This lead magnet change made a HUGE difference

Read Time: 5 minutes

Welcome to BE THE EXPERT! In today’s issue:

  • How to design the perfect lead magnet
  • My favorite tool for building lead magnets
  • YouTube split testing update

How to design the perfect lead magnet

We reduced our cost per lead by 90%, and I’ll show you how you could do the same.

Let’s do some online business math to show how impactful that could be to your business:

Say your cost per lead is $10. You pay $1,000 in ads, you get 100 leads.

Say 20% of your leads buy your $100 entry level course.

You make $2,000. Your return on ad spend is 2x (you spent $1,000 and made $2,000)

After the changes I’ll detail below, now imagine your cost per lead is $1.

You pay $1,000 in ads, you get 1,000 leads.

20% buy your $100 program.

You make $20,000! Your return on ad spend is 20x.

HUGE difference there.

Probably worth revisiting your dusty old lead magnet huh?

The example above is an outlier for sure.

$1 leads and 20x ROAS are rare indeed, BUT even cutting your cost per lead by 10% or 20% can have a major positive impact on your business.

In our case, we were able to reduce our cost per lead to $1 – $2 for months earlier this year.

We found three factors that need to be aligned. Like a combination lock, all three need to be perfectly aligned to unlock low-cost leads.

Three essential factors required

The three essential factors are:

  1. Solves ONE problem but OPENs a gap / new problem for your IDEAL customer that your paid program addresses
  2. Very high value to your ideal customer
  3. Very low effort required to obtain the value

As long-time readers know, one of our signature programs is our content engine program. That is where we provide content planning, editing, repurposing, and publishing services.

The program is a done-for-you service (we have since also added DWY and DIY)

We wanted to generate more qualified leads to grow that program, so we began planning a new lead magnet.

Solve ONE problem but OPEN a gap / new problem

To get someone to opt into a lead magnet, they need to feel like it will solve some question or challenge they have.

If you don’t help them solve something important, you’ll get fewer opt ins and higher cost per lead.

If you help them too much, they’ll not purchase your paid programs because they’ll just implement your lead magnet.

You can usually find good lead magnet ideas by looking at the first module/element of your paid program.

In our case, we asked ourselves “what would our ideal customers need to have to be ready immediately for a content team to help them?”

We looked at the first phase of our program which is coming up with a content strategy and detailed content plan aligned to their business goals and objectives.

When our leads or customers had a great content plan and wanted to publish at high volume, they were in the ideal state for needing our services.

If we made our lead magnet some kind of content planner and planning process, we would attract leads that were committed to content marketing.

If they implemented the lead magnet, they would have a detailed content plan and be bought into publishing at scale.

They would be in exactly the right state to need our follow on content services to bring it to life.

That is where the idea for our revenue-generating content planner was born.

This was the first unlock: solve a problem (content strategy and plan) and open a gap (the need for help to execute the plan)

Very high value to your ideal customer

Most people think about PDFs and checklists and things like that as lead magnets.

Those are the easiest to make and have been successful for a lot of folks over the years.

These days, though, you need to push much harder with your lead magnets.

How many PDF lead magnets have you downloaded and never looked at? (me too, a lot…)

We could have gone with something easy like that but we decided to both provide and demonstrate more value.

So we took a critical part of our internal systems, our Notion-based content planning system and turned that into a template that we could use as our lead magnet.

We went further and I recorded an hour long master class on content strategy and how to use the planner to create and manage your content plan and included that as well.

This combo could easily have been a paid program itself priced at hundreds of dollars but we decided to offer it as a free lead magnet.

By being very specific, the lead magnet also would ONLY be interesting to our ideal customers (we already had in planning our DWY and DIY versions so basically any solopreneur interested in serious content marketing was a fit)

This was the second unlock: provide very high value to our ideal customer

Very low effort required to obtain the value

An effective lead magnet also needs to be fast and easy to implement.

This is typically your audience’s first encounter with your style of teaching or delivering something.

Ideally, we want the lead to opt in, immediately get the lead magnet, and start taking action right away.

In our case, this was the weakest area initially. The content planning process took a lot of time, as people had to brainstorm ideas in many different categories and complete their content plans.

We looked at how to streamline that and decided to also include our layered AI prompts and training process so that ideas could be generated very quickly that were tailored to each person’s business.

This took the entire process down to 1 – 2 hours: the training plus creating a 6 – 12 month content plan.

This was the third and final unlock: low effort required to gain high value.

The Results

The three unlocks led us to the unique value proposition: Plan a year’s worth of revenue-generating content in a day.

We began running Facebook ads for the content planner and immediately saw great results.

As mentioned previously, with quizzes and various other lead magnets, our cost per lead was $10 – $20, typical of the highly competitive online business space.

However, the content planner ads generated leads for $1 – $2, which, as you saw at the top, made a dramatic difference.

Much of this newsletter’s readership came from this route, and we certainly gained customers for our programs as well.

How to replicate the results

Let’s do one quick example in a totally different niche.

Let’s say you have an online training and coaching program for CrossFit athletes.

You could create a planner and mini-course that helps your prospects enter all their current data on fitness, lifts, workouts, etc., and generate a training program aligned to your teaching/system.

The output of the lead magnet would be a training program and targets for them.

It would solve a problem (needing an elite training program) and open a gap (need guidance and coaching for how to implement it)

It would attract your ideal customer by being specific and aligned with CrossFit athletes (as opposed to regular Joes just trying to get in shape).

The above would be high value and quick to implement since they just have to type in some data they already have.

Take Action

With the potential to dramatically improve your revenue and profit, designing a great lead magnet is definitely something to focus on.

When you do, be sure it:

  1. Solves ONE problem but OPENs a gap / new problem for your IDEAL customer that your paid program addresses
  2. Delivers very high value to your ideal customer
  3. Requires very low effort/time to obtain the value
Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help:

Solo to Virtual CEO™ – Training + Community: All of our core training in one community! Includes courses and detailed tutorials for each of the nine foundational elements all online businesses need and our Expert Business Operating System for planning and managing your entire business…

Solo to Virtual CEO™ – DIY/DWY/DFY: All of the above plus our entire tech platform (DIY), daily coaching/support (DWY), and MY team working FOR YOU (DFY) to build your expert business…

Expert Business Content Engine: Done-For-You content editing, repurposing, and publishing! We help you create and publish content at scale across all channels (YouTube, Podcast, Blog, Socials)…

Saturday Spotlight 💡

Content Spotlight:​

In this video, I break down the exact steps you need to take to analyze, design, document, automate, and delegate your way to a fully systemized operation.

Tool Spotlight:​

Notion – One of my favorite tools of all time.

Turn ideas into action with Notion’s AI-powered workspace.

Notion tools and templates are a fantastic lead magnet as outlined in this issue!

News Spotlight:​

YouTube creators can now test multiple video thumbnails – TechCrunch

YouTube announced this week the rollout of “Thumbnail Test & Compare,” a new tool for creators to see which thumbnail performs the best.

This is a great update, it used to require paid or 3rd party tools but now YouTube will natively support thumbnail split testing. We’ll be starting to use that this week!

David Ziembicki

CEO, Expert Business Agency

David Ziembicki is the founder and CEO of the Expert Business Agency, which helps coaches, course, and membership creators build their online businesses. David has been an industry-leading technology and business consultant for over 25 years having worked at Microsoft, Deloitte, SAIC, and Avanade.