Create a WINNING Lead Magnet for your B2B SaaS | B2b Marketing Lead Generation

okay so we're back with another video this one we're going to be talking about lead magnets now as a B2B marketer or founder you're probably already aware that only three to 5% of the market are actively looking to buy a SAS product at any given time now because these buyers have such high intent they come at a premium all companies that are competing with each other are fighting for this small segment of the Market's attention driving up costs for everyone involved now lead magnets are great because they allow you to tap into the remainder of the market that isn't actively looking to buy right now attracting them getting them into your funnel and hopefully converting them on the back end without having to sacrifice your margins and that's exactly what I'm going to be talking about in this video how you can build these lead magnets that attract and convert your dream customers without throwing a bunch of money away now if you don't know who I am my name is Liam I'm the founder of digic seed we exclusively work with B2B SAS companies helping them generate more trials and qualify demos through high converting acquisition funnels and cro and it's 100% guaranteed if want to find out more about us if you want to work with us there'll be some links in the description so what we're going to be talking about in this video the role of lead magnets in B2B marketing the foundation of a banger lead magnet that's a lead magnet that performs well a creation of a banger lead magnet and mistakes to avoid when doing that and then finally most important part distribution how do you get these lead magnets in front of people so you can actually capture some intent so the role of lead magnets in B2B marketing now from my experience lead magnets are sort of seen as a a dirty thing in B2B marketing they're associated with sleazy marketing tactics you know people assume that they generate lowquality leads and it's an old way of marketing now of course these are all untrue if you do anything the incorrect way it's going to lead to um bad results you know the classic approach companies take when they think of lead magnets is just taking information from across the internet uh you know putting it into a document exporting it as a PDF and slapping their logo on it um you know a lead magnet does not need to be a PDF and so let's quickly talk about the law of shitty click-throughs which tells us over time all marketing tactics and strategies result in shitty click-through rates um very simple as the market starts to adopt these new tactics and strategies you know as they enter the mass market then of course performance drops because buyers become numb to um to the message that they see and how this is relatable to lead magnets is because over time people have stopped focusing on the fundamentals the principles of of why these lead magnets are used in the first place and theyve just sort of seen them as a you know checkbox exercise they've just started slapping random information together you know putting it in an advert and um then getting concerned when it doesn't get results and you know this is the sort of standard right now of of lead magnets in the market these are all B2B SAS companies you can take a look at their front-end ads uh where they're pushing traffic to these lead magnets and there's just no persuasion um not really tapping into any specific challenges or desires of their target personas the cop copyrighting is quite vague and weak um so of course they're not going to be generating results right you're not stopping people as they're scrolling through social media um there's just nothing captivating about these lead magnets and so really this is the the standard you you have to beat and I think personally this is a blessing in disguise um and I think it's comparable to how recent advancements in AI such as chat GPT have lowered the barrier uh of entry for many things such as outbound marketing content creation and all this means the Delta between average and great gets even further you know as more people adopt these tactics and strategies because now the barrier to entry is so low it just means there's going to be a lot of noise a lot of saturation and so great marketers who do understand the fundamentals and the principles are just going to get further ahead now what really matters when it comes to lead magnets is they target the right people and companies obviously the purpose of these lead magnets is to get people or cold traffic into your funnel so you can then convert them on the back end but you need to be targeting the right people there's no point in going after people who have no Authority or who aren't interested in your product or you can't serve they are directly linked to an identified desire or challenge of your target market so I've emphasized the word identified here because we don't want to make assumptions about what the market cares about we don't want to create a lead magnet because we saw a competitor create a similar lead magnet we actually want to go out there and speak to the market to identify what are those underlying you know desires and challenges and then we create a lead magnet that ties to one of those um and we'll talk through that in a second um and then finally your product is positioned as the faster proven and trusted path so again the whole purpose of these lead magnets is to get people into your funnel so they will eventually buy your product or service um and so you need to pre-frame that you need to set your set yourself up for Success now if your lead magnets are too pitchy then of course you're just going to um turn off potential buyers they're going to see through you know uh whatever you're doing however on the flip side if they have zero persuasion there's no sell in whatsoever then you're just going to get no conversions um and there's a there's a way to do this you know you don't have to be so direct response but there's some sort of tactics you can use to position your product um as the ideal solution now if you ever sort of question how valuable should these lead magnets be then really the goal is to give away so much value that you feel like you should be charging for the lead magnet that's really the The Benchmark you want to be going for um you don't want to be just doing these lead magnets as like a checkbox exercise just because everyone else is doing it and you heard they're cool um you know you want to actually do it in a way that positions