Hello, badass. So I asked you on my Instagram stories which topic you would like me to cover next, by far the winning suggestion was designing a juicy lead magnet.
[00:00:15] Understanding the Power of Lead Magnets
So a lead magnet allows you to build trust with your audience, grow your email list, and turn your followers into paid clients because as if you've been listening hard and doing your homework with the Badass Empires podcast, followers do not equal sales.
I know industry peers or people within group coaching programs and masterminds that I've been part of. People sometimes have double, or triple the followers that I have, and they're making less than half the revenue. And then likewise, I know that my business coach made her first million dollars with an audience of just 6,000 people on Instagram.
So we know this, we know that followers do not equal sales necessarily. Of course, it can help. And this is because. An online community is not a business. Having a lot of followers on your page is not a business or a sustainable business model. Sure, you might get some sponsored posts or whatever from time to time, but it's not a consistent, predictable, scalable business model.
[00:01:27] The Essential Elements of a Successful Sales System
And we know in Badass Empire's land, to be a profitable business and make sales, you need a sales system. Is having a strong niche and messaging that will attract aligned profiles into your audience who are very likely to be into what you're selling because you've reverse-engineered your offer, your transformation down to the content you share so you know that you're attracting the right people in.
You've got the sexy no-brainer offer for those people, something that provides the result of the solution that they're looking for, the transformation that they're after between the audience members you have and the amazing offer that you're selling, you need to nurture and form relationships with these people to bridge the gap between followers, followers, just being observers, consumers of your content and actual clients who want to sign up to work with you and go all in and get that transformation.
That nurturing, that relationship building, it comes down to building knowledge and trust. So not only do your followers know who you are, they like who you are, they like what you stand for, they like what you're doing, and ultimately they trust you. They trust that you know what you're talking about, that you know your shit, and that they can rely on you to help them make progress against their own life goals.
And there are many ways to do this. This nurturing, this trust building, this relationship building that converts followers to clients.
[00:03:14] Designing a Strategic Lead Magnet
But one of the key elements of a successful sales system that can do a lot of heavy lifting for you Is an intentional strategic lead magnet, AKA an opt-in-a-freebie, something really valuable that you provide in exchange for the person's contact details, and email address.
It's also something that a lot of entrepreneurs are getting wrong. It's not just about slapping together some PDF using Canva and chat GPT and getting people's Email addresses and thinking that you've nurtured them, that you've built a relationship with them because that PDF probably won't, change the game for them.
It's just more information. It's not necessarily going to impress them, going to elevate their perception of how capable you are, how credible you are. Did it give them wins? Does it give them micro transformations that they're looking for? So it's not just about giving them anything in exchange for the email address.
Take on your part. It's about giving them something really generous and really valuable so that they see you as the coach, the guide, the mentor, the service provider for them. So in this episode, we will cover what a lead magnet is, what it can look like, the benefits of creating one, and how to make a juicy one that will help you turn your followers into clients and make sales without even having to actively sell.
And of course, I'll give you a concrete case study of some lead magnet styles that have been proven to work for both myself and my clients. So I know you're going to get so much freaking value out of this one. So without further ado, let's dive in.
[00:05:05] Exploring Different Types of Lead Magnets
What is a lead magnet? Essentially, it's something of value given for free in exchange for your follower's email address.
It's great for building your email list, of course. But, as I said before, you want to make it worth their while. And, classic examples that you've probably grabbed online could be something like a PDF workbook or an ebook, maybe a LinkedIn makeover checklist or 10 easy meal prep recipes, or it could be a little bit more involved like a free mini course or a multi-day challenge.
For example, like seven days to regulate your nervous system, and every day you receive a new email with a new thing to work on, some new information, or something to execute as part of that challenge. If you follow a podcaster, it might be some secret or bonus podcast episodes that go further in a way that they haven't yet on their more public podcast.
It's anything that allows that creator, that educator to go further and connect deeper. And that's something that we should be appreciative of and grateful for when you have this energetic exchange of someone giving you their data, their name, and their email address for more value.
Because that's when they go from being this anonymous follower to an actual lead. Because they've shown right then and there a keen interest in taking the next step with you. Going further, learning more, understanding more. And if you think about the free content that you're putting out there anyway, let's take the example of an Instagram account, usually you can only put out, mini, bite-sized tips and tricks, or 30 to 60-second pieces of content here and there across all of your content pillars at any one time and you're only able to tackle one small element, one small aspect of your expertise.
Whereas your lead magnet tends to give you more time and attention with your lead, with this person, where you can share things like why it's important. The big picture, maybe more about your signature methodology and just give them that more nuanced taster of your expertise and authority and package it up for them so that they can get that feel that all those little content pieces that you put out there, they're part of something bigger.
