KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Social media marketing is an incredibly effective means of remaining constantly in touch with your audience.
• You need a means of staying in touch with your social media audience should social media disappear tomorrow.
• Lead magnets are an effective means of gathering more data about your audience, allowing you to remain in contact with that audience outside of social platforms.
• Landing pages are the best tool to use when distributing your lead magnets

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

All your social media efforts occur on borrowed ground. You do not own the social media platforms you advertise on. You need to be prepared to remain engaged with your social media followers through other means. One of the best ways to do this is to offer lead magnets on your social profiles, which allow your followers to gain something of value in exchange for giving you their email addresses.

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS

• The one question you need to ask yourself about your social media marketing efforts – 00:51
• What a lead magnet is – 02:45
• 9 types of easy-to-create lead magnets – 03:06
• The 7 things that will make your lead magnet enticing and engaging – 04:13
• Amy Porterfield’s best tip for creating amazing lead magnets – 05:23
• Why it’s okay to not worry about “giving away your expertise” via lead magnets – 05:50
• Learn how landing pages can improve conversions for your lead magnets, especially by using the great tool known as LeadPages – 06:47
• The new marketing opportunities you gain by building your email list – 08:16

Transcript below

Hello, and welcome to the second episode of Social Media Marketing Made Simple Podcast, and I'm your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. Thank you so much for joining me for what is just my second episode on my podcast, and today, I'm really excited to share with you, some new techniques and tips that I've been learning, through a course that I've just completed with Leadpages. I am now certified as a conversion marketing expert with Leadpages, so I wanted to share some of their thoughts, and some of the things I learned with you today.

The one question you need to ask yourself about your social media marketing efforts

Before I get started, though, I wanted to ask you a question. What would you do if social media stopped tomorrow? I'll just let you think about that for a minute, because that's a big question to ask. If there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no LinkedIn, what would you do, and what would happen to your business?

I've spent the last three years solidly working on Twitter, as one of my platforms that I market through, and I'm lucky now that I have over 10,000 followers, which is great. Really pleased about that. However, what if tomorrow, I broke one of their terms and conditions, and they shut my account, or if Twitter just decided, "I don't want to do this anymore," and therefore they decided to close Twitter down, what would happen to those 10,000 people that were following me, and how would I get access to them?

Please don't get me wrong, social media is still super important, and is a great tool for getting your company out to people that perhaps don't know you, using things like Facebook advertising, talking to people on Twitter, making connections through LinkedIn can be a fantastic way of telling people that you exist, and marketing your business.

However, you are marketing on borrowed ground. This ground does not belong to you. Facebook make up their rules, LinkedIn make up their rules, and as algorithms change, and as rules around advertising changes, you might have to think of ways of getting those connections that you make off those platforms, and into your own email database, so that you can market to them directly.

What a lead magnet is

So, on a very simple term, you are trying to get their email address from them, but you've got to give them a good reason, in order for them to hand it over. That reason is going to be something called a lead magnet.

Now, what a lead magnet is, is something that you're giving away, that is of value, and when I say of value, I don't necessarily mean something physical in all cases. It can be some information, but you're giving it away for free, in order to attract people to your business, and with the ultimate goal of handing over their email address.

9 types of easy-to-create lead magnets

So, what can a lead magnet be? Well, it can be loads of different things. It could be something like a how-to guide, a worksheet, a handout, some template, an ebook. It could be a discount off a product. It might be something like an email mini-course, or if you're a consultant of some sort, it might be a free Skype call, or a free coaching session. It can be any one of these things. It just has to be of value to the person that you're offering it to.

Because the idea behind it is that if someone will go to the effort of giving you their email address, for some information, they're obviously interested in your product, or what you sell, or your service.

Also, to help you out, I've put together a list of different ideas, of lead magnets that you can do, so if you want this list, then please head back to the page on the podcast, and download that list there.

