Introduction
In a world where attention spans are shrinking, how do you grab and hold onto potential leads?
Are those old school eBooks and white papers still working, or is it time for a fresh approach?
Join us on this electrifying episode of **Content Universe** with Mikael Svart, founder of Montaners!
We’re diving deep into the future of lead magnets and sharing game-changing strategies for 2024.
Mikael shares insights from a recent meeting where things didn’t exactly go as planned—trust us, you’ll want to hear this!
Get ready for some offbeat ideas that can supercharge your marketing. We’re talking about interactive tools, calculators, engaging resource libraries, and even eye-catching email courses.
Wondering how to resonate with your industry? Or how to harness the power of video content? It’s time to rethink your offerings!
Tune in for advanced marketing techniques that’ll reshape your lead acquisition strategy.
Let’s get the conversation rolling!
If you’re eager to elevate your content game, this episode is a must-listen!
What You’ll Learn
1. Discover innovative lead magnet ideas for 2024.
2. How to effectively use tools and calculators as lead magnets.
3. Benefits and challenges of webinars vs. pre-recorded sessions.
4. Create value through exclusive access resource libraries.
5. Transform your company into an industry news media outlet.
6. Leveraging email courses for engaging, long-term client relationships.
Episode Transcript (AI Generated)
wn Hello, and welcome to the content universe! Today I want to talk about lead magnets. Now I had a meeting with one of my great clients this Friday afternoon? I think it was Friday? Maybe it was Thursday? I don’t even — I don’t really remember … Anyway it doesn’t really matter to you, does it? Now we talked about creating a new lead magnet that they could use for obviously obtaining different kinds of leads, and one of the things that we were discussing was whether we should do an eBook or a white paper or what they called a light paper which is like a shorter version of a white paper just not to mistake it with the white papers that say engineers they know because they’re typically really long but these marketing white papers that’s what I’m thinking about. Anyway we were talking about lead magnets and whether it will be interesting to play around with other kinds of lead magnets than the white paper or the PDF, the downloadable PDF. Now at the meeting I got a little bit … I think they called me kind of unprepared because I wasn’t really able to just come up with a brilliant new idea. I was like kind of baffling a little bit and I was like, what is another good lead magnet actually? And when I came out in the car I obviously did a quick search on good lead magnet ideas for 2024 and that’s what we are going to talk about today because obviously while these may seem kind of trivia just the fact that I couldn’t come up with them just you know on the spot made me realize that it might be worth talking about especially when you are investing in creating a content universe. Alright, just to get this clear if you haven’t heard any of these episodes before the concept of this podcast is that I will talk about something then I stumbled upon during my normal work day or work week and then see if there are any learnings that I can kind of pass on to you guys. My name is Mikael Svart and I’m the founder of the content production agency where we do, we’re called Montaners, that’s that was the end of that sentence. At Montaners we create podcast episodes for our clients we create show notes, blog posts, social media stuff, video stuff, all that kind of stuff and we do that for mainly high tech companies or at least companies that are involved at high knowledge stuff. So it could be technology companies, it could be engineering companies, those kind of people, okay. That aside now you know who I am, let’s look at some of the lead magnet the types of lead magnets that you can do and that will also still be very powerful if done right, they will be very powerful this day and age. Now, obviously you have the old school things, so you have the old school guides, you have the PDFs, the downloadable PDFs what I would call a guide or a typical white paper. It could be a trend report that you’re writing up, it could be something, an explanation of some sorts. Those still, I would argue are quite powerful also because it’s like the trade off between being fairly easy to make and then still gain you the leads that you want. I think that trade off is still pretty good. Obviously, people have now over the last 10 years downloaded hundreds and hundreds of white papers to their machines and not read any of them. So I think looking out a little bit, I wanna touch upon, let me just count here, one, two, three, four, five, six different lead magnets. Okay, the first one, let’s go to that one. The first lead magnet type we can call tools or calculators. Now those are in essence a formula on typically on the website where you jot in some of your own or when you visit the website, you jot in some of your own data. And in different or whatever kinda topic it is, you’d jot in the data and then you’d hit calculate. And then typically you’d get like a short answer, just like a teaser answer. And then what is really powerful is that if you can then sum it all up in some sort of report or more extensive report on the data that your potential lead has put in. And the really powerful thing about this is of course