They're part of a larger transformation that's possible for this person. The delivery of the lead magnet can give them a taste of what it's like to learn more from you and get results because of you, thanks to you, alongside you. So naturally it builds that trust and relationship as well. When you get this right, it helps you to turn those followers into clients by building that knowledge and trust, because they have gratitude at how much they've received for free, how much value they've been able to consume for free, and learn from you and get inspired by you.
And ideally, your lead magnet is giving them micro wins, micro transformations that give them this confidence boost. It gives them a sense that. They can do it, at least even this small part. And not only that, they can do it with you, alongside you. It also allows you to sell without having to actively Sell, which is just so much easier and so much more scalable, right?
At the end of the day, if you can be sleeping and you have people being able to find this lead magnet, consume it, enjoy it, have a shift in thinking about what it might be like to work with you and send you a message over it, send you an email over it, it's just really leveraged. Sales technique, right? So you don't have to actively be there, chasing people up in messages, responding in real-time.
It's doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's doing a lot of work for you. And of course, done right, especially when it's messaged and marketed and positioned well, it's going to build your email list and deepen relationships in that way as well. Even if someone goes through your lead magnet, And doesn't have the reflex that they're ready to buy from you, or that now is their time for that transformation.
They might later. And you can contact them in three months, in six months, in twelve months. Sometimes people have been on my list for a long time. And They've consumed my lead magnet. They know I'm the coach for them, but now's just not it. Yet when I launch later on, they're one of the clients that signs up live on the masterclass straight away in the first 24 hours, because they know that they want this and they've known for a long time, thanks to things like this lead magnet, which again, are doing that work for me of positioning me as The coach for them, sometimes before I've even had a chance to chat to them or I've ever met them before.
So we know we want to do this. We know it's good for business. We know it's good for our community and us as entrepreneurs. So how do we do it?
[00:10:39] Creating a Juicy Lead Magnet: Tips and Strategies
How are we making this lead magnet juicy? So super valuable, oozing with value, but still enough to leave them wanting more. Firstly, we've got to make sure that this lead magnet is doing the right work for you.
Not just doing, any old work in terms of impressing people and having them say thanks, was amazing. But, shifting them in the right direction. And to do that, we need it to be super aligned to your paid offer, okay? And you know that I'm a fan of that one, Clear Signet to offer because it makes your messaging and your sales so much easier, simpler, and more profitable because clarity and simplicity in business leads to profitability.
I've seen it time and time again. And so we just want the one freebie, one lead magnet leading into one. So you have to know what you're selling. You have to know what your transformative offer is for people. You have to know what the why of your offer is, what kind of person would enjoy your offer, get results from your offer, and who it is for.
Because your freebie, Is going to be designed based on if they like what's inside this, they're gonna love what's inside my paid offer. So if your content, your free content that they consume online is your top of the funnel, and those content pillars you have reflect The topics that you cover in your paid offer, but you're giving them sort of light, quick, bite-sized pieces of that.
That freebie, that lead magnet, it's going to go one step further and it's going to give your leads a taster of the results or the transformation that they might experience in your paid offer. All in one place. So it's going to put things together for them. and take them through a mini journey, a mini A to Z, a mini feeling of what it's like to get results in that area quickly.
And it's going to give them that impression that they've taken one step further, one more action towards the result that they're hoping to achieve in their life. so you've got to make sure that the content of that lead magnet is highly aligned to the result.
the kind of content experience or feeling that they might get from your core offer. Then you've got to pick the right format. So a big question is how deep you want to go and how you want to deliver it. And it will depend of course on the structure and price point of the course or the coaching program or the service that you're selling.
For example, imagine that I'm selling a 197 self-study course on interviews, and how to succeed in interviews. And it's a lower ticket price point. And usually, that indicates that you have zero interaction with me. zero support, zero sort of personalized feedback, so to speak. It's going to be a course that is full of really valuable video training and workbooks and self-coaching activities that will boost your confidence around interviews, help you prepare for the main questions, help you prepare for any random unexpected.
Questions that might come up and help you to seal the deal in the interview setting. For something like that, a PDF might be enough, right? Imagine you had a PDF with 20 job-winning interview questions to ask at the end of the interview. And when people download it, it's not just this basic list of 20 questions that you can ask at the end of an interview, but you take the time to introduce your authority and your expertise, You educate them on different types of interviews.
