How to Create Lead Magnets that Fill Your Pipeline

Jeff Craven [00:00:00]:
In every interaction that you have with your client, with your prospect, you you know, there’s no reason you can’t offer some kind of lead magnet, whether it’s big or small. 

Jeffro [00:00:19]:
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. We’ve talked on earlier episodes about how important the messaging is when putting together your business website. You need to spend time really getting inside the head of your target audience, and only then can you start writing copy that resonates. But what about when you’re selling a service that requires more persuasion? What if you want to capture the contact information of a prospect before they’re ready to schedule a call? Well, that’s where lead magnets come in. You put together a free resource that promises so much value that the prospect can’t help but give you their email address in exchange for it. Writing a high quality lead magnet that provides value and demonstrates your authority can feel daunting. What content would be interesting or compelling enough? Where do you start? And what about other collateral? So to help me with this topic today, I’ve invited Jeff Craven onto the show. Jeffro Craven is a certified StoryBrand guide that specializes in working with consultants.

Jeffro [00:01:09]:
He has been helping his clients communicate their value for over 10 years, And he’s great at helping people find their angle and turn it into messaging and collateral that makes decision makers sit up and listen. So welcome to the show, Jeff. Thanks for being here.

Jeff Craven [00:01:22]:
Oh, thanks for having me, Jeff. It’s good to be here.

Jeffro [00:01:25]:
Definitely. You know, for those who don’t know, store StoryBrand was a, popular book written by Donald Miller, But it’s more than a book title. It’s actually a framework to help people write more compelling copy. Can you share a little bit more about what it takes to be certified?

Jeff Craven [00:01:40]:
Sure. What you do is you will, you know, go and join a specific program. It’s a a program that you can join, and, you go through a certain amount of training, and they make sure that you understand the framework. You understand the the, the thinking behind it, the why behind it, and they also make sure that you understand how to apply it. And once you’ve demonstrated that, then you can be certified.

Jeffro [00:02:07]:
And that makes sense. And and this is a framework that has kind of stood the test of time at this point because so many people have used it. It’s proven effective, and It’s something that comes up now and then when we’re talking about copywriting. We’ve talked about messaging before on the show. We’ve highlighted how important it is to know your audience and speak in a way that will resonate with them. But today, I really wanted to focus on the collateral and the lead magnets that support your marketing efforts because that’s often a piece that owners forget about and just leave out entirely.

Jeff Craven [00:02:35]:
Yeah. And it can be a it can be a daunting, you know, exercise for people. Because it you know, it’s like, what what what would I write about? When and, you know, what do I what do I say? How do I put it out there? How long should it be? You know, all all those things, can be pretty daunting and actually keep people from actually doing it.

Jeffro [00:02:53]:
Right. And and just to make a distinction, when I say collateral, I’m thinking of the flyers and info sheets and white papers that you bring with you to a prospect meeting or a trade show. You leave that stuff with people for them to review after you’ve gone. Whereas the lead magnet is something that you’re offering usually on your website to get someone to give you their email address in exchange for that thing. It could still be a white paper depending on what you’re offering, but it has to be something that is clearly valuable to the visitor. Right?

Jeff Craven [00:03:19]:
Right. Absolutely. And and in order to create something that’s gonna be compelling, you have to be very, well versed in what their actual problems are and understand how to articulate that problem back to them in a way that they they are, you’re like, wow. Are you reading my diary? Do you know are you following me around? So that you can know, hey. I know where you’re at right now, and I know this this is going to help you right away, it’s gonna solve an immediate pain for you. And that pain could be, hey. I’m confused about, how to approach this problem, or I don’t really have clarity on on what next direction I I should take. You know, there are lots of different ways that you can help your prospect right there in their in their journey.

Jeffro [00:04:06]:
So, you know, writing a right paper or guide is a little bit different than writing the direct marketing or sales copy. So how Do you approach that collateral to make sure you’re providing value along the way? I mean, you kinda touched on it, but how do you make sure it’s not it doesn’t feel like 1 big pitch?

Jeff Craven [00:04:21]:
Yeah. That’s a great question. It has to be like I said, you know, before, it has to be immediately relevant to their pain. It has to be has to line up with the promise that you’re making to them. So let me give you an example of, a client that I worked with who their consultants, they they work with, medical practices, independent medical practices. And these doctors that start these independent medical practices, they get overwhelmed with how much business, they have you know, business problems they have to face and they have to solve, which takes away time from their patients. So the understanding that and really getting into that, and understanding where that pain comes from, how they experience that pain, the what’s behind that problem that they’re having, really help us narrow down. Hey.