that everyone wants a good calculator because a calculator is a shortcut and people tend to like shortcuts. So it’s a powerful tool. And also, it’s a powerful tool because you will not only get the email and the person of course asking for the calculation, but you might also if you set the allowance tick boxes right, you might also be able to get some of that data that they actually plotted in, and that will then in turn give you a really good idea of what to talk to the client about when you then reach out. Okay, so those are the tools and calculators, those are really powerful. They’re also, sometimes they can be quite hard because they kind of require a programmer to set up the calculator, often they do. So it’s a little bit more of an investment than say just the old school white paper downloadable PDF. Okay, second up, webinars or workshops, so live workshops, that could be, or live seminars even. Obviously there’s a big difference between seminars and webinars because webinars don’t require that you rent a big place where you can have the audience sitting listening to you, but it still requires something that I find really hard. It requires an audience. So, while webinars are still, I would say pretty powerful, or I would argue that they’re pretty powerful because you get, they’re kind of personal, you know? You get a chance to interact on a more humane level. You get to interact with your potential clients, with your prospects. And that in itself is really powerful. One thing that I’m always a little bit concerned about is the audience bit. Because when you are doing a webinar, and especially, of course, if you’re doing a live seminar, it is very important that you have a live audience. And having a live audience requires different things. First of all, of course, it requires, some that, you know, the topic that you’re talking about should be something that they want to listen to. Should be worth the time spent. The other thing is that, the time of the day and the, you know, the date, that just needs to be at a time where they have time in their calendar. Where their calendar is open. So you do risk losing a lot of attendees simply because they have other meetings, they are out traveling, they are not at work because they’re in a different time zone. All of these kinds of things, and that I think is a really big limitation to the webinar thought and why I would probably also go for something that is not necessarily live. So more like a webinar or even a video course that is downloadable rather than something that is is live when you sit there. Okay, third up we have resources, or like resource libraries that’s basically what I would call a content universe. So having exclusive access resource libraries, that can be really powerful as well because what you then allowing your prospects or your leads to do is to come on inside of your content universe to tell them or to show them all the knowledge and to really help them and to really make yourself represent yourself as a good and thorough advisor. And I think doing so is just really powerful because people typically, especially when we’re talking high knowledge companies, they typically really want to make sure that they are only buying from top experts. So if you’re able to show that you’re a top expert by inviting people into a resource library or a content universe, that is just really powerful. Now, the downside of this is, of course, that if you’re just starting out with your content universe or you’re just starting out with you’re trying to attracting leads, well, building that resource library is gonna take you some time, and that time may be something that you want to put in, but as of now, it won’t generate you any leads. So having the resource library, I think is a really powerful thing, but of course it does take time, it does require quite a lot of, I would say strategic priority. Fourth one coming up is basically becoming your own news media. And this is one of the things that I always try and argue when I talk to my clients because, in my opinion, if you want to create high quality content, if you want to create content that is worthwhile reading or consuming for your clients or prospects or whoever visits your website, if you want to create that, you will have to, or it’s gonna be easier for you to kind of ignore your own products, ignore those kinds of things and position yourself as a thought leader if you think of yourself as an industry media. Because if you think of yourself as an industry media, it’s kind of easier to focus on what is important, what is interesting for your audience, what is on their mind right now, what are the trending topics, what are the trending things, any movements in the industry that you need to kind of touch upon or have a comment to, it’s just so much easier to have that approach if you see yourself as a news media or a knowledge media magazine so to say for the industry rather than your company marketing department. So, if you’re really able to do that, I would argue that your content universe is gonna be so much more interesting and it also allows for this lead magnet which is basically a news email so it’s gonna be an email set up maybe coming out every Friday. It could be like the Friday digest of your industry but it will have to talk about something that is not just your brand, something that is not just your products or services. It has to talk about something that is interesting when you are in the industry. It