5 reasons NOT to create a lead magnet

Welcome back to the Low Energy Leads Show. I'm your host Lex Roman, and today we're talking about lead magnets. Lead magnets or freebies are common these days as a way to capture interest, build your email list and convert people into customers. But there are some pitfalls that I think go overlooked. And so today we're gonna talk about five reasons not to create a lead magnet, whether you already have a lead magnet and it's not converting, or you're wondering whether you should create one, this episode will help clarify things to watch out for.

Before we launch into my reasoning, I wanna level set on what a lead magnet is. So a lead magnet is something that you offer for free in exchange for someone's email address. So that tends to be something like a free download or a free training. People will use checklists or templates, something that you're offering that entices someone to get on your email list and give you their email address in exchange for the free tool that you are giving them. So the components of a lead magnet look like this. You have some kind of form or landing page where people would input their email on that page. Your messaging with the value is of this free resource. Then you follow that up with access to download that resource, and usually a series of emails that gets that person familiar with what that tool is, why you created it, who you are and what you offer.

In terms of paid services. The pieces of a lead magnet include the form, so the messaging that you're using on that landing page and the actual form element, the free download itself, what you actually create, what the value is there, what the messaging and mechanism is there, the email sequence that you run off of that lead magnet, and the calls to action that you include in that email sequence and where they go. It's quite a journey for people to take. You have to get eyes on that lead magnet. So eyes on the landing page, how are you gonna get visibility there? You have to convert people into that form. You have to keep their attention through your email sequence, and then you have to get them to take that call to action at the end that makes them a paying customer. You can see how those many factors make it really hard to get all of those things right.

And so lead magnets generally take a bit of experimentation to figure out how they can be effective in your business, whether that's where you place the lead magnet so you even get people's interest or what action you're driving at the end. So they become paying customers. And this brings me to reason one, not to create a lead magnet, which is complexity. When I'm deciding whether or not to use a marketing strategy, I'm looking at how many factors are involved in executing that strategy and how many things I could possibly be wrong about. So the longer you run your business, the more evidence you have that you understand your audience and your message and your channels. And lead. Magnets are like a perfect storm of too many factors at play where it's really hard to pull apart exactly what might be not working about them. It's also incredibly hard to nail a lead magnet right out the gate, so it often requires a lot of experimentation and learning.

I think it really becomes unwieldy fast. Lead magnets are a more advanced strategy for people that have a little bit more of a handle on what their messages are, what their visibility channels are, and who their audience is. Reason number two, not to create a lead magnet. No clients. If you don't have any clients yet, you are absolutely wrong about who your target client is. This is a hundred percent true in all cases. None of us are fully aware of who our clientele is until we start reaching and working with them. So all of us are wrong about a lot of things when we launch our business. If you've heard me talk about my story, you know that I was wrong about everything in my business when I started. The degrees to which you're wrong about things will vary. However, all of us have a lack of clarity around our clientele when we launch.

You go into your business thinking, I'd like to work with this target market. Here's who I'm trying to work with, here's who I'd like to reach. But the reality is that you don't understand those people at a deep level until you start working with them. And if you don't have clarity on who those people are at their core, what situations they're dealing with, what their deepest darkest desires are, what their pains are, what motivates them, what drives them, what their day to day looks like, how you fit into their lives. Until you understand that you cannot properly message and target them. And that makes it really hard to nail something like a lead magnet because you think you know who you are reaching, but you actually do not know who you are trying to reach. We often fall to things like demographic information. Oh, I'd like to reach moms.

I'd like to reach women in their forties. I'd like to reach people retiring. And these are really flat ways to look at your audience and they will not help you message and target your people at all. So when it comes to a lead magnet, you won't be able to properly speak directly to your clients if you've never had clients. This is why I always recommend that people start with a really high touch way to get leads earlier in their business. This is known as something called customer development. We haven't talked about it a lot on the podcast, but it's something I talk a lot with my members about. It's the idea that you really spend a lot of time conversing, actively talking to your potential clients and then to your actually booked clients. You're better off trying to shoot for those one-on-one conversations, those face-to-face interactions, whether they happen in the real world or on Zoom, where you can actually dig in and understand what this person is going through.

And does your target buyer have the problem that you think that they have? Do they think about it the way that you think about it? Do they talk about it the way that you talk about it? Reason number three, not to create a lead magnet is unclear visibility. If you don't know how your lead magnet would get seen, it's not gonna be that helpful in order to convert people into customers. Again, people will use lead magnets as a patch. They think that it will bring in customers through some kind of magic, but that's not how it works. You have to promote your lead magnet, and if you don't have clarity on what those visibility channels are, then it's gonna be really hard for that lead magnet to get seen. You might promote them through talks or podcast guesting that you're doing. You might promote them through blog posts.

If you are doing blog posts, whether those are getting seen through Google or you're guesting on someone else's blog, you might promote them as you're networking. If you're introducing yourself in networking events or maybe on your business card, it might be your calling card as you're interacting with clients, it's worth thinking about what are those visibility channels? Often that's a harder question to answer than what the lead magnet should be, and I find that people jump two steps ahead, create the lead magnet, and then wonder, well, how am I gonna get people into this lead magnet? So before you create the lead magnet, I really want you to think about what are my visibility channels? Where would people come across this lead magnet? And specifically, where would my target buyer come across this lead magnet? How will I get it in front of them? Because you don't just want anyone downloading your lead magnet.

