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Foreign. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 279 of the Kate Show. This is Kate, and I am going to talk today about your lead magnet. Common question that I get from people who are thinking about working with us or they just started working with us is how do I know my lead magnet is working? Because a lot of people have a lot of lead magnets. Some of them end up competing and cannibalizing the other. Some of them just don't have good offers. And some of them are really solid lead magnets, but they are buried on the website of the business or they're just not being promoted in the right ways or in the right places. And people will end up trashing the lead magnet, thinking the topic or the format or the layout was the problem, when really it was just about positioning and exposure. So today I'm going to talk all about the top signs to look at. If you're trying to figure out, is my lead magnet working? Should I change the format? Is the topic right? Let's get into it. All right, so let's start with the signs that your lead magnet isn't successful or won't be successful. So number one, if you've had a lead magnet up for a while and you've gotten less than a dozen signups or over a calendar year, then chances are high there's something wrong happening. Now, like I said, it could be the topic of the lead magnet. Maybe it's just not relevant to your ideal client. It could just be that you're putting it somewhere on the site where it's not readily seen or it's easy to ignore. There are so many different things that could be going on here, but let's kind of progress through these and I'll break them apart. Um, a second thing is, you know, you don't do anything to promote your lead magnet, so you're not blogging at least once a month. You're not using your lead magnet as the call to action for every blog post. You aren't doing printed copies of your lead magnet and giving them to potential referral partners or potential ideal clients that you are meeting with in person. Um, you don't have an automated welcome email for your lead magnet. So people sign up and then nothing happens. You might be surprised how many times I run into that, like, oh, wait a minute, this is only halfway set up. Or they are sent the welcome email, but then there's no ongoing email marketing after that, or people will just rely on a really long automated email sequence instead of real time newsletters. Every month. Or they do a combination of the automated really long sequence plus real time email newsletters and as a result end up bombarding their recipients with which results in unsubscribes or really just lackluster open rates and in the end, ineffective marketing. Like I said earlier, another reason your lead magnet may not be successful is because it's hard to find on your website. So maybe it's not visible unless the user scrolls down or goes to a different page other than your homepage. Or maybe your lead magnet is a pop up right now which most people will just close without ever really looking at. Pop ups are terrible for conversion and I do not recommend them. Your lead magnet should be shown at the very top of your site, like very top of the screen. And it should show up no matter which page people land on. Now, if you don't have that capability on your site, I'm not sure why you wouldn't have that capability. But if for some weird reason you don't, at least make sure it's at the very, very top of your homepage. All right, so the next thing that happens is having too many lead magnets that indicate an unfocused or a vague specialty. I see this happen a lot. When interior designers offer design services and staging services, they create lead magnets for both and then they're like, well, I don't know where to put both of these now. Or they have a lead magnet for their peers and a lead magnet for their clients and they're like, I don't know, I guess one will go on the services page and one will go on the home page. Um, like I said, the problem with that is if your lead magnet's not on the homepage, it's probably not going to be effective. People aren't going to see it, they're not going to sign up for it. So pick one lead magnet, just one. And if you've got multiple audiences you're trying to target, pick one. You should have one primary ideal client so that you don't run into the issue of trying to market to too many different demographics at the same time. That will confuse you and it will confuse them. And it will also prevent you from ever having some sort of specialty that you can become known for because really you're trying to be too general. Another issue that people have with their lead magnets is it's DIY focused or quiz based. Quiz based things naturally attract a DIY market anyway. So I would stay away from quizzes even though I love platforms like try interacting with I think they're really cool. If you are focusing on the DIY market, go that route for sure. But if you're looking for high end residential projects as an organizer, designer, stager or window treatment professional, don't go the easy route of the quiz or the DIY focused topics. Now an example of a DIY focused a lead magnet that teaches your client how to do something without you. Okay, so how to pick a color palette, how to figure out your design style. All those little how to's might seem very trendy and cute on Instagram and Pinterest, but they attract the D.I.Y. er, they repel the full service client and in the end they do not get you where you want to go in your marketing. The other thing that might be happening is your lead magnet is not addressing your ideal clients page pain points. Or it's not explaining the benefits of your services or it's not showcasing your work. Or maybe it's something as simple as it doesn't include images of you or it doesn't end with a strong call to action that tells people what to do once they have looked through your lead magnet. Okay, so there's a lot of ways to improve an existing lead magnet, but most often I find the issue is that the topic