has to comment on industry trends, et cetera like I just mentioned. But putting that down into a weekly digest email is a really powerful way of I would say attracting leads into your funnel because if they can see that you have a content universe that’s interesting to follow, if they can see the value in all of the articles, the podcasts, the videos, whatever you do, if they can see the value of that as they would in an industry media, they’re more prone to sign up for that newsletter. And once they’ve signed up for the newsletter, obviously you then keep on bringing the value and then when they are ready to buy whatever you’re selling, well, you will be the one top of mind. I would very highly warn against mixing in product marketing or service marketing like marketing messages into these kinds of news emails because then very, very quickly they just get phony, people are very, very good at detecting bullshit in those kinds of things. And if they signed up for what they would consider an industry media, they do not want you selling to them. Okay, so a news media email, that was number four on the list. Okay, now one thing that I think is kind of powerful but it’s also very closely connected to the tools and calculators point that I just mentioned is lead managers that are also templates. If you can somehow template tie something that is that you have inside of your company and that has a lot of value for your clients, if you can templatize that and then bring it out to those guys that could be well, for me that could be my prompting templates for AI that could probably be a pretty powerful lead magnet or template my blueprint for my make setup that could probably be a really powerful thing as well. And all of those kind of things we again talking about things that are shortcuts to gaining something to obtaining some whatever objective or goal. So if you can create a really valuable template from maybe from what you’re already doing that is really powerful. And what I really like about this is that templates usually don’t take a lot of effort in doing. Oftentimes it’s just looking at what you are doing yourself already and then taking that and turning it into a template. Even chat GVT could do that for you sometimes but it could also be downloading the blueprint from an automation or it could be an Excel sheet where all of the pre calculations are done behind the scenes and then you just plot in something and get out a result. Obviously this is going to depend on what kind of service or product that you’re selling. But if you think about templating things that is a really powerful lead magnet also in 2024. All right the last one on my list here is again we’re talking email marketing, direct emails and it is if you can somehow serve a course or a learning course inside of an email and a string of emails that is just really powerful and if you have the ability to even do you know record it as a video course then you’ll also get the interaction where you get the human face on your knowledge and that is brilliant and that’s one thing that I would really recommend most of you out there. It’s really easy to set up which is a huge benefit and on the contrary to the webinars it doesn’t require a live audience yet it can bring the exact same value if not even more because if you have an email course sent directly to your to your prospects with links into you know an unlisted YouTube video or even more you can have say six, 12, whatever emails coming out one every week or one every day depending on what kind of course depending on what it is that you are trying to teach them and if you can do that that is potentially quite a lot of hours of exposure of your knowledge and exposure of yourself as a person so I would say that this is just a really powerful way as well also when they sign up for an email course or course sent on an email they are not surprised that they get emails in their invox and that’s also huge benefit because people are so tired of signing up to things signing up to downloading a whitepaper and then getting spammed by 10 emails afterwards or signing up to a webinar and saying no to marketing emails and then still getting all of those emails afterwards because you can do that illegally or you can do that legally but either way having signed up for something that is not the emails themselves and then receiving a lot of emails that’s just annoying to most people so that’s also why I think well the email courses but also the news media emails like I just mentioned they’re really really cool ways of creating a lead magnet that is the email All right that’s actually again a little bit long episode I’m sorry about that I hope it’s not too boring I hope you can kind of hold your breath all the way through or breathe no just breathe normally actually just breathe normally all the way through if you think something’s missing on this list let me know in the comment let me know in the comment to this podcast I know you can comment directly inside of inside of Spotify So you do that or you send it to and if you do that that email goes straight into my personal mailbox so I will respond to it if you have any questions, comments or just think you want to say hi feel free Did I say com before? It’s without the M Alright, so Alright, I think that’s it for today’s Content Universe I hope you enjoyed If you did, give us a like give us a star review give us a mental high five and that’s all for now thank you so much for listening
