Building a Lead Magnet – The Six Tips That Will Help You Create a Sustainable Lead Flow

A great lead magnet will attract clients to your accounting firm. This is how you nail one that provides value and constantly generates leads.

Carl had a pretty successful business with WritetoDone. The company’s subscription-based model pulled in a decent amount of passive income. Plus, the marketing strategy he has resulted in an average of 22 new subscriptions per day.

But he knew that he could do more.

He believed that a lead magnet could generate even better results. 

And when he finally completed his, he saw the ROI in just one day. That’s because within the first 24 hours of his magnet going live, WritetoDone’s subscription rate skyrocketed to an average of 168 people per day.

That’s a 664% increase!

But that’s not all.

This surge in new subscribers also led to the site creating a five-figure passive income stream for Carl.

You might be wondering how this applies to you. After all, your accounting firm doesn’t work to the same subscription model as Carl’s company. However, the idea of leveraging a lead magnet to drive more people to your business works for everyone.

But what is a lead magnet?

It’s simply a piece of content that you offer to people in exchange for an email address. The prospect gets a valuable piece of information and you get to plug them into your list. And by doing so, you can now market to them directly and nurture them through your sales funnel.

You just need to create a magnet that’s capable of attracting people. 

Follow these tips and you’ll have yours up and running in no time.

Tip #1 – Understand Your Client Avatar

A lead magnet that tries to target everyone isn’t going to get you the quality of leads that you need. Many of the people who download that magnet will have problems that you can’t solve. Plus, you’ll soon find a few vampire clients making their way through the funnel and into your firm.

A good lead magnet targets a very specific audience.

To figure out who that audience is for your firm, you need to create a client avatar. This is a description of what your ideal client looks like.

And the best way to come up with an avatar is to look at your existing clients and identify the ones that you love working with. Determine the key traits that these clients have in common and use them to build the perfect client for your firm.

Once you define who that ideal client is, create a lead magnet that targets them.

If you want to find out more about creating client avatars, check out this article.

Tip #2 – Create a Unique Value Proposition

What makes your accounting firm stand out from the dozens that you compete with?

What is it about your service that makes you VITAL to your clients?

These are important questions to ask because having a lead magnet requires you to make an offer. You’re trying to convince your audience that it’s worth their time to download your magnet.

Your unique value proposition is what will tip the balance in your favour.

Spend some time creating a list of all of the things that make your firm unique. Maybe you offer certain services that other firms don’t. Perhaps your pricing model or the level of transparency you offer makes you unique.

Whatever it is that makes you unique, identify it and leverage it when you’re creating your magnet.

Tip #3 – Identify a Problem (And Make Sure That Your Magnet Solves It)

Every single client that you’ll ever work with starts out with a problem.

It’s this problem that causes them pain inside their business. And it’s this problem that you need to appeal to if you want them to download your lead magnet.

But here’s the tricky part…

The problem depends on the niche that you’re targeting.

You need to dig into what your current clients value most about your service – the solutions that attack the very specific problems that they have. Once you’ve identified these problems, use them as the foundation of your lead magnet.

A good lead magnet offers a quick solution to a problem while demonstrating your expertise. If you can provide a solution that works, you’re showing the prospect that you know what you’re doing. This makes them more likely to listen when you make an offer in the future.

Tip #4 – Choose the Type of Magnet That Appeals to Your Audience

The ideal lead magnet is one that the prospect can consume in about 10 or 15 minutes – it’s all about solving a problem quickly. 

The only exception is if you’re using an eBook to attract clients. But when using this type of lead magnet, the focus shifts a little from solving a problem to building authority.

Let’s assume that you don’t have the time to write a whole book as a lead magnet. What other content types could you leverage to attract leads?

Any of the following make for great lead magnets:

• Checklists – Condense a list of tasks down into a simple list that the client can work through to achieve something.
• Templates – This is a great one for accountants. You could provide some standard templates for basic accounting work that the prospect can leverage in their business.
• Cheat Sheets – Much like a checklist, this is a list of steps or tips for the reader to follow. The difference is that you go into more detail with the list to show the reader why the steps are so important.
• Webinars – Do you want to give the prospect a chance to hear your voice and see the value that you offer in action? A webinar is a great way to do this and it gives you an opportunity to make an offer to anybody who listens.
• Video Tutorials – There are a lot of visual learners out there who aren’t interested in text-based content. A great video may be just what you need to draw them in.
• Discount Vouchers – This type of magnet works best if you have a product to sell. If you can offer 10% off in exchange for an email address, a discount voucher is a great way to build out your list.

Of course, you can leverage all of these types of content for lead magnets. But when creating your first one, spend some time working out which type will appeal most to your ideal client. Focus on that and test the results.

And speaking of testing…

Tip #5 – Use Audience Insights to Tweak the Magnet

You’re unlikely to get the lead magnet perfectly right the first time you create it. 

Even if the content’s great, that lead magnet needs to sit on a landing page. Plus, you need a marketing campaign to push people towards that landing page where your magnet is.

Any number of things could lead to a less than optimal lead magnet campaign.

For example, a poor landing page design could put people off from ever looking at the magnet. Ads targeted at the wrong audience could lead to low click-through rates or vampire clients downloading the magnet.

The point we’re making here is that the work’s not done when you have the magnet up and running. You still need to make sure it works.

Make use of all of the audience insights you can get to make tweaks. Split test different ideas to see which work best and keep optimising until you have a magnet that performs well.

Tip #6 – Don’t Rely on Just One Lead Magnet

Does your accounting firm provide multiple services? 

We bet it does, which means you need more than one lead magnet. 

Ideally, you’ll have magnets in place for every single service that you offer. And if you really want to dig deep, you could even have magnets that target people at specific stages of the sales funnel for each service.

Why?

Again, it comes down to the idea that your magnet needs to target a specific audience that has a defined problem.

If you’re relying on only one magnet, you’re likely failing to confront a multitude of challenges that your ideal clients face. You’re only speaking to one problem, which means you’re alienating a lot of prospects.

And that amounts to missed opportunities for your firm.

Multiple lead magnets allow you to target a larger audience. Just make sure that you don’t overcomplicate things by creating more lead magnet campaigns than you can manage.

Become Magnetic

A great lead magnet has the ability to pull in huge numbers of leads. 

That’s what happened to Carl. He achieved a 600%+ increase in subscription numbers with his magnet.

Your magnet could achieve similar results for your accounting firm. And if you get it right, it will become a source of constant leads that allow you to focus on only working with the clients that you want.

The tips we’ve shared here will help you create a magnet that works. Identify a problem that your audience has and home in on it. Choose a magnet type that appeals to your audience and test constantly to optimise the magnet, its landing page, and your ads.

And once you have a magnet that works, use what you’ve learned to create more magnets for other services.