Turn your list building into a conversion machine and not a conversation machine.
Stop just collecting emails, and instead build a list of interested people to qualify in (or out) through your funnel. But first, you must build an asset and supporting funnel that aims to do a lot of the pre-sales work for you - so you can spend time on only the most valuable prosects. The Partner Elevate channel enablement software helps you do just that.
For any Partner organisation, winning new business can feel like a never-ending challenge.
Partners tell us daily that they’re wasting time on unqualified leads, that they’re relying on current customers for new opportunities, and as a result are getting distracted by the need to find new lead sources. What they’d rather is to spend time converting more qualified leads (not qualifying them from the first touch), and they want their sales generated from a mix of existing customers and new business.
Salespeople need the ability to spend time with their highest probability prospects, and this means there is an expectation that the marketing team hands over leads that are already qualified and ready to buy.
We know that this is much easier said than done. Creating a funnel that delivers steady lead generation is no easy feat – and requires a specific approach to how you structure and deliver content through each stage of your funnel.
So, what comes after you have designed your competitive offer, and started steady lead generation by knowing your ideal client and attracting interested people?
Why it’s important to build your list
Hand in hand with attracting interested people, is giving them a reason to enter your funnel with a lead magnet, then a list to put them in, and a process to manage them through to a sales qualified lead.
And, we want to do this without spending 1-on-1 time.
One of the biggest mistakes marketing and sales teams make is reaching out to talk with a lead when it’s simply too early. When a contact hands over their email in exchange for your lead magnet, they might still be in the research phase – or even a university student looking for resources to complete an assignment!
This just leads to frustration. You are engaging with a lead when we don’t know if they even have a problem you can solve. You are also spending time on pre-sales work when you could be spending time with more qualified leads, and you’re not sure how or what to prioritise.
Here are some of the biggest mistakes we see salespeople make when building their funnel:
1. Wasting time with qualification too early in the funnel
Many salespeople feel they’re gambling their time between pre-sale or prospecting, qualification and conversion. If we use the funnel to do the early-stage qualification for us, then salespeople can focus their time and energy on the warmer prospects – where they should be.
2. Going straight into selling mode
When sales reach out to contacts too early in the qualification stage, it’s likely they won’t know whether that contact even has a problem that you can solve for them. When you hit the ground running with your sales pitch, it could be way off. Having more context and insights comes with serving them the right content at the right time.
3. Not letting the contact qualify themselves (in, or out)
A well oiled and successful funnel will serve the content that allows contacts to either qualify themselves in or out. This means your salespeople don’t waste time with prospects that might have already realised that while your lead magnet was valuable, what you have to offer is not what they need. We should not fear unsubscribes – they ensure our list contains only the people we want to talk to (because they want to talk to us!)
Building your lead magnet
When we think about building a list, we need an asset that gives them a reason to engage with us. Of course, it must be compelling enough for them to provide their details.
For them to give up something, we must offer them something valuable in return. This is what we call a Lead Magnet. It could be an eBook, Whitepaper, Webinar, video, or something else that is gated behind a form on your website or even LinkedIn form.
For the Lead Magnet to be valuable enough to pique their interest and hand over details, it must have three key things;
1. Possibility
It must show the possibility of what you can offer – how your offer solves their problem and reduces the pains they have relating to their problem.
2. Actionable
It must be actionable to the point that the contact actually takes action and downloads or subscribes to the content. This means the content is valuable and they can action your insights.
3. Result
It must deliver a particular result for that person. They might be able to take what you’re telling them and action it in their business today and see impact. This is not something they can Google and find out.
Once you have made sure your lead magnet has possibility, is actionable and shows the result, it’s time to work through the structure.
Lead Magnet Checklist
To help you get started building out your lead magnet, we have put together a checklist.
Offer Headline
Of course, you need an attention-grabbing headline. The best way to get the attention of your core customer is to tug at their heart strings. Uncover what they’re frustrated, concerned or worried about and work that into your heading.
For example;
Instead of “Cyber Security Risk Assessment”, try “Build your Cyber Security Maturity”
Instead of “Move your Apps to the Cloud”, try “Modernize your legacy Apps with a move to the Cloud”
Instead of “Increase Productivity with Office365” try “How to increase satisfaction and grow productivity with Office365”
Introduction
Arguably the most important section of the lead magnet. If the reader gets here and doesn’t see what they are looking for they will realise you are not the solution to their problem – so we must be precise and distinct in the way we uncover these six things:
- Who is your core customer and what are they challenged with?
- What does your core customers need to overcome their challenges?
- What are their frustrations, wants, fears and aspirations?
- What you do the best – why are you right to solve their challenges?
- What is the one result you give them?
- Show credibility
Your three core messages
Aligned to the frustrations that your customer currently faces – think about the top three problems your customer has. These will form the next three sections of your lead magnet.
For each problem, elaborate on the problem by focusing on:
- The pains they face daily because of this problem they have
- How your solution/service will help them solve this problem
- The outcomes of your solution, what does the future look like? (This is not feature or tech-focused, it’s results driven and outcome focused)
- Prove it – show them why you are qualified to help with a case study or testimonial
Wrap it up
Now you have worked through the three core messages, it’s time to get into the detail of how you do it. Here you can talk about features, technologies or tools of the solution or service. Do you have a proven process that ensures seamless delivery? Share some IP to help them understand how you’re different.
Here, we also want to create a fear if nothing changes. So, if they decide today not to do anything about their problem, what will happen? We must highlight the impact of doing nothing.
To summarise, link everything back to your one result.
What next >> CTA
A lead magnet would not be complete without a conscious and specific way for your contact to engage with you next.
Depending on where they are in their journey of getting to know you, they might be more or less inclined to engage with more direct CTAs, so we like to give them four options.
- Free resource offer
- Book a meeting offer
- Join our community / Follow on LinkedIn offer
- Read our testimonials
Partner Elevate’s Ad Builder
Now that you have your Lead Magnet ready to go – it’s time to take it to market with a compelling and actionable ad or post.
If you would like a copy of our Ad Builder, click the link below!