you as an authorative figure and you know they they want to go um and learn more about your product or service now what doesn't matter so much when creating lead magnets is the format so they do not need to be a PDF um and I will talk through some examples in in just a minute the design they don't have to be you know um really slick and and nice some of the best performing lead magnets we've had um are just really really simple very uh massive focus on text rather than design so just focusing on value uh or how easy or hard they are to create just because you spend weeks creating a lead magnet um you know doesn't mean it's going to perform well it's just the way the universe works sometimes the scrappiest things ever um are what perform the best um so foundations of a banger lead magnet so I'm a I'm like really believe in this that the success of your marketing campaigns truly rests on the understanding you have of your Market um so you don't want to start making assumptions about what the market cares about you don't want to think oh I'm just going to create a lead magnet and put a PDF together you want to First identify what are those challenges what are those desires that my market has and only then do you create a lead magnet that links to those you don't start with creating the lead magnet you start with what are the what the problems I'm trying to solve so um a framework I created uh called desire discover so outlines the process of collecting these actionable insights from users and customers that you can then use to create unique persuasive angles so notice how we're speaking to the market first and only then we're creating the angles which we're going to use in our campaigns because otherwise if we haven't identified what the market cares about then how can how can we create captivating campaigns we're just going to sound like everyone else so um I could do maybe a 1 to two hour video on this framework um but we're just going to touch on it lightly here here so desire Discovery is broken into one toone research one to many research and Analysis and pattern recognition so one toone research as it says on the tin actually speaking to customers hopping on calls with them asking open-ended questions if they say something of Interest digging deeper you know going down that rabbit hole to understand what are those underlying behaviors and motivations you know we're not interested in ah I'm you know I want to save time it's like well why you know what happens if you don't like going down that path one to many research so let's say your company is more on the low touch side maybe a product Le growth model um so you can distribute surveys uh speak to customers at scale not as good as one one to one research but still good nonetheless um if it's one of your only options and then most importantly you know analyzing um or identifying and analyzing uh any patterns uh you know are people saying the same things um how do they speak about your product what are the challenges you know are they sort of connecting the dots together um because if you're seeing something more than once then it probably means it's a pattern and maybe you know there are other people feeling like that in the market and then as I said here so when you actually deeply understand what your Market cares about creating an offers creating ads creating emails uh with resonance becomes easy because you know what they care about and so it's as if you're just um you know talking directly to them and so some of the things you want to answer um when doing this going through this uh sort of research phase is who are the targeters you know if you're targeting larger companies hundreds thousands of employees who at those companies have a problem that your products solve you know even in a department let's say you're going after the marketing department well who within that marketing department does the CMO really care you know do they have too much on the plate or is it you know the head of Department sort of director level or um senior manager what are their specific desires so there's a couple of things to unpack here one is uh Persona based so CMO is going to have different desires and challenges to like ahead of marketing or like a ahead of demand generation but also going a layer deeper you know in the B2B space your product all products can be linked to saving time and money but this isn't enough you can't just say our our product saves you money it's just it's not a good enough claim nowadays because the market sophistication is so high and so you need to go a layer deeper um and so that's kind of what I've put in in this graph here is save time well what sort of kpis are you working towards you know what are the negative outcomes if that doesn't happen what are the associated tasks like where are you losing that time um what is the current vehicle they're using right now um that isn't working perhaps what have they tried and failed beforehand this is really good for coming up with unique angles and creating like a a common enemy um personal outcome so what are they getting out of it personally you know we all have our um selfish desires um so like what are they looking to get out of it is it promotion uh and then what's the business outcome of course from B2B so there's always going to be a business outcome the point being is save time isn't enough we always want to go uh layers and layers and layers and deeper the the the deeper we can go the more resonance our message is going to have and then some other things we want to answer is like where do they consume content so when it comes to Distributing our campaign are there certain channels we should go to because we know our Target Persona is hanging out there now I mean more specifically like uh places like Reddit and Twitter of course most of the world spends their time on on Facebook so we want to be a bit more Niche and then who do they consume their content from um what can be really powerful when it comes to lead magnets is uh collaborating with industry influencers who you can basically borrow the credibility of them assign it to your lead magnet uh and you're going to get a higher conversion rate just because of that now uh creating your uh lead magnet so one thing really important thing to remember is lead magnets are an offer right and an offer is something you give the market Market in return for time and or money and some types of offers uh video training webinars templates checklists product demos free trials paid subscriptions blogs