is DIY unintentionally and the placement is incorrect. Fix those two things and you're going to see a difference. Now here are some good lead magnet formats to consider. You could do a video. I know a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to do a video. That's scary. That, that's nerve wracking. Honestly guys, pick out your phone, hold it up and start talking. Talk for two minutes. That's your lead magnet. Or you could do what I'm doing. Grab a really great webcam and you don't even need a microphone. A lot of webcams have built in microphones and just sit in front of your computer and chat. Tell people about your pricing and your services and your specialty. Or if you're like, no, I really, really don't want to do video, then you could do a PDF. Now that could be a digital PDF that is delivered via an email automation. That's typically what our clients end up doing with us. Or they will also do a printed version of that PDF and give it to select referral partners or potential clients in person. And that's the cool thing about the lead magnets that we offer. They can be used digitally or in print format. Okay, so if you're going to go The PDF route, digital or print, it should be at least three pages long. And here are the order of the pages. Now, I'm going to list off more than three pages. You can pick what you will. There should be a magazine style cover, very aesthetic, very pretty. Then the next page should be about you, meet the owner, and then about our clients, and then about our services and pricing, and then a featured project. And finally, a call to action on the contact page that tells the reader what to do next. Okay, there are a lot of great lead magnets out there that don't include a photo of the owner person who's actually going to be doing the work, and they don't have a call to action. And that makes these lead magnets completely useless when they could have been great. A lot of people are so close to having good lead magnets. Okay. Some effective lead magnet topics include an investment guide, which explains your process, your services, your pricing, a client guide, which is a deeper look into your process. More granular than an investment guide. You can go deep into how do you handle back orders, what if the dye lots change on the fabric that you're using to create their drapery or their upholstery or whatever. Or you could do a general guide like busting myths about your industry, sharing photos of your work, and sharing a brief overview of your services. Now, all of that can be made into a video as well. But generally, I know people like the PDF route. It's more comfortable for most people. And we have lead magnet templates available in the vault. So if you go to socialitevault.com, you can check out everything we have there. But we use canva largely for lead magnets because we can do a print PDF from there, digital PDF. We can collaborate with our clients on their lead magnets. We can combine an investment guide and a client guide into a very nice, robust document. But we don't want to get too robust, because if you have a 20 page lead magnet, who honestly has time to look through all that? Nobody. So try to keep your lead magnet, like three to 10 pages long. If it gets longer than that, chances are you're including things that really aren't necessary. All right, so that's the long and short of Is your lead magnet working? Here's why it might not be. And here are some good topics and formats for you to consider. All right, so now let's talk about what you should do once your lead magnet is created. What are the next steps? Okay, well, you need to first set up a welcome email Automation. I prefer to use mailchimp or Flodesk for this. It's super easy in either platform. And you'll need to have a welcome email that is branded to your business and looks very professional. And, and there should be a button in there that you can link the PDF to. Now, this is something that we do for our clients because it can get a little bit techy. Some people just don't want to even bother messing with stuff like that. And I totally understand. But I'm going to tell you guys, for those of you who might want to try to tackle it yourself. So in flodesk or mailchimp, you create an email template. You make sure that it looks good, include a photo of yourself, a short bio, a little bit of about how you work with clients, and the headline of it should be something like welcome to you know your business name. And then there should be a button that lets people click and download your Lead Magnet. Now, this welcome email should automatically be sent right away to anyone who signs up for the Lead Magnet on your website. So now you have to go over to your website and install a signup form. So flodesk makes this really easy. You can embed different forms with them. But if you're looking for a more direct integration, mailchimp has a lot of direct integrations and personally I'm still using them. Actually, I use mailchimp and flodesk and we are pro partners with both platforms, so I can't really even recommend one over the other at this point. They're both great. They are better than what I have found with ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit, which tend to have way more features than you need and you end up paying too much for it. So I digress. Go to your website and connect the form. Make sure, like I said earlier, that people see this form at the top of your website, at the top of every page of your website, or at the very least, at the top of your homepage. And it should be a little headline bar and it should be text pitching the Lead Magnet. So if you go to socialite. Com, you'll see I did this for myself. Um, it's about creating a marketing content strategy. And you can go click that. Once you enter your email address, you can watch the video where I walk you through how to create your marketing plan. By the way, that might be a good thing for you guys to actually go do. And then once you sign up, you can access the video. Mine is in video format. But then you're