What are lead magnets and how should video businesses use them to generate leads?

Introduction

There's a very powerful way for video businesses to generate leads, open up conversations, and build their database. But many video production professionals just flat out don't use them – or if they do, they aren't using them to generate a constant flow of new opportunities, new contracts, and new prospects into their video business.

Today we're going to understand what lead magnets are, what you should be creating, how to promote them, and ultimately how to make sure that you're always opening up new conversations with potential customers.

What You'll Learn

• What a lead magnet actually is – A short, easy to consume piece of gated content that prospects exchange their email address to access.
• How to identify what to create – Using audience personas to understand your ideal customer's challenges and desires.
• Where lead magnets fit in the buyer's journey – Understanding how consideration stage content transitions prospects to the decision stage.
• The power of the exchange – Why helping prospects see the light positions you as the obvious choice when they're ready to buy.

What Is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is a short, easy to consume piece of content that is gated – meaning the person or prospect needs to share their email address in order to get access. You've probably seen them: industry reports, short how-to guides, gated video content, worksheets, and downloadable tools.

By developing and promoting your lead magnet to your ideal customer, you ensure that your database is continually growing with people, brands, and prospects that are perfect for you. This allows you to open up conversations with those people and ultimately convert them to a new project. Without these powerful tools, your video business is never growing.

What Should You Create?

A lead magnet always needs to solve a problem. It needs to be valuable enough to your prospect for them to want to download it. The first thing you need to do is truly understand your ideal customer using an audience persona.

We go deeper than regular audience personas. Of course we profile their age, location, marital status, and income bracket – but we also look at what challenges they face, what hurdles they're looking to overcome, and what their desires are on a personal level. When we understand this information, we have everything we need to create a powerful lead magnet.

How Lead Magnets Fit the Buyer's Journey

Lead magnets are consideration stage content. They help the buyer understand that video is a route they should be taking, and you help them see the light. The beautiful thing is that as they consume your lead magnet, they transition to the decision stage where they look for the person or team that is going to help them.

But here's what just happened: in order to get that content, they gave you their email address. So when you next reach out to them, they'll be in the decision stage and you're the person that got them there. Who are they going to work with?

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:37:00
There's a very powerful way for video businesses to generate leads, to open up conversations, to build their database. But many video production professionals just flat out don't use them. Or if they do, they aren't using them to generate a constant flow of new opportunities, new contracts, new prospects into their video business. So today we're going to understand what they are, what they should be creating, how to promote them, and ultimately how to make sure that you're always opening up new conversations with potential customers. What are lead magnets, and how should video businesses use them to generate leads.

00:00:37:00 - 00:01:18:00
So you may or may not be aware of lead magnets and their purpose, but let's tick that off straight away. A lead magnet is a short, easy to consume piece of content that is gated. So, the person or prospect needs to share their email address in order to get access to that content. You've probably seen them. Industry reports, short how-to guides, gated video content, worksheets, downloadable tools. By developing and promoting your lead magnet to your ideal customer, you ensure that your database is continually growing with people, brands, and prospects that are perfect for you. This allows you to open up conversations with those people and ultimately convert them to a new project. Without these powerful tools, your video business is never growing.

00:01:18:00 - 00:02:06:00
So, that's what a lead magnet is, and it's an easy concept to get your head around. But the challenge that production professionals have is knowing what to create, understanding what their ideal customer would want to download, need help with, and how to promote them. So, that's what we're going to focus on now. And I'm going to share with you some free resources that will help you to develop your own lead magnets. So, what should you create? What's going to be attractive enough to your ideal customer for them to share their email address? Well, a lead magnet always needs to solve a problem. It needs to be valuable enough to your prospect for them to want to download it. So, how do we work out what that is? Well, the first thing that we need to do is to truly understand our ideal customer. And we do that with an audience persona.

00:02:06:00 - 00:03:01:00
Below this video, you'll be able to download and use the audience persona worksheet that I and my students use in order to get crystal clear on their perfect prospects. This isn't any old audience persona. We go deeper than the regular audience personas. We of course profile their age, location, marital status, income bracket, and so on. But we also look at what challenges they face, what hurdles are they looking to overcome, what are their desires on a personal level. Because when we understand this information, we have everything that we need to create a powerful lead magnet. Once you've developed your audience persona, you need to look at the challenges that these people face and specifically how you and your service can help them to overcome those challenges. This is also really helpful to start shaping your awareness stage and consideration stage content, but we're focusing on lead magnets in this video. You can check out my other videos and get clear on that.

00:03:01:00 - 00:03:53:00
So find a couple of the challenges and let's use another worksheet to brainstorm a perfect lead magnet for those people. You've also got access to my book, video course, and audio book, The Lead Generation Machine, which again is linked below, and you've got that for free. Okay, so quick recap. We know the challenges that our perfect prospects face, and we know what we're going to create. So the next step is to create it. But depending on what your brainstorming session spits out, you'll either need to create a PDF or a video or report or whatever you end up deciding. But remember, a good lead magnet needs to be short and sharp, but provide a high level of value. It needs to explain to the reader, viewer, prospect how they can overcome the challenge that they're facing. So, assuming that you've got that created, the next question is, how do I get people to download this?

00:03:53:00 - 00:04:54:00
So, I know I always talk about this, but it's because it's important, the buyer's journey. We've got three stages. The awareness stage where the buyer becomes aware of an issue or an opportunity. The consideration stage where the buyer becomes solution aware. So this is where they understand that video will help them to fix that issue or achieve their opportunity. And then the decision stage where the buyer becomes provider aware and they decide who is going to help them to fix that issue or achieve that opportunity. I've linked to the video that goes into more detail on the buyer's journey below. But our lead magnets are consideration stage content. They help the buyer to understand that video is a route that they should be taking and you help them to see the light to see the answer. And the beautiful thing about this is that as they consume your lead magnet, they transition to the decision stage where they look for the person or team that is going to help them.

00:04:54:00 - 00:05:27:00
But what just happened? In order to get that content, they gave you their email address. So when you next reach out to them, they'll be in the decision stage and you're the person that got them there. So, who are they going to work with? Now, that's a rather long answer to the question in hand, but I'm hoping that you can see the power of using lead magnets, making sure that they help your target audience, what you should be creating, and how to actually use them to drive results. So, what are the next steps? Well, if you're looking to build out your sales and marketing systems, I have three free video courses created specifically for the video production industry. And they're all for free and you can get access to them via the link below. So go check it out and have a great day.