How to Get New Leads in One Easy Step

Are you a service-based business owner who is trying to attract new clients with your website? If you want my advice, please stop. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but hear me out.

A regular mistake that service-based business owners often make is trying to convince website visitors to become clients right away. The problem is that those visitors have no way to gauge whether or not you can even help them, let alone whether you’re worth the money that you’re charging. It’s best that you just forget about getting clients right away and instead start with leads.

Just think about this for a moment. Whenever people land on your website, 95% of them are not ready to sign up with you. That means you have less than a one in 20 chance of making a conversion. That’s it.

But I’m sure you already know what this is like as a visitor of websites yourself. You click a link and discover a business for the first time. At this point you have no good reason to sign up with them. Not until you determine that the business can help and is worth the investment will you become a client.

To make matters worse, in most cases once people leave a website they never come back. That means that about 19 out of 20 people who land on your website will probably never return.

When you try to turn your website visitors into clients, the deck is stacked heavily against you.

But, what if, rather than trying to attract clients, you tried to do something else? Let’s think this through for a moment.

There is another way…

Focus on Attracting Leads and Turn Them into Clients

Every service-based business wants to succeed. Success depends on regular, incoming revenue. And what creates regular, incoming revenue? Clients, of course. But where do those clients come from? They all start as leads.

A potential lead is someone who is interested in what you do but is not ready to become a client yet. While they might not be a hot audience ready to throw scads of money at you, they are warm and are willing to listen. If you target this group rather than those ready to become clients, your conversion rate can jump by 5-10 times or more!

Conversion rates fluctuate based on industry and the offers, but if you’re wondering what a good conversion rate is, the graphic below shows the average conversion rates among some popular tools in the industry.

(Check out the case studies of the clients we mentioned in the chart: PatsyClairmont and BeSociallySmart.)

Some of our own landing pages are converting at 70%+ and many of our clients convert in the 30-50% range (that’s a far cry from 5%). And the best way to do that is with a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is typically a free offering that introduces visitors to you and your services.

It serves several purposes.

First, it introduces them to you and what you can do for them. This allows them to get to know you and what you offer in order to determine whether or not you can actually help them.

Second, through your lead magnet, you are going to give them information that will help them solve a problem. Once that problem is solved, they get the rush of accomplishment. It gives them an experience of what success feels like if they decide to work with you.

Third, when people download a free lead magnet, they are opting in to your email list. That’s like them saying, “please send me more because I want to hear from you and how you can help.” This is an invitation to nurture an ongoing relationship. Remember, people don’t buy from businesses; they buy from people.

Fourth, Facebook allows you to add a pixel to your website that will identify visitors from ads. You can use that information for retargeting campaigns.

So, there are many benefits to focusing on getting leads with lead magnets rather than trying to sign up visitors as clients right out of the gate. But I want to emphasize that for the lead magnet to work it has to be truly valuable to visitors. That means you can’t just slap something together and post it on your website. You have to be intentional about what you use.

What to Create as a Lead Magnet

Before you sit down to create a lead magnet, you need to know your target audience like the back of your hand. Always start there. Without insight into your target audience, your marketing is simply going to be throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, if anything at all.

If you’ve ever listened to Heather in one of her masterclasses (here’s a great one for you), you will hear her say again and again, “know your ideal client.” There’s a process that typically goes with this. I recommend you go through it. It’s that important.

Once you know your ideal client really well, you will know what their key problems are. Start with that list. Then ask yourself, “Which one problem can I help them overcome quickly and easily?” That becomes the topic of your lead magnet.

“Quickly and easily.” That’s what I said, and that’s what I want you to focus on. There are many free downloadables you can create for a lead magnet, but how much time and energy do you really want to put into this? The answer should be as little as possible while still coming up with a quality product.

Let’s take a quick look at some lead magnet possibilities in this matrix.

The bottom left quadrant, “High Effort / Lower Value” does not work as well for a lead magnet as the top right quadrant, “Higher Value / Lower Effort.” The types of lead magnets on the bottom tend to be less desireable for potential leads or tend to produce a lower quality of lead.

The top row of lead magnets converts well, but the top left quadrant takes more effort for you and your lead. Maybe they have to schedule time on their calendar or sit down for a block of time to consume the content.

The top right quadrant is the best because these types of lead magnets are extremely useful. They are also quick and easy for you to create. They’re also easy for your leads. The faster you can help them get a quick win, the faster they’re likely to know, like, and trust you and your services.

Remember, you still want to keep the value high. Your lead magnet should be something they’d happily spend money to get. After all, you want them to have a “Wow, that was awesome!” experience. So, you can see why that upper right corner is your target.

Does Your Lead Magnet Have to be Free?

That’s up to you. How much time and energy do you want to put into it? If you are going to charge people for the product, then you need to spend more time on it and make it super valuable. You might look at that upper left corner and see what you can come up with.

The advantage of a free lead magnet is that it consumes very little of your energy. Yes, you do want it to look really nice, but the time still remains minimal.

Paid lead magnets have their own pros and cons.

You’re not going to convert as many people as you do with a free lead magnet, but the people who buy your offer have already demonstrated that they’re willing to spend money on your solutions.

The biggest advantages are that you can use the revenue your paid lead magnet generates to cover your ad costs. These are sometimes called low-ticket offers or Self-Liquidating Offers (S.L.O.). In fact, if you’re one of the thousands who purchased Heather’s Marketing Planner, you probably went through her SLO funnel.

Heather chose the Marketing Planner to test as a lead magnet after giving it away for free and getting ridiculously great conversion on the freebie. So she tested it as a Self Liquidating offer and it took off like wildfire.

Here are the downsides.

SLO funnels are hard to set up and get working. There are a lot of moving pieces you have to get right for it to work. And for many people, it can be a technical headache to set up.

If your offer isn’t “worth it” in people’s minds, a SLO funnel won’t convert. Or worse yet, if people pay money for something that doesn’t have the value they expect, that will lead to a poor experience and a negative reputation online. So make sure that any paid offers you create deliver 10X or more the value your clients pay to get it.

These downsides are why SLO Funnels are trickier for beginners, and I tend to steer people away from them until they have a proven offer.

So, should you create a free or paid lead magnet? Again, it’s up to you. How clear are you on what your ideal clients need to get results, and how much time and energy do you want to spend on it?

How Do You Promote Your Lead Magnet?

The most important place to promote your lead magnet is on a landing page. This is a dedicated page on your website that presents the lead magnet to your visitors.

Your homepage is a great place to promote your lead magnet. This way, people can see what you have to offer right away.

Another place is at the end of your blog. When people are done with your blog articles, you give them the opportunity to continue to find out more about you through your lead magnet.

If you want to supercharge your promotion on your blog, you could write a blog article related to the lead magnet. Your article, then, serves as something like a teaser that makes them want more. And when they get to the bottom, the offer is right in front of them.

Paid ads are great for external promotions, especially on Facebook. I’ve already mentioned how Facebook allows you to pixel visitors. Retargeting campaigns can be extremely effective.

What if Visitors Stop Downloading Your Lead Magnet?

It’s going to happen. Over time, the lead magnet gets stale. All you need to do is create another one. This is where the “quick and easy” free ones are advantageous.

Go back to your list of problems and draw out another one. You might even want to create a few at a time; that way, you are ready to rotate in a different offer when you start to see your number of downloads drop.

If you keep your lead magnets relevant and fresh, you can keep a steady stream of leads coming into your marketing system. Then, you can nurture those relationships until they are ready to become clients. More clients mean more income, which leads to the freedom you need to live the life you want.