Jeff Craven [00:05:12]:
Here are the 5 business problems that are keeping you from your patients. They’re taking time away from your patients, and here’s how you can approach them, how you can solve them. And that helped that helped on 2 levels. 1, it helped the prospect understand, hey. Do I actually have a problem? Like, help them diagnose. Oh, yeah. I do have that problem. That that is something that’s coming up.

Jeff Craven [00:05:34]:
And then also, of course, you know, gives them direction on how they might address it and solve it. Does that make sense?

Jeffro [00:05:40]:
Yeah. That makes sense. So what do you say to the people though who get nervous about giving away their secrets? Right? They don’t wanna put too much in there. I mean, you gotta give them something, but how do you walk that line?

Jeff Craven [00:05:52]:
Yeah. It’s that’s a very common, fear. And, I usually answer that objection to my clients with, David Ogilvy. I don’t if you’re familiar familiar with David Ogilvy, very famous advertising guru and, back in the sixties, and he made his name by giving away all of his secrets. He wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man, and he didn’t hold back. He just gave everything away, and that just launched him. He became, you know, the go to person for advertising. So I always tell my clients, I mean, don’t don’t worry about that because the reason people are coming to you the reason people would come to you is not because they don’t know something is they don’t know how or they don’t have the time or they don’t, you know, they don’t, they they know their time is better spelled spent elsewhere.

Jeff Craven [00:06:49]:
In fact, that’s the people you want to hire you. Right? Those are the people that that know that time is money, and their time is more important to them than their money.

Jeffro [00:07:00]:
So what is, the difference when you’re writing, You know, a white paper or something in terms of the call to action. On a website, we hear we talk about that a lot more. Is that is it better to be more understated when it comes to a guide or a stated when it comes to a guide or a a white paper on physical collateral or handing to someone? Or do you let the content itself drive the next steps? Or what does that look like?

Jeff Craven [00:07:23]:
So when you let me just clarify. Are you saying the call to action within the actual content within the lead magnet, for example?

Jeffro [00:07:30]:
Yeah. Within I’m talking specifically about, oh, like, a physical white paper you take to a trade show. At the bottom, do you do the same thing that you do on the site and say, interested in learning more? Call this number to set up your appointment. Or do you just because I’ve some companies just have it more professional. They just Leave the block of contact info at the bottom without a clear call to action. So is there any guideline on that to make it effective and not feeling pushy.

Jeff Craven [00:07:58]:
Yeah. It’s gonna depend a lot on what what the, buyer’s journey that you’ve identified. So if they are in if they’re early on in their buyer’s journey, they are really just trying to educate themselves. Right? And they are they might they may not even know that they have they may they may see the, kind of the the fringes of a problem, but they may not may not understand exactly what it is. So let me I’ll give you another example. So I was working with this other consulting firm. They do team performance, improvement, and they and a lot of their clients, their prospective clients, weren’t aware. They thought, oh, we we haven’t what they can see is organizational problems.

Jeff Craven [00:08:49]:
Like, we’re not fast enough. We aren’t innovating. We aren’t, you know, we’re losing our losing the talent that we don’t wanna lose. And they would think, oh, we’ve got a technology problem or we’ve got a, we’ve got a morale problem. We’ve you know, all it’s a cultural thing or whatever it is, and not identify the connections between their organizational problems and how their team performance could help with that. So we put together a, a lead magnet that had, that that called out, hey. Here’s here are the 4 secrets that high performance organizations know about teams. Right? So they we’ve identified something that the that the prospect wants, and then we connected it to Teams because they because we knew that a lot of their prospects hadn’t made that connection yet.

Jeff Craven [00:09:49]:
Does that make sense?

Jeffro [00:09:50]:
Yes. No. That makes sense. And I think it, it makes me wonder, is there ever a time when you wouldn’t want a lead magnet because it obviously seems like a great way to draw people in and get them into your ecosystem. But are there times when you don’t need 1? Maybe for a simple widget that you’re selling.

