Businesses with an engaged audience grow faster than those without. And lead magnet campaigns are the fastest way to grow your audience.
At a basic level lead magnet campaigns are simple. Adverts are run on social media giving away valuable content (a guide, an online quiz and so on) in return for the consumers’ data; name, email address and telephone number etc.
Then, you nurture the people who download the asset (we call these people suspects – they become prospects when they start a conversation with you) by continuing to add value. In turn, this demonstrates knowledge, and positions you or your firm as a go-to expert.
Lead magnet campaigns have two key aims:
- To uncover the small number of prospects who are ready to take immediate action
- To build an audience over time so, when the suspect is ready to take action, you’re the person or organisation they contact.
Patience + data = success
You need two things to run successful lead magnet campaigns.
Firstly, patience. There may be some quick wins, but the aim is to build an audience that will produce a steady stream of prospects over the medium to long term.
Secondly, data. This should be used to continually iterate and improve your campaigns.
As you’d expect, we regularly review the data we collate from the lead magnet campaigns we run on behalf of clients. This week, we thought we’d share some of the key findings to help you improve your lead magnet campaigns.
1. People will give you their telephone number
Less is more. However, your lead magnet campaigns need to provide actionable data. So, asking for telephone numbers is important. Our research shows that asking for a telephone number doesn’t reduce the number of people prepared to complete the form.
Of course, if you’re going to ask for their telephone number, you need to make use of it by picking up the phone!
2. LinkedIn is more expensive than Facebook
The cost of getting someone to download your asset is significantly more expensive on LinkedIn than it is on Facebook. For example:
- It costs, on average, 4.5 times more to get someone to download your retirement guide on LinkedIn compared to Facebook.
- Targeting medical professionals costs 9.5 times as much.
- Expats cost up to 3.59 times as much.
For every type of campaign we run, LinkedIn is more expensive than Facebook.
3. Choose your platform based on targeting not cost
Cost shouldn’t always drive the platform you use. Sure, if all other factors are equal, you will use Facebook rather than LinkedIn. However, there may be times you need to use LinkedIn to so you can target a specific niche.
Don’t let potentially higher costs drive you down the road of a particular platform if it means you have to compromise on targeting, which in the long run will undermine the effectiveness of the campaign.
4. People will engage with your follow-up – part 1
Getting someone to download the lead magnet in exchange for their data is the easy part. You’ve then got to show that you’re the go-to expert by adding value and demonstrating knowledge.
Sending follow-up emails is the most effective way of doing this.
An analysis of the follow-ups we produce for clients shows that open rates on the email average 51.99% and 51.68% respectively. It’s clear that a large proportion of the people who download your lead magnet want to hear from you again.
5. People will engage with your follow-up – part 2
The negative indicators we see on follow-up emails are surprisingly low:
- Unsubscribe rates are 1.57% on the first email, falling to 0.89% on the second email.
- Analysis of the follow-up emails we run shows that no one has ever marked them as spam.
Combine these stats with the open rates and it’s clear that many people who downloaded the original asset want to hear more from you.
6. People take a while to switch off
Our analysis shows that open rates only start to fall significantly after the fifth nurturing email.
Of course, this assumes that the emails you send add value. We have no stats to prove it (because we’d never do it) but, if your follow-up emails focus on your needs rather than adding value, the engagement rate will likely fall significantly faster, and more people will unsubscribe.
The lesson here? If you’re adding value, sending four or five follow up emails in a short space of time, perhaps one per week, doesn’t seem to harm engagement rates.
7. More options = more clicks
It’s a mistake to give someone just one option to click in follow-up emails; it reduces the likelihood of that single link being relevant or interesting to them.
Our research shows a correlation between the number of clicks and the number of articles included in the follow-up email; the higher the number of options, the greater the click count.
So, in your follow-up emails, even if you have one key message, give the recipient other options.
8. Targeting business owners is expensive
Many advisers and planners want to work with business owners. However, targeting them on Facebook and LinkedIn is expensive. Our research shows that getting a business owner to download an asset costs an average of £31.20 on Facebook and £35.21 on LinkedIn.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t target business owners. However, you do need to think about your budget and whether there might be lower hanging, less costly, fruit to pick from the social media tree.
9. Target niches to outperform
If you’ve read our content over the years, you will know the benefits of working in a niche. Our analysis of lead magnet campaigns shows that those in a niche are more effective than generalist campaigns.
Sure, targeting a niche might mean you have to overcome your fear of missing out. But, all the evidence shows that you will build your audience faster than you would with a more general campaign.
10. Niches can be significantly cheaper
If you’re still not convinced about the benefits of targeting a niche, perhaps the fact that they seem to be cheaper will get you over the line?
Our analysis shows that the cost of getting someone to download an asset is cheaper when targeting niches compared to more generalist campaigns.
So, niches (for example ex-pats, medical professionals, parents, first-time buyers) are cheaper, easier to target and the campaigns are more effective. Now, are you convinced?
Bring in the experts
Lead magnet campaigns require several different skill sets:
- Design and copywriting skills to produce the asset you will use in the campaign and the advert itself
- Knowledge of Facebook or LinkedIn so you get the targeting and the advert right
- Web design and development skills to build landing pages
- Data analysis, to help you understand what’s working and what isn’t.
If you don’t have those skills in your team, we’re here to help. Drop us an email to hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300 and we’ll arrange a time to chat.
