A lead magnet has two goals.

The first one is to attract people to become leads and secondly, to position them to be customers. If your lead magnet is not fulfilling these two goals, then it actually sucks.

The question is; How do you know that your lead magnet sucks?

There are three indicators that show that your lead magnet sucks. They are:

– You’re not attracting any email subscribers.

– The contacts that you are collecting are not opening your email and downloading your “freebie” or “free gift.”

– No one is excited about receiving your lead magnet.

Let’s look into it more deeply.

You’re not attracting any email subscribers

The thing is less than 5% of your visitors will convert into a customer on their first visit. If you don’t attract the other 95% quickly and find ways to engage them, you can lose them forever.

The right lead magnet will help to quickly convert your visitors to leads. Not ordinary leads but high-quality leads.

Once your lead magnet is not attracting email subscribers, there is a problem.  This can be due to three things:

Your lead magnet’s topic is not specific enough

For lead magnets to work, it must solve a specific problem with a specific solution for a specific segment of your market.  You cannot just create a generic lead magnet for all your website visitors.

Imagine a visitor reading a blog article on “How to lose weight using 5 diets” and a pop up comes up with the title “10 reasons you should lose weight.”  The title is not specific enough.  They already know that they need to lose weight, the “how” is what they need. What if you use a title such as “5 diet plans to help you lose weight in 10 days.” It is more specific to the topic of the blog post, and it has a high tendency of readers subscribing to get it.

Your content is boring

One thing that appalls readers is boring content.  If your lead magnet sounds boring, no one will want to read it. For example, long or large e-book does not seem to cut it.  If you tell them that your e-book is 300 pages long, no one has the time for that. But if your e-book is concise or you use list based or quick tips topics, chances are, they will want to read it.

How to fix it

Be specific.

If you want your lead magnet to generate results, be specific.  This boils down to your target audience. Know the type of people that visit your website and what they need.  Digitalmarketer.com created a lead magnet that lead to 35,869 leads emails in 60 days. What did they do differently?

1. The lead magnet (template) is in list format “7 proven Facebook ad campaigns.”  It is not “101 proven Facebook ad campaigns.” The title is specific and the lead magnet is concise.

2. The topic specifically addresses Facebook ad

3. They created a section on “what you will learn”. This gives readers a sneak view of the benefits of downloading the templates.

4. The action button is conspicuously displayed on the page.

The rule of thumb in creating a lead magnet that fulfills specificity is that it must offer value within the first five minutes of the opt-in. You can’t expect a course delivered over 14 days or a 300 page e-book to work as a magnet. They are daunting and takes time to consume.

Invoke urgency

When you have a specific lead magnet, then add urgency to it. Urgency creates an instant response or action. It gives your audience no time for consideration to come back and subscribe. It should tell them why they need it and why they should get it now. This will greatly increase your conversion rate.

For example, check out Autogrow’s lead magnet below:

The action button uses urgency to compel website visitors to subscribe. i.e. “Yes, send it to me now.”

The contacts that you are collecting are not opening your email and downloading your “freebie” or “free gift”

It can be painful to spend time, energy and resources to create a lead magnet and an email campaign, only to discover that your subscribers do not open nor download your lead magnet therein.

What is the problem? Why are they not opening your email?  This can be due to two things:

You sent the email at the wrong time.

The thing is, sending emails at the wrong time can affect your open rate. If a visitor subscribes to your email list in order to download your free resource and you did not send it immediately, they may forget and not open it when it eventually comes.

Your subject line is unattractive

A study carried out by Convince and Convert reported that 35% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone. This implies that using a boring subject line can have a negative impact on your open rate.

How to fix it

Send your emails at the right time. Usually, the first email a subscriber receives should be sent immediately after they subscribe to your email list.  The truth is, there are instances where you subscribe to get a free download, and the email does not arrive until 2 days later.

Your email subject line should be short i.e. not more than 50 characters.  It should specify the aim you want to achieve and grab the attention of your subscribers.

As an example the following one is the Leadsbridge’s most downloaded lead magnet: The black of lead generation

No one is excited about receiving your lead magnet

The truth is, if your offer is not attractive, it cannot be exciting.  If it is not exciting, no one will look forward to receiving it. This is often associated with three things: boring lead magnet title, lack of promise of what they will get by downloading the free magnet, and not solving your audience problem with the lead magnet.

All these can lead to your website visitors ignoring your lead magnet.  The question is, how do you get your visitors excited about your lead magnet without actually showing them what is inside?

How to fix it

The lead magnet’s title/topic is very important. A research by copyblogger revealed that about 8 out of 10 people will read a headline or in this case, your lead magnet headline, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is where creating a clear, specific and actionable title for your lead magnet comes in.

Another research by Kissmetrics revealed that the first and last three words of the title grabs readers attention, for instance, check out the headline below:

So, concentrate on the first three words and the last two if you want to focus the attention of your audience on your lead magnet.

Make a promise

Your lead magnet title should make a promise. Make a bold promise that your e-book, checklist or content upgrade will deliver.

Address your reader’s problem

One way to get your visitors attention is to let them know that you know about their problem and you want to help them to solve it. Address their problem in the headline.  For example: check out the headline below:

Conclusion

Above are the three indicators that show your lead magnet sucks. If your lead magnet is not delivering leads as expected, it means that you are not attracting email subscribers, your leads are not opening your email and they are not excited about receiving your lead magnets. You can fix these problems by using specificity, urgency, sending your emails at the right time, using an attractive title, addressing your audience problems, etc.

Have you created a lead magnet that sucks before? How did you fix it?  Share with us in the comment section below.

About the Author: Growth Hacker at LeadsBridge a suite of lead generation tools integrated with over 300+ platforms. Eager digital marketer, nurtured by news and strategies of this world, helping people and businesses to build and reinvent their online presence.