If you have people coming in to the lead magnet and they're just grabbing your free resource and they're not actually a buyer for you, that's not gonna be a good use of your time. It's not gonna be a good use of your resources. Think through the visibility channels. What is the path to the lead magnet? Where are people discovering this? The best case scenario is that you already have visibility on things like your website or maybe on a social media profile. You're already doing talks, you're already guesting or guest writing, you're already showing up places, and you can plug it in there as a call to action. If those things haven't happened yet or if those channels aren't working with other calls to action, it's unlikely that a lead magnet would turn that around. We interrupt this episode to bring you an important message from our sponsor.

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The fourth reason not to create a lead magnet is that it's for browsers, not buyers. Lead magnets are a little bit of a long game. What you're doing with a lead magnet is targeting someone who's researching a topic or who is, you know, attending a talk about a topic or listening to a podcast about a topic, and they may not yet be ready to buy a solution in that topic area.

You are trying to catch them in a research phase where they are maybe problem aware for the thing that you solve, but they are probably not yet ready to buy a solution. Why do I say that? I say that because if they were ready to buy a solution, then visibility on you would be enough to make them a buyer, so they wouldn't need a lead magnet mechanism. If somebody is problem aware and they are solution ready are buying a solution, they are shopping for a solution. When they discover you, then they're ready to take a buy call to action like booking a discovery call or reaching out to you about a project. They don't need a long convincing mechanism in order to become a buyer. Lead magnets are designed to take someone from a browser and turn them into a buyer. Somebody who's saying, I think I have this problem, I wonder what I could use to solve it, to saying, I definitely need to solve it and I need to work with you in order to do that.

It's a longer game than some of the other things that you're doing. They target people who are, are not in buy mode, and I am a huge fan of targeting people in buy mode. Eventually, as your business grows, you may be more willing to play a longer game. You may want more people coming in that you can convert over longer periods of time. That is especially true if you're operating at scale, you're running things like workshops or membership programs. You want a wider list, but if you're a service provider who's offering something relatively high ticket, you generally don't need to play that many long games. You can play much shorter games in the marketing space, and you don't need to have these complex mechanisms to convince people they need you. Instead, you just need to get in front of the people who are in that buy mode.

It's up to you how much you wanna convince people in a research mode to become a buyer. I like starting with people that are most buy ready and they're shopping for that solution and working my way back up. And I find as a single service provider, I just don't need that many people that I, it's actually pretty hard for me to exhaust the biready crowd and even bother making it up into the browser when I hear people have just launched a lead magnet and they're like, it's not converting into customers. It's like, yeah, the people that are getting your lead magnet were not in a buy mode for your service. If they were, they would've reached out for a discovery call when they learned about you. Reason number five not to create a lead magnet is that it's a slow play. Not all marketing strategies are created at the same speed, and lead magnets will take a long time to pay off.

Very few people will download your lead magnet and convert immediately into a buyer through your email sequence. What tends to happen is that people will get on your email list through the lead magnet and then they will stay on the list learning from you over the next weeks or months learning who you are, learning how you work, learning what you offer, and eventually they may be in a moment where they need your help. So that can take weeks or months to pay off. It is a slow burn strategy. It can be worth doing, but it's worth walking into with eyes open. Knowing this may take a while to convert. These people are not gonna be coming into your discovery calls like hotcakes. They will be taking some time to simmer and fully cook for all the amount of time and thought that goes into a league magnet.

You might have a faster play strategy that you could be working in order to get clients in the door right now. As you're choosing your marketing activities, make sure that you're aware, is this thing gonna pay off given the nature of this activity, given the way that it targets someone? Am I reaching these people in buy mode where it will be a quick payoff? Or am I reaching people who are going to need some persuasion to become even more problem aware and solution ready? Right, wallet open, buy ready. You wanna be mindful of that because leave magnets have their place and I think in a more mature business, they are a great way to capture early interest. And as your, as your systems start cooking, it's easier to convert people over time because you have people that have been in your email list for the last couple years, but in the beginning of your business in the early couple years, if you're hitting an issue with clients, it's not my go-to strategy, it's gonna take too long compared to other things that you could be trying, like getting right in front of your buyer with partnerships, with targeted speaking events, with targeted email campaigns, there are things that you can be doing that will pay off in client interest this week or this month, and a lead magnet is not one of them.

As you're thinking about which marketing plays to prioritize in your business, consider some of the factors we talked about today which apply to ideas beyond lead magnets. So to recap the five reasons not to create a lead magnet, we have complexity. Too many factors at play, no clients. If you don't have any clients yet, you don't understand them. Unclear visibility, lack of clarity on where your lead magnet would even get seen. Browsers not buyers. Lead magnets are targeting people in a research mode and convincing them over the long term to become buyers and slow play. You simply have faster ways to reach your clients. It's up to you whether it's worth playing the long game and as your business grows, it may be worth it to you to create something like this. That is a long play strategy because maybe you have enough visibility channels where you need a light call to action for people to get on your email list and convert down the road earlier on in your business.

I would avoid lead magnets for this reason, because you can't usually afford to play that long of a game. And as we talked about earlier, they're so complex and time consuming to get right, and you have more direct ways that you can get in front of buyers instead of browsers.

If you enjoyed this episode, I wanna invite you to get on the Low Energy Leads Newsletter where I share weekly tips on staying booked with less energy. I also wanna invite you to something new I'm trying called The Growth Gym. The Growth Gym is your home to learn how to make smarter marketing bets. If you're striking out finding your buyers, join us on Fridays at 12 Eastern on YouTube and LinkedIn to learn how to take your marketing ideas and turn them into smarter bet tests. Topics will vary week to week, and if you're on the Low Energy Leads Newsletter, you'll get a heads up about what's coming next.

Until next time, keep your energy low until you know the value will be high.