it like a campaign to launch the lead magnet and market it and then move on to the next one, but rather think about how you can continually market your lead magnet. So now let's talk about creating an effective lead magnet. First of all, you need to really understand your audience and some other problems that your audience has that you can write about in your lead Magnaire, and you also need to understand your audience in terms of the best way they like to consume information. Would they want to download a PDF? Would they want to watch a video? Would they want to listen to a podcast? So understand your audience and identify the problem your lead magnet is going to tackle.

Rob Da Costa [00:05:38]:

Now, obviously, the lead magnet you create also has to tie back into the service that your agency offers. For example, there's no point in creating a PDF on how to get cheap stationery. is a really silly idea if you're a marketing agency because that doesn't connect back to you. So the lead magnet not only has to tie into one of the problems that your audience has, but it also has to tie into the services that your agency offers so there is a logical pathway for them to read the lead magnet to ultimately buy from you. Now when it comes to types of lead magnets, well, I've already alluded to a few. I think often people think they are just very long and in-depth, e-books, but they don't have to be. They could be an ebook.

Rob Da Costa [00:06:20]:

They could be a one-page cheat sheet or a one-page template. They could be an audio or a podcast. They could be a free training video or, indeed, a free training course. It could be a quiz that people take, and then you provide the answer in an email. So it's that whole bunch of things. So pick one that is gonna be consumed by your audience and one that you feel comfortable ball-writing as well, so that's sort of tying those two things together. The key thing about whatever you do in your lead magnet is that it needs to provide excellent value, it needs to give a really quick win to your audience, and it, of course, needs to solve a problem that keeps your audience awake at night. Now once you've decided on your lead magnet theme and you've decided on your topic, you want to make sure that you're creating a really compelling title and description and chat GB or Claude or one of the other AI writing tools is definitely your friend here because you can go into the writing tools you can say.

Rob Da Costa [00:07:14]:

I'm writing this for this audience. tackling this problem, can you give me some titles and it's definitely gonna help you with that. I believe that, as I said in a previous episode recently, the AI tools are a great way of getting you from 0 to 50, and then you go from 50 to 100. And I think creating a lead magnet is true for using AI as well. So there you go. That's what a lead magnet is and how to decide what theme we're gonna write about and what format it's gonna be in. And I want to pause here and say, you need to knock out the way as many barriers as possible to stopping you from getting this lead magnet created and then marketed. Because if you're thinking, well, I need to wait so I can afford to send it to a designer to get it making it look pretty, well, you don't.

Rob Da Costa [00:07:57]:

Just use Canva and use a free version of Canva. There's lots of great templates in there that you can use, get a VA to do it for you, but you don't need to spend lots of money. And as I said earlier, it doesn't need to be really long and you don't need lots of them. So remove as many barriers and roadblocks for you getting this thing created because Once you've created it, we need to then move on to promoting your lead magnet. Now I'm not gonna get too technical here, but you need to make sure that you have sign-up forms on your websites on pop-ups, and you need to have a link to that page in your marketing. So you basically want to have a landing page. This is a page that people will arrive on when you're promoting your lead magnet. And this landing page will be specific to your lead magnet.

Rob Da Costa [00:08:42]:

And on there, there will be a form where they have to put at the very least their name and their email address. And then in return for that, you will send the lead magnet over to them. And, obviously, once you've got that landing page and you've created the form and that form will pipe the information into your email marketing systems such as Mailchimp or active campaign or Convertkit or Mailerlite, and then you will that will trigger automation because you've tagged that lead to say they downloaded lead magnet x, and that will trigger a sequence of emails to send them to follow-up. And I'll talk more about follow-up in a moment. But, obviously, once you've done that, you want to promote it on social media, you want to promote it to your existing email list, you want to consider, whether you've got a partner that can promote this for you, you also will consider things like paid ads and so on. So you wanna think about how can I consistently promote this far and why you might put a link in your signature in your email so that every time someone gets an email from you, you're promoting that lead magnet to them as well. And often a great way to promote a lead magnet is by working with a partner who has a larger audience than you and is targeting the same audience as you with a different offer. So if you have partners like that, you can offer this lead magnet as a value add.

Rob Da Costa [00:09:57]:

They might send an email to their list or you might be a guest on their podcast, but you just want to find as many ways as you possibly can to promote your lead magnet. Now once you've got set up. So you've written your lead magnet. You know it solves the pain. You understand your audience. You've decided what the right format is. You've designed it, so it looks fairly nice. You've created a landing page, which is a page specific to that lead magnet talking about some of the benefits of why they should read or consume the lead magnet.

Rob Da Costa [00:10:25]:

You've connected that form on the landing page to your email automation system, and you have been promoting your lead magnet far and wide, you now need to make sure that you are following up on these leads because it definitely isn't good enough just to have them download the lead magnet, maybe get one email from you saying, here's the lead magnet and then just sitting back and hoping that they will contact you. So you need to create a sequence of emails over the next few weeks that dig into aspects of that lead magnet in more detail and offer the next logical step that you want them to make on that journey. What's the next step on the buyer's journey that they will take once they've read the lead magnet? It might be that you then invite them to a workshop or it might be that you offer them a one-to-one call to understand more about the specific challenge that the lead magnet's talking about. And then, of course, that leads on to a conversation about working together. So don't make the mistake of doing all of that hard work in the first part to create your lead magnet and promote it and then not do a good job in following up. Now I teach a bunch of different sequences in my program to my members on how to nurture your lead So your first email is gonna be like a welcome email saying, hey. Welcome into our world. Here is the lead magnet you requested.

Rob Da Costa [00:11:40]:

And then after a while, you're gonna go into an inert shrink sequence of emails where you are. Remind them about the lead magnet by checking in with them, asking them questions, and giving them the next what I call the next micro commitment that you want them to make on the buyer's journey. So there you go. In 12 minutes I've covered an awful lot of ground that would normally take a lot longer than that, but I hope you buy into the value of a lead magnet. I hope you understand exactly what it is. I hope you understand how to match the pains that your audience has with you do and your lead magnet sits in the middle. Remember, it doesn't have to be long, but it does have to deliver value very quickly. I hope you then understand about creating the landing page, which is specific to that lead magnet and embedding your email form onto that page.

Rob Da Costa [00:12:29]:

so that people have a way of giving you their email address in return for getting the lead magnet. And then, I hope you understand about the concept to bring the email and a a nurturing follow on sequence of emails that digs into aspects of the lead magnet in more detail and moves your buyer to the next stage on the buyer's journey. Now in the show notes, I'm gonna put a couple of lead magnets that you can download. The a will show you what I'm talking about, but be perhaps more importantly, we'll give you more insights into creating this automated lead generation system and also understanding more about email marketing. So I'll put those two links in the show notes. I also want to remind you about my fortnightly agency accelerator live workshops where we spend 45 minutes live, chewing the fat on a topic. And one of those forthcoming topics is all around email marketing So make sure you have signed up to attend them. They happen at 9 AM UK time every second Wednesday, and we are tackling 13 different themes and challenges that I know you as an agency owner have, so make sure you've signed up to save your seat for them.

Rob Da Costa [00:13:38]:

And I will either see you there or I will see you on the next episode of the agency accelerator podcast. And, of course, if you've enjoyed this episode, please please please do consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and of course, share this episode far and wide with your friends. So I can reach as many people as possible. But other than that, I hope you have a great rest of your week and I will see you next Thursday for the next episode of the agency accelerator podcast.