How to Turn a Lead Magnet into an Autopilot Money Making System

If you’re starting an online business for the long term, you’ve to make every effort to create an autopilot money making system which will help you to work smarter and not harder. And the best way to successfully do this is to create a lead magnet and use it to build an email list of subscribers from scratch. If you ask me, your mailing list is the most valuable digital asset you can have as an online entrepreneur.

 

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through a flawless money-making system using a simple lead magnet funnel which will serve as an ethical bribe to engage your target audience, build your credibility with them and demonstrate your expertise on a topic to make it easy for you to sell relevant products or services to them from time to time.

 

To say the least, online marketing is a Herculean task that every entrepreneur must engage in if he or she wants to close sales at all. It’s even compounded by the growing and constant cutthroat competition in the marketplace. But you can turn the odds in your favor if you can come up with creative ways for your website visitors to give you their email addresses in exchange for a freebie which will enable you to engage and wow them to become your raving customers somewhere down the road.

 

Before I go into finer details on how to turn a lead magnet into an autopilot money making system, there are essential tools you’ve to invest in to make it seamless. These online business tools include:

 

• Domain name of your own. You’ve to register a domain name for your business and I’ll recommend NameCheap domain registration services as a good and cheap registrar to get a domain name.
• Web hosting. You need to get web hosting to upload your website files and downloadable materials on the World Wide Web and HostGator website hosting company is reputable and reliable with their excellent services.
• Email marketing software. An autoresponder is essential for this purpose because it is the pivot which you’ve to depend on to automate the freebie delivery to your leads when they subscribe to your list without any manual involvement. GetResponse email marketing software is cheap and reliable for both beginners and veteran internet marketers to build an email list of subscribers.
• Blog website. Creating a blog website cannot be ignored because it’s central to your digital marketing success. You can make use of self-hosted WordPress blog for free if you sign up with HostGator website hosting which supports WordPress hosting on their web servers.

 

After you’ve gotten the above tools sorted out, the next step is to create high-quality content to give away for free. It must be something valuable that will interest your target audience and solve their pain points.

 

Now, let’s dive in!

 

What is a Lead Magnet?

 

A lead magnet is simply a freebie in any form or format that serves as a specific solution to your target audience’s needs, wants, problems, pain points or challenges which they are currently grappling with. It could be a free ebook, video, podcast, email course, webinar, app or software to solve a problem or better explain a topic.

 

But you’re not just giving these types of lead magnets out without getting the contact information of your prospect such as name and email ID. This is more like elbow greasing or ethical bribe which will help in your subsequent digital marketing campaigns as you build relationships with your email list of subscribers.

 

List building for online marketing purpose is the goal of creating a lead magnet in the first place. You’ve to take the time to research and create a lead magnet which will resonate with your focus audience and compel them to exchange an email address and/or name to get what you’re touting to them for free.

 

So, the opt in form is where the exchange of email address and the promise to deliver the gift is consummated. 

 

Although there are a lot of lead magnet ideas you can make use of but it’s important you investigate your specific industry or niche market to know what they would like to get from you. If you run a blog website, you can publish a blog post related to a topic and ask your readers at the end of the article what type of lead magnet they wish to get from you.

 

Elements of a Good Lead Magnet

 

Apart from the lead magnet itself, there are other features that will complement the funnel. It includes:

• Landing page
• Thank-you page
• Download page
• Email sequence

 

Landing Page

 

This is the page where the subscription form will be embedded. It’s your selling point where you can convince the prospect why he should fill out his name and email address to download the free ebook, video or software, etc.

 

A landing page doesn’t have to be complicated anyway. You’ve to include a catchy headline and sub headline which will clearly state the main benefit of getting the lead magnet. You can add bullet points to expand on other benefits in your free give away.

 

But don’t forget that social proof is a big boost to any list building system. If you’ve testimonials and income proof to add credibility to your landing page, please do and include it. Also, the CTA (call to action) must be conspicuous and unambiguous if you want to record high CTR (click through rate).

 

Privacy policy statement must be clear enough to remove any intention to trade your subscribers email addresses with third parties.

 

Thank You Page

 

The thank-you page is the page that immediately comes up after a lead has entered his name and email address in your opt-in box. This page will simply appreciate your new list member for signing up for your newsletter and giving him the direction to download the lead magnet.

 

Usually, this will take him to his mailbox and then click a link from the email you sent for double opt-in and to download the gift. It’s as simple as that!

 

Download Page

 

If you’re not linking directly to the lead magnet from the thank you email you’ve sent, the download page is a place you can place the link to the free offer. It’s also a good page to promote one-time offer if any to your list subscriber.

 

A lot of internet marketers have made a lot of money from the download page by promoting complementary products and services at heavily discounted price. For example, if you’re selling a digital product for $47, you can offer it at $17 at the download page. You’ll experience an increase in sales revenue quickly.

 

Email Sequence

 

The email sequence will include the welcome email, first 2 to 5 relationship building email, non-promotional emails and marketing emails interspersed responsibly. It’s a good practice to prepare 3 months of email sequence in advance so that there won’t be lull in your communications with your new subscribers list.

 

In between you can send time-based promotional and broadcast emails to your list from time to time which is still okay.

 

Lead Magnet Content

 

For your lead magnet to become valuable to your readers, you must take the time to create high-quality content worth sharing. You can evaluate the competition and learn what they are doing better.

 

Besides taking the above steps, there is need for you to research the pain points of your intended audience and proffer workable solutions to solve them. For example, there is a free ebook on how to use OpenOffice software to prepare and secure PDF ebooks which I downloaded many years ago from a mailing list I subscribed to. Till date, that free ebook is still valuable to me because I don’t have to shell out dollars to buy Adobe Acrobat software to execute the same tasks.

 

If you can solve your target audience’s pain points and problems with your lead magnet offer, you’ll not find a hard time promoting paid products and services to the same email list. Let it be a valuable product or service that is not freely available on the internet.

 

How to Create a Lead Magnet

 

It’s easy to create a valuable lead magnet if you create a blog in your target niche market and regularly publish articles focusing on keywords and search queries. This will attract the right audience who will give you the information they want if you ask.

 

If you take care of on-page SEO (search engine optimization) and off-page SEO, driving free targeted traffic to your blog from search engines like Google will become a cinch.

 

Also, through survey or questionnaire you can elicit information from your blog readers who want to learn further from you. The idea really is to position yourself as an expert over time and build credibility.

 

Making use of keyword research tools will uncover questions people are asking and the search intents of your target market. Gather this information and create an outline to address the issues discovered. This is the surest way to put your best foot forward and gain the confidence of your target audience.

 

If you make use of GetResponse email marketing software, you’ll be able to automate the system seamlessly and just focus on creating unique content consistently to wow your followers and fans. I highly recommend this list management system for beginners because it makes nurturing of leads with constant content painless and hands off.

 

With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and apps, content creation has become easier. Personally, I believe that AI tools are only as intelligent as the developers and the prompts you feed in as the user. This is a topic for another blog post which I'll publish soon. 

I’ll welcome comments and suggestions from my readers below. Please let me know the specific topics you wish to read about and I'll work on it as soon as possible.