So there are, first screenings with recruiters, there are first round, second round, there are technical interviews, whatever. There are different kinds of interviews and you help them not only categorize the different kinds of questions that would be strategic to ask at different Stages of the interview process, but you can also help them understand that there are questions that you can ask very intentionally to do your due diligence on things like.
the management style, or the team culture, or anything that's going to be important for this person to assess whether or not they want to work there or not as well. And then on the final page, you can pitch the fully-fledged interview course that you have. Plus, you can have the act of them downloading that PDF trigger a, let's say, three-week email series that educates them on how intentional and strategic every part of that interview process can be.
Helping them to raise an awareness that there's a gap probably between, how they're preparing for interviews and how nuanced it really can get. And then of coursepitching the upsell into your program as well So a couple of different ways that you can present your offer after a PDF like this now in general I would say I think the market's pretty done with PDFs just because there's been so many Bad ones.
And I think people are a little bit fatigued by them, especially with content creators using ChatGPT to pull really basic generic info you could find anywhere to get there. And they can feel quite transactional. You can, how many times have you given your email? In exchange for a PDF freebie, and not reading through it, and not doing anything with the information inside.
Now, PDFs can be great if they're done well, and they're thorough, and also if you just want to build your list quickly. Like, when I launched Badass Empires, I created two juicy PDF freebies, because While I eventually want to launch a whole mini-course video series that will be amazing and incredibly juicy, for now, time-wise, first things first, I've got to get building my email list.
And I'll do it with a great freebie, even if it's not as transformational as my video mini-course will be. Now, the classic PDF aside, as you probably realise, my preference is for fewer people to download your thing or go through your thing because it's higher effort because it's more intensive. After all, it's a lot more commitment.
Then have more people download a low-commitment transactional item like a PDF. And this is because when that person says, Hey, it's a four-week mini course, but I'm going to do it anyway because that's how badly I want this. You are attracting a particular kind of person who's ready to take action.
who's ready to get the results that they so badly are craving. And I'd rather my email list be full of people like this than people who were just like, nah, I'll check it out, right? And this is why, especially because we typically work with that kind of higher level coaching program at that 1, 200 to 2, 500 mark, I typically enjoy things like mini-courses, masterclasses, more intensive ways to get to know each other and have time with the person to describe the why, the bigger picture, give them a real taster of your style, your approach, your unique methodology and get those micro transformations going.
So a mini course, for example, is brilliant because you build authority by showing them what can happen if they do the work. So you might have an introductory video on what they're going to cover, why it's important, and how it's going to help them get that first step of the way, get that first. Result that they're looking for.
And then over a series of a few weeks, you're going to show up often with either, video pieces of training, audio files, whatever it is, plus some workbooks that they can download week by week for say three to five weeks that allows them to get that taste of that transformation and take self-guided action towards that result that you ultimately promise in your paid offer.
So there's an education element. There's a credibility and authority element. There's an element of challenge and learning and enjoyment. And an element of them showing up for themselves doing the work and getting results. And even that, that confidence boost, that accountability, that self-trust and accountability, that feeling like, Hey, I'm doing it.
I'm doing the thing I said I wanted to do is key for people to say, Hey, Imagine if I took this further. Another thing that I do quite a lot over at badass careers is the one-hour masterclass, a one-hour workshop where you walk people through again, your expertise, the fact that you really know your shit and you walk them through, for example, the Badass Your Resume or whatever it is, and you give them, The five key principles of success.
And you show them how to go so far on their own. And it's already super generous and super valuable, but maybe in your course, you cover like 20, but you give away five or something like that. It's also a great opportunity to call out any mistakes that they've been making, which again, positions you as the authority, as the credibility, and helps them to make really important mindset shifts when you call out, what they have been doing and how they should be doing it.
So it's giving you more time to say, Hey, You need to acknowledge and celebrate your accomplishments, for example, and draw the gold out of your career stories. And these are the reasons you haven't been able to do that, and you're not giving yourself enough credit. And so we're going to do a mini exercise together and walk through what it would look like if you did this for yourself.
And then this is how you would package up that information on your resume. So it gives them enough to get started with. And again, has that feeling of having them Now, I'm not going to go into the one-hour masterclass training on this podcast because this is just a whole other level of lead magnet.
Just to put it into context, when I learned how to evergreen Badass Careers AKA move away from doing live launches into having this Evergreen sales system with a masterclass funnel, with the masterclass being the lead magnet. I signed up for a program that was 22, 000 and I worked on it for over six months.
So for me, this is You know, a system, a sales funnel process that you get to when you know your shit as you've worked with a lot of people, you understand their psyche inside out, you have heaps of success stories, and testimonials that you can weave in like your methodology is rock solid, you're so confident in the results it can provide, that's when you get into things like the masterclass.