Jeff Craven [00:10:08]:
I don’t I don’t know that there’s ever a time you wouldn’t want 1. And, you know, when you say when you when I say lead magnet, a lot of people, they immediately comes to mind, you know, is that PDF download that, you know, the the the white paper or the case study, whatever it might be. But there are all kinds of lead magnets that you can produce. You can produce video. You can give them, hey. Here’s a here’s an email course, or here’s a, here’s a template that you can use to to solve this or that problem. You know, here’s even you know, I’ve seen people use just Excel spreadsheets with macros already put into them, to help people, you know, figure out a specific problem that’s related to what they can the ones they can solve. So, yeah, I think there’s always in every interaction that you have with your client, with your prospect, you you know, there’s no reason you can’t offer some kind of lead magnet, whether it’s big or small, to help not only help them, but to give you an indication of where their interests lie.

Jeffro [00:11:20]:
Right. And that makes sense. I have seen a lot of creative lead magnets because like you mentioned, templates. It could be for specific programs too. You know, it’s an editing template, for a particular program or a PowerPoint, you know, background templates or whatever it is. Yeah. You’re right. Any of those things can provide value to that particular audience.

Jeffro [00:11:40]:
And if you know what they want and need, then you can pick something specific to them. But a lead magnet is really just the first step, though, in your relationship with that person because obviously, they’re not ready to buy just yet. They’re still in that learning or exploring mode. So, it’s almost just as important, if not more important, What comes next? You know, with the follow-up, the email sequences, can you talk about that a little bit to kind of connect those and, you know, where do you go from there?

Jeff Craven [00:12:06]:
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, the yeah. I think what you’re talking about you’re talking about email sequence or or whatever follow-up you you’re gonna use because you want people to to begin to know, like, and trust you. Right, it’s something that, you know, speaking of story brands, something that don Donald Miller refers to is the speed of relationship. And everybody moves at different speeds in terms of their relationship, their willingness to trust you. So you just get you need to respect that.

Jeff Craven [00:12:35]:
And so with the with your lead magnet, whatever they download is gonna give you an indication, like I said before, indication of where their interests lie. And so you’re going to whatever that lead magnet, whatever problem that is promising to solve, then you’re just gonna give them more, in in terms of let’s just say it’s an email sequence. You’re gonna give them more ways to solve their problem. You’re gonna call out different whether that’s gonna be, hey. Here’s an a different way to think about this. Hey. Here’s, you know, here’s a here’s a good, here’s a great exercise, to use with your team. You know? Here’s, 5 things that a lot of people miss and, and, you know, how you how to know if you’re, you know, how to know if if if you have this specific problem or this if you’re missing this you know, all kinds of ways that you can do you can approach this, and sort of build off of that that, problem that you know they’re interested in solving.

Jeffro [00:13:38]:
Like you mentioned, you can’t just jump from, Okay. Here’s some value. And then your 1st email says, alright. You ready to buy my $10,000 coaching program? I I know you gotta kind of Build up to that. It is think of it more of a relationship where you gotta, you know, walk before you run

Jeff Craven [00:13:54]:
and Right.

Jeffro [00:13:55]:
Still provide more value along the way, but you’re you can do that in a way where you’re leading people towards that end goal while helping them. Right? Because if they feel like you’re just being push that you’re trying to get something from them, that’s a good way to chase them away.

Jeff Craven [00:14:09]:
Yeah. Something I advise my clients to do is to to separate their lead magnets into 2 buckets. The the first one I call the warm lead generator. That’s the one that you might offer on your website knowing that that’s that most most often, a lot of the people that are becoming there are just they’re looking for information. They know that there’s a you know, they have a problem. They are they are, researching solutions. Right? So they down let’s say they download that. And within that, warmly generated within the sequence that you send out after that, you give an offer for what I call a hot lead generator.

Jeff Craven [00:14:50]:
It’s a more maybe it’s a more aggressive, way for them to solve their problems. So I’ll give you another example. There was a, another consultancy I was working with, and we they had the warm lead generator, and it it went over their philosophy of how they solve that problem. Right? And and what and why they do it that way and the benefits in doing that way. And then within that sequence, we offered a, an assessment. Right? It was an online assessment. Took about 10 minutes. Hey.

Jeff Craven [00:15:25]:
If you wanna know if you wanna solve this problem and you wanna you, make the best use of your money, the best use of your time and your resources to get the biggest bang for your buck, take this assessment, and it’ll tell you where your biggest opportunities lie. And so that helped that buyer’s journey to where people could go from go from, hey. I’m I’m in I’m interested in the solutions. I’m researching them right now to hey. I’m actually actively, I’m actively, looking to solve this, I think I’m getting closer to wanting to solve this. And then that that, if they took that assessment, that would trigger an email from one of their SDRs who would then reach out and say, hey. I see that you are interested in this you know, in in solving this issue, in this in this, area of your organization, we have lots of resources in, for that. What can you tell me a little bit more about what’s going on? And I can send you more tailored resources, and that would start a conversation.