communities now note how most of these aren't paid right an offer can be free or paid um there's a a massive misconception that offers have to be you know your paid subscription really it's anything you're packaging and you're giving to the market in return for something and so regardless if your offer is free or paid it needs to be a no-brainer there are so many templates webinars products checklists there are so many of these things these offers out there in the market why should they care about yours and so what makes an offer a no-brainer is when the perceived value greatly outweighs any Associated cost so when they when they're getting a bargain when they're getting more for what they're putting in that's what makes an offer a no-brainer now the ingredients of a no-brainer offer so it needs to solve a specific problem it can't be vague it needs to solve a very specific problem for a very specific group of people because that's how you're going to achieve resonance it needs to have high perceived value many ways you can do this I I'll do a separate video on this but you can sort of uh stack the value uh risk reversal so uh especially when it comes to sort of uh the paid offers uh people are giving you their money and so there uh there comes a risk with that um and so what can help increase the perceived value or the likelihood of them taking that offer is a bit of risk reversal uh and then quantifiable proof so many claims out there in the market people claiming they can change your life in 30 days um and so you need to back it up with proof it's easy to make claims it's not so easy to have actual you know quantifiable verified uh proof and so if you sprinkle all of these into your offer whether it's a lead Magnet or whether it's something else um you're just going to increase the chances of actually attracting and converting cold traffic and so we've got an example here on the left we've got download our customer Journey guide and then on the right we've got sort of something that's spiced up a bit so let's pack these uh unpack these so download our customer Journey gu this is quite literally something I see in the market of uh for companies um advertising their lead magnet you know we can see that it's a customer Journey guide but why is this important what problem does it solve and why should I care it doesn't really you know answer those questions whereas on the right instantly we've got social proof so 3,000 others um have you know taken this action so it must it must work it has some credibility you know um social proof is a very very powerful psychological trigger we typically Outsource um our judgment to others so if people are saying positive things about something then you know we kind of um just accept it for what it is uh we're being specific so B2B R uh retention marketers if I'm um responsible for churn um then typically I'm going to be on the retention side of the business so we're just increasing that likelihood of residents or somebody going oh that's me okay I'm going to pay attention to this whereas download our customer Journey guide well where you know within the funnel is this customer journey and so it could it could be targeting a broad range of of marketers um who have improved short-term churn so it's a very very specific uh problem retention is one thing churn is one thing short-term churn is a very specific area of churn typically associated with bad onboarding so we're being very very specific trying to achieve that resonance and then after applying the X on boarding framework um so this x can be whatever you want but we're just introducing a sort of unique mechanism here you know there are so many customer Journey guides out there in the market uh there's so many onboarding flows you know we need to sort of spice it up a bit um because the market is so sophisticated we need to sort of take it a step further to to capture people's attention so minimal viable offer so mvo um even after going through this research phase uh even after you know crafting this no-brainer offer um it's still very much possible that your lead Magnet or your entire Campaign Will flop uh you know it's just life I've I've had it happen um it's important to start lean and receive feedback from the market as soon as possible now if you're more on the product side let's say you're a Founder then you're probably very familiar with this concept right you don't just build uh a great product and launch it to the market you sort of start lean uh launch your MVP get feedback and then you iterate and sort of over time build a great product and it's no different um to marketing so we've got this of loop going on here so launch your mvo get feedback from the market and iterate and so over time Brick by Brick you're building this um you know predictable funnel and and this is you know applicable to everything not just uh lead magnets so we need to think how can we launches so it gives value and we receive um feedback from the market as possible so you don't want to just be launching something crap to the market because it's not going to uh deliver value and so therefore it's not going to resonate you're not going to get any leads um and so so there needs to a balance to be strike where uh it's giving value to the market uh it's also persuasive it's positioning your product as the sort of the superior option um but you're not spending weeks or months uh putting it together and and sort of going for Perfection because as it says here growth L speed so just some examples of you know things I've seen when people uh have created lead magnets so Perfection here on the left and then speed right so Perfection is like if you want everything to be perfect and speed is like okay this is just good enough to to get it out and get feedback so a custom built web page um you know you could just put it in a Google doc could just put it in notion or gamma like I'm using here uh it doesn't have to involve code uh high resolution Graphics you know if you want to go really premium um you don't need that you know this uh little diagram here took me 30 seconds to create um or you just have no Graphics whatsoever um if you're talking about complex topics always helpful to you know visualize them uh comprehensive not flows with intent triggers so intent triggers you know based on certain events that happen within your funnel like triggering emails um you don't need those just use like a Time based email flow or you know maybe you don't even have to have an email nurture flow at all uh add