also sent a welcome email that Tells you more about, you know, what you might need to know. And that is what you should be doing with your own lead magnet. But should you just let your lead magnet sit there? No, not necessarily. You should also be pitching it at the end of any blog posts that you're writing. Hopefully you're blogging at least once a month. And if you're not blogging, maybe you're making videos like I am or you're podcasting. This is also what I'm doing here. Obviously, you can pitch your lead magnet on your podcast or in your YouTube channel. Whatever you're doing, you can also pitch it on social media. However, usually social media fans are just fans because they like pretty things, and the home industry is full of pretty things. They might, they might sign up for your lead magnet, but really, historically, statistically, even anecdotally, they're not going to be the high end residential client that you're looking for. So don't feel like you have to post constantly on social media about your lead magnet. Now, you could pin it on Pinterest just like once or twice in a couple different formats, using different graphics or something, just for the SEO value of it. Really, it's not because people are going to find your lead magnet because of Pinterest. It's just the SEO value. Okay, so once you have all of that set up, what are some signs of success? Well, to be quite honest, we are not influencers. We are not looking for like thousands of signups a month for our lead magnets. That's not practical. We, and I include myself in your group. You know, high end interior design, staging, organizing window treatments. Um, you are not necessarily doing work on volume. You're doing bigger projects so that you, you don't have like tons of them a year. You might have five to 20 projects a year. Maybe organizers will do a little bit more than that. But still, it's relatively low volume. And that means your lead magnet signups naturally are not going to be very high. If you get like a dozen people who sign up for your lead magnet and stay subscribed in a year, in 12 months, that's considered successful. And that shocks a lot of people because they're like, oh, I was over here upset that I got 15 because I thought I needed like a hundred. No, you don't. So a lot of this is about changing your expectations to match the industry that you're working in. Um, now that we have that out of the way, we have to talk about, what are you going to do with the people who Sign up for your lead magnet. Do you just ghost them? No, of course not. You want to convert them to a paying client. So how do you do that? Well, that's where email marketing comes into play. I know I always find a way to bring it back to email marketing. I just don't know how I do that. With email marketing, you should be sending out a newsletter every two to four weeks. The people who signed up for your lead magnet as well as people who are already on your mailing list will get that newsletter. And it helps you stay top of mind with them so that then when we're, when they're ready for help, to remodel, to build new, to get organized, to help with staging, whatever it is they need. You're the person who comes to the forefront of their mind versus one of your colleagues who has not been investing in email marketing. Now email marketing is only increasing in popularity and in effectiveness and social media is really, really struggling in the service based sector because there's so much noise and you have to create so much content. And even then getting views and likes does not equate to getting clients. So with email marketing, you're looking for things like a good open rate, you're looking for consistency on your part, you're looking for people in your mailing list to start replying to your newsletter, even if just to say, oh wow, I really liked this, or good to hear from you, or you know, basic things like that. Because the job of email marketing is to nurture a relationship with people who might refer you to their friends and family, or people who've never hired you yet but probably will in the future if you do your job well, if you do a good job of showing up again and again. Now we have had clients who will send out one newsletter with us and they get a six figure project immediately. Okay, amazing. I wish that I could have that happen for everyone. But some people have to send two, one or two newsletters a month for almost a year before they get any bites. But then they do end up getting projects and they're very excited. And the good thing is email marketing is a very low cost and low effort, low time commitment way to market your business. It almost seems too good to be true. And that's why a lot of people will be like, oh, I think email was dead anyway because I don't even read all my own emails. But the truth is you do read your emails. I know that because that's how a lot of you connect with me. So you do read emails if they're worth reading. Your goal is to send out email marketing content that is worth opening. That is worth reading. Now, the average open rate for the home and garden industry has increased a bit. It's closer to 30%. But our clients are getting 50, 60, sometimes more percent in their open rates just because the content is exactly that. It's worth reading. It's short. The images are not oversized, best practices are followed, spam words are avoided. All the things that we have to be aware of when email marketing. So I hope this was helpful. Guys, your lead magnet is part of a broader marketing ecosystem and it's definitely bolstered by blogging. And if you're not doing email marketing but you have a lead magnet, like there's, there's no point to having the lead magnet because the lead magnet serves as an entry point to your email marketing. So get your email marketing going and be consistent with it. It pays off big time. All right, guys, that is what I have for you this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. And as always, keep your marketing simple, your message clear, and I will talk to you soon.