Jeffro [00:16:30]:
Yeah. I like that a lot. And for those listening, SDR is a sales development rep. That’s the person who’s just just gonna do the follow-up. But I I like this because you’re you’re acting as a guide. Right? So you’ve taken the warm person and you’re guiding them to the next step, right, with that assessment, and it’s still providing additional value and is giving you more information about what they want or need. So that that’s a great way to move people along. Yeah.

Jeffro [00:16:56]:
And it doesn’t feel pushy because you’re helping them. Right? It’s something they wanted anyways.

Jeff Craven [00:17:00]:
Yeah. The way that I, like to think about this, and I advise, you know, people that I work with that that, to think about this is as a conversation. Right? This is a way to have a conversation with them on their terms. And it’s so much it’s a much different approach than than, hey. Let’s hey. Just buy my stuff. Right? There is a time for that, and you’re always gonna at every every interaction, you’re always gonna invite them to take the next step. You know, one of the analogies that I’ve heard is if a sale is like a marriage, then, you know, marketing is like dating.

Jeff Craven [00:17:43]:
You know, it’s like you you’re getting them if you so if you can you could keep asking. Let’s say you go out with someone from a while and you ask them to marry you and they say no. You say, oh, you wanna go on another date? Sure. You know? So you wanna give them the option to do to to marry you. Right? But you but if they say no, you also wanna give them an option to go on another date.

Jeffro [00:18:03]:
Right. You don’t end the relationship right there. So you’re just opening that door Right. While staying on the path with them

Jeff Craven [00:18:10]:
Yep.

Jeffro [00:18:10]:
Until they’re ready.

Jeff Craven [00:18:11]:
Yep.

Jeffro [00:18:12]:
So what are some things that I haven’t asked you yet about this process and lead magnet?

Jeff Craven [00:18:18]:
Yeah. So the the lead magnet is is a result coming up with an effective lead magnet is a result of some deeper work that is that is the I do is probably I do more of this kind of deeper work than anything else. It it is a it’s a product of understanding understanding your message on a level that is very clear to you, that you’re very confident in in presenting it, and it comes from, you know, it comes from it’s lined up with values that you hold and the kind of the world that you want to see. So I always always counsel my clients, say, okay. Well, what wrong in the world are you out to write? What is what what do you make right in the world, or what kind of world do you want to see? And this is independent of, you know, who they sell to or what they, what their, you know, capabilities are, what their framework is, whatever that is, it’s it comes from them and why they started the company in the 1st place. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, big a big world changing, wrong they wanna write, but that is a a really fundamental, part of making a message. What I what I consider making a message beautiful. And a message is beautiful as one that is clear, and it connects, and it creates a relationship.

Jeff Craven [00:19:57]:
So that’s that’s, all the stuff that comes out of it, the web copy, the lead magnet, the, you know, the the sequences we’re talking about, all of that comes out. The reason it’s the reason it’s beautiful, the reason it actually delivers value is because you’ve done that deep work before to understand, hey. This is why I’m doing this, and this is how it connects and flows through and makes sense with everything I’m saying about myself and how I’m gonna help my prospect.

Jeffro [00:20:30]:
Right. Because this You can’t skip over that step. I think a lot of people want to get right to the end result of a better copy or get my lead magnet out there or and this is also why ChatTpT isn’t gonna be as good as, you know, someone actually doing this work, figuring everything out, and then having their special opinion and, you know, perspective on the world that is speaking through all the content that they’re writing. So, that that’s a great reminder. And I think with that, we’ll kind of, start wrapping up here. So I did wanna say thanks for your time today, Jeff. You’ve done a great job breaking down how to make, these, you know, effective lead magnets and business collateral and making sure that you’re approaching it with the right mentality and providing value that guides people along the buyer’s path instead of just, you know, jamming stuff down their throat. So, guys, if you wanna connect with Jeff, you can find him on LinkedIn or through his website at thoughtcraft.c0.

Jeffro [00:21:28]:
Do you have any final thoughts for us, Jeff?

Jeff Craven [00:21:30]:
I just go out there and make beautiful messages. Connect with people and make connections, build relationships with with your message.

Jeffro [00:21:37]:
Awesome. Well, thanks again for being here, Jeff, and thanks to everyone listening. Go work on your lead magnets, and I’ll see you in the next episode.