copyrighting and creatives so you know once you create the lead magnet that's one thing you then need to actually launch it and distribute it um and if you're launching to cold traffic um you know you're going to be advertising but if you have an existing audience traffic you own then launch to them launch to organic traffic launch on your LinkedIn profile your Twitter profile uh and get feedback that way so you don't have to go and create you know nicely designed ads and do go through the copyrighting process and all that okay so when creating a lead magnet we also need to consider the lead intent because lead magnets are inherently used to attract colder traffic so these come with lower purchase intent um and can result in low quality leads just because somebody downloads a piece of content you know they opt in for your lead magnet does not mean they want to buy your product and so you need to think about the type of content you're using as part of your lead magnet will that just attract you know window Shoppers or will it attract people with some kind of purchase intent um and let me give you an example so let's say I'm a legal Tech uh I'm a marketer at a legal Tech SAS company templates would not be a good lead magnet to use because they're far too simple and they are used infrequently you know if I download an NDA template a non-disclosure agreement template it does not mean I want to buy a product nor does it mean I'm qualified to buy a product you know let's say this legal Texas company starts at 30k a year just because I download a template does not mean I'm qualified you know I could just be a freelancer u a very very small business um so probably not a good idea to use templates as lead magnets now on the other hand if we had a sort of scoring based system that measures the effectiveness of contract processes that could attract buyers with higher intent so something where you opt In You complete some information you check a few boxes you know are you doing this are you doing that and it sort of measures the maturity of your contract management processes now if you're opting in for that you're probably a buyer who is already problem aware you've identified that your contract management processes could do with some improvements hence you looking for uh looking for or opting in for this health check and then you probably also have a higher likelihood of qualifying for our product because if you're um if you have contract management processes in the first place that probably means you know you're handling a high volume of contracts you've probably got a bigger company um and so the likelihood of you qualifying for a product is far greater than somebody just downloading you know a template um and so this is really really important um something you need to think deeply about is the type of content you use what type of person is that going to attract um and typ Bally you know you can there's definitely extremes of this but if you just add a bit more friction into the that sort of process uh if people are willing to go through that then they're probably more qualified uh they probably have higher intent rather than something that is completely frictionless like downloading a template you know it's ungated um you're going to result you're going to get loads of leads um you know it's going to look great top of funnel but none of them are really going to convert and so some mistakes to avoid um where when creating your your lead magnet so high volume of leads does not equal good um so I kind of touched on this already you need to think about the intent of the traffic you're attracting you know um your cost per lead might be amazing but how many of them are turning into um customers you know you need to look at your bottom of funnel metrics you know what's your cost per demo cost per opportunity cost per qualified opportunity um you need to be focusing on them rather than sort of cost per lead click through that kind of stuff Don't Go Solution first um so you shouldn't just be like all right guys we're going to launch a lead magnet everyone else is doing it first speak to the market you know desire Discovery identify what problems they're having um what destination they're trying to reach and then try to come up with a piece of content or a lead magnet that fits into that picture um you're going to have far more success and then lack of distribution you know you can spend days weeks months crafting the best lead magnet in the world but if you're not getting attention if you're not getting eyeballs on lead magnet then um it's not going to work so talking about distribution most important part so you know 20% of your time should be going on creation 80% should be going on uh distribution um so there's three types of traffic when it comes to distribution so you've got traffic you own which is of course the best kind this is like existing customers uh maybe you have an email list that you've been uh building over time or you have like a following on uh your socials this is the best type of traffic uh traffic you control uh so this is typically received from advertising platforms that you leverage so you pay them a fee um and you can send that traffic to wherever you want and control it so you can send it to a dedicated landing page where you know um your sales argument is and then you can control that traffic traffic you don't control is just you know appears organically comes out of nowhere um you know really you want to try turn traffic you don't control into traffic you can control and you own the the goal is always to to own your traffic um now prospecting into cold audiences at scale is best achieved through advertising right um because inherently if it's cold traffic then you're not going to own it because they don't know who you are and so the best way to get in front of um those cold audiences is through uh advertising so we're going to focus more so on that now you need to consider the traffic temperature um buyers are at different stages in the buyer Journey they operate with different levels of awareness and so you're messaging must be tailored accordingly to achieve residence right so different types of um traffic temperatures so cold traffic don't know who you are they don't know what your product does uh they might not even know there is a problem to be solved right so obviously uh products solve problems they don't know who you are but they probably don't even know a problem does exist in their life that needs to be solved right so very very unaware uh