Whereas, the mini-course is great for beginners because you build authority by doing the work alongside them and showing them how to get it done. Whereas the one-hour masterclass is very much like the pure expertise builder based on experience. So it's not something I would recommend for beginners.
Again, there are so many different formats. It can be challenging. It can be, weekly journal prompts, or showing up on your email inbox for a month. It can be so many different things. It will depend on what your offer looks like, who your ideal client is, and how they like to consume and take action on information.
But Those are the main sorts of formats that you'll be designing between. And if you're wondering how much to give away for free essentially, this is going to be a one-way conversation, right? Even if it's a mini-course, even if it's an intensive lead magnet, It's still a one-way conversation and it's self-coaching.
So by default, it's never going to be as transformative as anything that could be supported with any form of dialogue, any kind of coaching presence, any opportunity for them to ask their personalized questions and get feedback from you. Already, it's very likely that this isn't going to be able to even compare to your paid offer.
And while on the one hand, you do want to give a lot of value, on the other hand, you want them to be able to get through the mini-course and finish it. It has to be light enough that they can get through it, and achieve the micro transformation all by themselves. Remember, they don't have you there. for them and it needs to be the kind of work, the level of work that they can confidently advance in all by themselves.
So it's not going to be your most sophisticated, advanced nuanced information that typically requires a coaching conversation and a lot of unpacking or anything like that. It's about that sort of base-level fundamentals and a taster of it while setting them up to win.
It's generous in its value add, but it's also light enough, understandable enough, and doable enough that your ideal client could get through it by themselves and make some moves, take some baby steps, and get some form of results to have that reassurance. Hey, look at me go. I'm doing the thing. I can do this.
[00:25:45] Real-World Examples of Effective Lead Magnets
So let me walk you through some concrete examples of things that I've done or things that I've seen work well for other entrepreneurs. So you can get a taster of concretely, what does that look like? So let me take my signature offer for Badass Careers. That was my core revenue generator for About four years there, which was The Career Glow Up.
That was my signature coaching program, helping people to get clear on their career direction. So figure out what they truly wanted, find their purpose to then brand themselves and market themselves on the job market to then land the job interviews, negotiation, all of that kind of thing, all coming together to essentially take them from not knowing what they wanted to do, feeling unfulfilled.
To career pivoting or just landing that career-defining move that was going to upgrade and level up their career. So my first lead magnet for The Career Glow Up was a mini course called Find My Why, and the logic behind Find My Why is giving them a taster of the first phase of the program. So we've got clarity, branding, and landing.
Let's talk about career purpose, one aspect of the clarity phase. So it gives them an aspect of phase one. Where do you start? You've got to get clear on who you are and what you want. And for this, I used a framework that wasn't my framework. It's the Ikigai framework. And for those of you who don't know, Ikigai is a Japanese word that means your reason for being, AKA your why, your purpose.
And the framework is very simple. It just takes you through what you love. What you value, what you could be paid for, and what the world needs. And the overlapping of all of these different aspects lands on your Ikigai. And so I use this framework to walk them through the concept of career purpose. At the time when I was running The Career Glow Up for the first two iterations, I used the framework inside the program.
So I didn't have my intellectual property developed yet, and I was using that framework because I used that framework personally to design Badass Careers. So I loved the framework and I had used it before. So that was one of the frameworks I used inside of the program anyway. Essentially, they would sign up for the series, which was a five-part series, and I would email them with a video, which I hosted on YouTube, there was a button inside the email to download their associated workbook for the week, where they would have activities, journal prompts, actions, missions to complete.
And I credit this freebie to why I ended up having a very successful first launch because Making over 30, 000 in sales because it built so much trust and respect. After all, it was so valuable. By the end of the mini-course, people had drafted their career purpose statements, which was exciting for people.
So it gives them a taste of it and helps them to use it, the concept being the more self-awareness I have of who I am and what I want. The more I can understand what my career purpose is, that was a massive shift for people. And yet, that win, that high, that excitement, it still didn't compare to my paid offer because they didn't necessarily know how to translate that purpose statement into an actual job title, into an actual short list of career options, And they certainly didn't know how to make it happen.
So while the risk is that maybe they would find some parts of the clarity phase of the career glow up a little bit repetitive, even though it's more thorough, more in-depth, different diagnostic tools, like it's a lot more nuanced inside the actual paid program, and it's just one part of the clarity phase, but that risk was worth it to reassure them that they are.
Capable of finding a purpose-fueled career direction. And, if anything, it just allowed them to move faster through certain parts of the program once they were in. And get into the actual making it happen phase. When I moved into a model of career glow up where by this time I had, many people through the program and I had developed my intellectual property around career clarity finding and career purpose finding, I didn't want to give my frameworks away publicly because I knew that there were a lot of career coaches creeping on my stuff and stealing my models and my frameworks and my content from me.
