You aren’t new to the marketing game. You know demand creation is for the 97% of your target audience who aren’t currently in the market, while demand generation targets the 3% ready to buy.
But what happens between those moments? How do you walk prospects from ‘not yet’ to ‘I’m ready’? And what about the ones who may never be ready? Do you forget them?
Lead magnets are the answer. But not as you traditionally imagine them.
What are lead magnets really?
We’re not talking about ebooks and fancy graphics delivered via inbox — those approaches come from the B2C world. While there are a few things we can steal from B2C Land, these don’t usually translate directly into B2B.
Effective B2B lead magnets don’t queue directly up to sales like lead generation does. In fact, they don’t loop in any prospects further down the sales funnel until they’re ready.
You can cultivate interest and capture emails without sending prospects to sales — It still gets your leads closer to what you actually do.
Lead magnets should be shared to build trust and affinity.
You may already be using some, and you’ve likely opted into a handful over the last few weeks. In B2B, lead magnets can be labeled signup incentives, signup offers, content upgrades, freebies or opt-in bribes — but these labels are off-par.
Lead magnets live middle-of-funnel and help align people with your point of view. They introduce people to your voice and establish thought leadership. They cultivate trust.
When used effectively, lead magnets in B2B will generate unqualified leads. But they also generate leads that will eventually shift to qualified.
As a bridge between demand creation and generation, lead magnets are intentionally relationship-building and can result in affinity between your audience and your business.
Building lead magnets that truly make a difference
At the end of the day, we all want to make sales. But a lead magnet is not a direct ticket to sales — prospects may pass go. They may collect $200.
Instead, successful B2B lead magnets offer genuine value to those interested in the areas where you offer the most value.
A lead magnet is simply a high-value piece of content that is later followed by more valuable content.
Give away a little of your expertise for the low, low price of an email, a newsletter subscription or a notification opt-in. Then, promise more value down the line.
With this approach, you cultivate trust and interest — your audience gains insights with enough value that they should come with a price tag, you get to build a list of the people that may be part of your 97% and you begin to cultivate the affinity between the reader and your brand that may eventually walk them across the bridge from gen creation to capture.
While you aren’t necessarily handing off these leads directly to sales, opt-in lead magnets help leads just slightly further down the sales funnel.
Examples of some amazing B2B lead magnets we’ve seen:
- Sweet Fish Media’s course on building an internal podcast
- VidYard’s use of subtle education about personal video with their media brand audience channel, Sales Feed
- Marketing Millennials’ multi-channel media brand
Using media brands and lead magnets to build an audience growth engine
Lead magnets stack right on top of another hot topic dominating B2B trends: Media brands.
Businesses set to take the lead in 2023 and beyond are capturing audience attention, building trust and cultivating thought leadership without directly mentioning what they are selling.
A lead magnet is a great way to subtly introduce your readers to your product or service. But for any lead magnet to be successful, it has to capture the attention of your audience. And it has to do so over and over again.
So, how can you repeatedly capture attention without becoming redundant?
By building an audience growth engine — starting with lead magnets and media brands.
You have to actually talk to your customers and ask them about what they currently paying attention to. Is it entertaining? Is it education? Are they just reading news? What kind of news? Where are they reading it?
Customers will literally tell you what they're paying attention to related to their craft, and that's where you should be.
Like any other marketing motion, lead magnets must be developed and released intentionally, with carefully designed follow-up email sequences and content streams.
When you connect with your audience, help them get where they want to go and build authority into your content, those within the 97% who will eventually be in the market will come directly to you because you’ll already be top-of-mind.
Catch attention with rich content in the form of podcasts, newsletters, entertainment, short-form video, community building — whatever form your audience lives and works in.
Help them further down the funnel with lead magnets worth their weight in gold.
And eventually, filter them through your built-out bottom-of-funnel processes.
Lead magnets aren’t dead. But they aren’t a straight ticket to sales, either. In B2B, lead magnets are a powerful tool to build affinity and trust, ultimately bridging the gap for your 97% on their journey to conversion.
Listen in to this episode of B2B Growth for Dan and Benji’s conversation about lead magnets and how you can use them to get ahead in the B2B marketing game.