warm traffic they already know who you are and then hot traffic very aware of who you are um you know low hanging fruit these guys um you know really you just need to get them push them across the line um as I said earlier lead magnets are inherently used to attract cold traffic their their sole purpose is to you know take people who are out of market to in Market um and this means you'll be communicating to strangers who likely have low or zero awareness of your company and so highly don't recommend that you just pitch your product features and talk about how great your company is your reviews all this kind of stuff because they don't care and they don't who you are and so it's just not going to resonate you're just going to sound like every other company pitching them um and so they're just going to you know continue swiping instead what you need to do is you need to focus on positioning your offer as a no-brainer and planting a seed in their mind you need to have thought-provoking copyrighting this is why copyrighting is so important you need to get them to to think um you know damn okay that is something uh I'm struggling with right now rather than hey buy our product it's more so hey you're struggling with this problem or here's something that can help you solve this really really big problem you're having right now you need to be leaning more towards outside planting that seed that gets them to start looking into these Solutions um you know reading more of your content sort of capturing them in your funnel um and you know let your sales argument do the talking uh and then so here the five stages of awareness I'm not going to go into them right now Eugene Schwarz um sort of every single buyer has to go through these stages of awareness um so from unaware um they aren't aware of any sort of problems that exist in their life all the way to most aware they know your product well they know a problem exists they know Solutions out there that solve that problem and then know your product is one of those Solutions um so sort of five stages of awareness either ends of the the scale and so you always need to think about the message that you're delivering to the market what stage of awareness are these um buyers and this is really important because depending on their awareness depending on that traffic temperature if they're cold if warm you'll speak to them in a different language of course if somebody already knows who your product what your product is who your company is um the features Etc you're going to speak to them in a far different language to somebody who doesn't even know your category uh exists um and so you need to also go for channel message fit um so marketing channels can be a really good indicator of traffic temperature and awareness right so classic example if you're advertising on Google then the primary way of capturing demand or intent is by targeting key keywords right so if somebody's searching actually let's go back to the the example we use the legal Texas if somebody's searching your contract management software where they clearly have high intent they are looking for Solutions um and so they're going to be sort of on the warmer scale uh they're going to have higher awareness right because they clearly know a problem exists and they're looking for a solution right so they have more awareness and they're warmer traffic um lead magnets won't be as effective here because this buyer is already in Market that already looking for um a product and so instead of saying hey download this piece of content you should just be pushing for the sale you should just be hey hop on a demo with us or you know start your free trial um but to attract colder audiences you know obviously Google is more of a warmer Channel call it a pull Channel because it's pulling intent in um to attract colder audiences you want to leverage push channels such as LinkedIn or meta so Google is a pool Channel pulling in that intent LinkedIn and meta is pushing your prospecting into cold audiences now LinkedIn is a B2B platform um so sales is implied that's why you know you're getting DMD every day on on the platform but in contrast nobody opens up Instagram or Facebook you know to um to buy a SAS product right and so inherently the traffic on there is colder B2B you know businesses sell to each other it's implied that something's going to be sold it's implied that people are going to be talking about their product and stuff like that Instagram you know pictures of people on the beach and stuff like that you don't expect to buy a software product and so again if you're advertising on met or LinkedIn your message needs to to match the channel that you're on um so quick table here um so LinkedIn uh great n native targeting so I can quite literally say I want to Target um you know head of demand generation at SAS companies of over 10 employees um whereas on meta you can't really do that um on LinkedIn it's very common to have your job title and you know what you're doing um and so that's those are the the data the data properties you can Target whereas on meta most people don't put their job roles on there um and so the native targeting isn't great it's more sort of interest and demographic based however this can be augmented with custom data lists which we've done previously and I've I've worked really really well um so just something to consider there if you want to have really sort of detailed targeting um probably go to more more towards LinkedIn as long as your customer lifetime value makes sense um and you know it's profitable overall whereas with meta uh you know it's the best advertising platform you're going to get in front of more people but your uh lead quality might suffer a bit um and so as it says here LinkedIn implied higher purchase intent because it's a B2B platform whereas meta low purchase intent you know people are looking at their friend stories and then uh you know an advert of a software product is going to pop up you have to really work hard to to um have a captivating uh advert there so that's pretty much it I'm not sure how long this one has gone on for but hopefully you found some value in that um if you have any questions if you'd like to learn more about any of this you know I could go on for hours and hours about this then let me know I'm happy to dive into more detail if you did find Value then please like leave a comment a like And subscribe and if you'd like to work with us um just click the link in the description and book a call with me all the best