So instead of sharing a full-on framework, around purpose, my next iteration of my lead magnet for The Career Glow Up was a mini course again called Career By Design. Career By Design was essentially a taster of each massive phase or milestone moment of The Career Glow Up. So it was in four parts, one part covering mindset and the way that people need to upgrade their mindset and stop self-sabotaging when it comes to understanding what's possible for them in their career and defining.
And defining success on their terms. Another module was on the clarity side of things. So I think it was around career purpose again, but really deep diving into your strengths and what your natural strengths are. So you can understand how even just one element of you can inform the kind of work you should be doing.
The next module was around the branding piece. So giving them an indication and taste on how to design and craft their brand. And then the landing phase. Giving some interviewing and salary negotiation tips to get a taste of that as well. So instead of just being a little taster of the foundations or the intro to the kind of whole process, this gave them a taster of every single part of the process from A to Z.
So they can understand how, from mindset to clarity, to branding, to landing, they need all of these parts to make a life-changing career move, but, in a mini course, I can only give them a little taste of each part. And I told them that. So in the end, when I say essentially while I hope that you have had some wins.
So for example, discovering your natural strengths landing your brand statement, and drafting your answer to tell me about yourself or whatever it is, there is so much more where this came from. What we've been able to cover in this process in this mini course is 1 percent of what we could cover in a coaching program because you've got far more materials.
But also, the personalization, the customization, the conversation around making this work for you. So the risk here is that, obviously they might find it a little light, they might find it a little watered down. Because you can never get the immensity of these four massive phases. across in such a mini course, but at the same time, they understand the big picture, the A to Z, and they realise that they want the A to Z, they want it all.
Another type of lead magnet I've seen done was for a life coaching program where they walked you through a workbook, a sort of step-by-step program where You would audit your life and they gave you the wheel of life, which is essentially the different aspects of life, career, finance, love, family, whatever it is.
And you have to audit yourself. Where am I today? And where do I want to be? But the catch is when you get to decide where you want to be, you've only got a limited amount of points, a limited allocation to spend, and so it forces you to prioritize, and then they walk you through, different prompts, different journal prompts, different questions and activities to help you understand.
What your core priorities are for the next phase of life and what do you want to be working on to improve your life? And they give you lots of cool ideas for baby steps you can take and actions you can already take today to start becoming that next version of yourself. And something like this works well.
because it helps them to create a gap in their mind between I understand where I am today, I understand where I might want to go, and I've got an idea of some kind of actions I can start taking. But again, what is missing is someone challenging them on their thinking, on their current frame of reference, them sticking to it, the accountability side of things, and wondering, how am I going to become that person?
How am I going to get there in the fastest time possible? So it's great because it gives them the impression that they've already started taking action in the right direction, but again, I raise that awareness that there is so much further to go in your program and that it's there for the taking.
So hopefully you can see the balance here in all of them, that they're super valuable, they give them quick wins, they give them a taste of what it might feel like to be doing work on themselves in this area of their life, but at the same time, this will never reflect the coaching, the accountability, the community, the support, the materials.
The thoroughness that they would get inside an actual paid program. And then to make sure that your lead magnet is working for you, typically what you'd do at the end of this mini-course, for example, you would pitch your full-length offer at the end. Again, letting them know what the difference is between what they've just been through and what the full program would entail.
And. Essentially, that's how you develop a juicy lead magnet that's working for you and working for them. Again, even if they don't sign up for your program, that's fine. We want to give these people value. We want them to have enjoyed the process. We want to see them win. You want to see them winning.
This is your purpose. But at least they know now. What you do, what's possible for them. Either they can apply at the end of this mini-course and hop on a call with you or voice note you or message you or whatever it is and become a client of yours, or they're just a really happy member of your community.
Who's recommending you to their friends and is following along? And Hey, maybe when it's their time. And when the stars align, they will become a client of yours as well.
[00:36:56] Wrapping Up: Your Path to a Purpose-Fueled Empire
So as always badass, I'd love to hear from you. If you have lead magnet ideas that you are currently weighing up, if you already have a lead magnet, I would love to learn about it.
I'd love to hear how it goes for you. And if you have any questions about this episode, send me a DM on Instagram and we can have a chat. But otherwise, until next time, keep showing up for your purpose. Keep showing up for your ideal client. Go build those audiences that are well aligned.
Give so much value. Be so generous. And watch it come back to you in your successful purpose-fueled empire of your very own. so until next time, stay badass, reign on, and we will talk very soon.