Okay, so you've decided that you're going to do a lead magnet of some sort. You've decided it might be a handout, or a worksheet, or whatever it is, but now you've got to put that content together, and I have got seven tips in which will help you ensure that your content is the best type of content that you can provide, and that you're going to get people downloading it, and giving you their email addresses.

The 7 things that will make your lead magnet enticing and engaging

Tip one, solve a problem. Your content has to solve a problem that your customer or prospective customer might have, so what is it that they have problems with, that your service, or your product helps them to solve? So focus on it from a you're trying to help them, and you're trying to solve a problem from them, so make sure that your content solves some kind of problem for them.

Tip two, you need to be specific. If you want someone to download something, you're going to have to be really clear what it is that you're providing them, to make sure they understand, and that they are compelled to download it.

Tip three, make sure it's easy to understand. If they don't understand what it is you're giving them, again, they're going to have difficulty handing over their email address, in order to get whatever it is that you're providing.

Amy Porterfield’s best tip for creating amazing lead magnets

Tip four is it needs to be too good to give away. Now, the theory behind this has actually come from Amy Porterfield, who has an amazing product. She does courses, and she really does provide a really good product, but her thoughts around this is that if someone is looking at some content of yours, and it is so good, they're going to think, "Wow, if this is what she give away for free, what on Earth would I get if I actually signed up to something, or took her service?"

Why it’s okay to not worry about “giving away your expertise” via lead magnets

I know that when I've spoken to clients about this in the past, they always get really nervous about giving away their best information, potentially that a competitor might see it, or that it's just sort of giving away their sort of Crown Jewels, or their secrets, or whatever it is, but please do not be concerned about it, because actually, what you find is that as you give away this information, as you help people, and support them to, in my case improve their businesses, or better market their businesses, they're going to become to trust you, and like you more, so if they do need your service, they will come back to you.

Tip number five, it needs to be immediate, so this is where landing pages, and Leadpages, who I talked about earlier, come in, because what Leadpages do is they enable you to create this process, so once I have my content, I can upload it to Leadpages, and I can create a landing page.

Learn how landing pages can improve conversions for your lead magnets, especially by using the great tool known as LeadPages

Now, landing pages are really important, because when you advertise, say a lead magnet on something like Facebook, you will want them to click through to somewhere, in order to get it, but if you just sent them to your website, they might get distracted. They might start looking at something else, and they might forget to actually download the thing they came over to your site to do.

So that's where landing pages come in really, really handy, and have been proven to convert things better. So, you would create a landing page that effectively just talks about the content that you're giving away. The other thing that lead pages can do is that they can make it immediate, so once someone's completed a form on your landing page, there is a way in which Leadpages can send that information to them straight away, so they're not having to wait at all, in order to get the thing that they've been enticed to download.

Tip number six is it needs to prove that you are an expert. No good giving away content that people might want, but actually doesn't prove you know what you're talking about in your sector, so make sure that whatever it is you're giving away proves that you know what you're talking about.

And tip number seven, make sure that it's easy to access, so don't have any long forms, with lots of information required, or anything like that. This needs to be as simple and as quick a process as possible, in order to engage as many people, and convert as many people as possible.

The new marketing opportunities you gain by building your email list

So, if you do this properly, you will start filling your funnel with people who are interested in you, and interested in the services that you provide. It's a great way of building your database. And of course, just because you've got them on your email list, does not mean that you need to stop interacting with them on social. Please continue there, and also you can now do really smart stuff, like you could use your email database, to create a custom audience in Facebook, and advertise back to them, because these are your strongest leads.

So, today was just a bit of an introduction about what lead magnets are, so I would urge you to go and have a look at Leadpages. Also, head back to my page, where the podcast is, and download that list of different ideas of potential lead magnets that you can use for your business.

Then, over the next few weeks, we will obviously be discussing lots of different areas of social media marketing, but also, areas around creating your database in order to market to them, through things like lead magnets. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.