When you focus on marketing your firm a key aspect to its success will be your ability to keep in touch with your prospects and nurture them to become clients.
The best way for this to be achieved is through email marketing. But in order to carry out successful email campaigns for your accounting firm you will need their email address. This is usually obtained by exchanging “something” for it.
This “something” is known as a lead magnet.
The easy part is creating a lead magnet. The difficult part is creating a lead magnet that actually attracts people enough to want to download it.
Let’s start at the very beginning…
What is a Lead Magnet?
A lead magnet is content that is given away to someone in exchange for their email address. More often than not this exchange is done via a website page or LeadPages, however you may also exchange something for a business card at an event or on your Facebook page.
The lead magnet that you create must provide huge value to your customer. Most people today are inundated with emails, newsletters and advertisements on Facebook and other websites. Most people don’t want to add to their already very noisy online world. Simply inviting people to sign up to your newsletter, or get a brochure outlining your business, will not be enough.
Nearly every accounting firm with an email list use lead magnets to attract new leads onto their database. The question isn’t then whether they attract leads, but rather how many and the quality of the leads they attract.
Over the 8 years I have been running my agency we have created some absolutely awful lead magnets and some really effective lead magnets. What I would say is when you design and create your lead magnet you won’t definitely know if it is a hit or a miss until you test it.
Through working with over 500 companies, new and seasoned, I have seen what does work and what definitely doesn’t. Today I share with you what you need to do to be in with a chance of having a successful lead magnet.
What Makes A Good Performing Lead Magnet?
Know Your Client
All good marketing begins with understanding and knowing who your ideal client is. What do they want? What are the pains and frustrations that they are experiencing?
These questions can be answered with ease if you have done the foundation work on your ideal client. If you know your “niche” then you will know their pains, and how to overcome them.
The best performing lead magnets give a quick win to your prospect and satisfies a need or solves a problem for them. A good lead magnet will appeal to your target prospect because it will provide important information, direction, clarity and “aha” moments when they experience it.
Be Specific
Another attribute of a great lead magnet is that it is highly specific. This is another reason why designing it for a specific pain and niche is essential. You do not have to answer all of your prospects questions in the lead magnet, or solve all their problems. But it does need to be specific enough that it is irresistible, and have enough value that they feel justified in sharing their coveted email address.
And for this to happen you need to be specific: For example “A guide to tax savings for the small business” is ok, but “A guide to saving tax in your Interior Design Business” will be downloaded more often by your ideal target market. (If your target market is interior design companies).
Stage Of Funnel
If you are not aware already, here at TwentyTwo Agency we specialise in creating content to nurture your prospects to become clients. Which means that the content we create is specific to your buyers journey with your firm. There are different kinds of lead magnet’s you will need to create depending where they are currently on this journey.
Attract
Top Of Funnel (TOFU) At this stage you are wanting to attract website visitors to part with their email address. Top of funnel lead magnet ideas could include a checklist or cheat sheet.
Convert
Middle Of Funnel (MOFU) At this stage they have put their hand up that they are interested and you need to build the relationship. A great lead magnet for the MOFU would be a webinar that helps them further with their situation, and then guides them into having a conversation with you.
Close
Bottom Of Funnel (BOFU) This is where you need to think about how you can close the lead into becoming a client of yours. This is where case studies and trial offers come into play.
Delight
Once you have on-boarded clients you can create content that will provide added value to them and delight them. A good client will know how great your free content is and share it with their tribe.
How Do You Attract Sign Ups To Your Lead Magnet?
You need to ensure that your lead magnet can be found with ease. Which means it needs to be found on your website without having to be searched for. The areas you need to have the sign-up forms for your lead magnet include:
- Feature box
- Top of sidebar
- Within your blog posts
- The footer of your blog posts
- The footer of your website
- On your About page
- In a pop up box
- On a dedicated lead magnet page (known as a landing page)
The purpose of having a dedicated lead magnet page is to ensure that the page visitor can only take two courses of action. Either to sign up, or to hop off the page.
Once you have your lead magnet and landing page set up you then need to distribute the lead magnet wherever you can and get it in front of your ideal client so they can download it.
How Do You Promote Your Lead Magnet?
Here are some ways you can promote your lead magnet:
- On your website
- Facebook Ads & Updates
- LinkedIn Ads & Updates
- Twitter Ads & Updates
- Your current email subscribers
- At the bottom of your LinkedIn Articles
- To new connections on your LinkedIn
- In Facebook & LinkedIn Groups
- At networking events
- At speaking gigs – offer it from the stage
- On your Instagram
- Ask your friends and family to share it
- Email signature
There are many ways to get your lead magnet out there. The aim is to get it in front of your ideal client so you can start a journey with them.
Worst-Case Scenario
The worst-case scenario is that you don’t have a lead magnet at the moment and thus have no way of building your email list. If this is your situation, now is the best time to rectify this. Your accountancy practice needs to think like a marketing firm to ensure business success and growth. If you want quality leads create a high value lead magnet. If you don’t know where to start then get in touch and ask for our “Lead Magnet Implementation brochure” for details of what is included and prices.
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To download one of our ebooks and get a list of marketing ideas for your accounting practice click here for the 100 Ways To Market Your Accounting Firm
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What do we do at TwentyTwo?
At TwentyTwo Agency we specialise in helping you create a strategy, attract ideal prospects, convert them into clients and get remembered and referred. Our specialities include content marketing, blog writing, email newsletter management and social media management. We are a content marketing and digital experience agency for accounting firms. We ensure you get remembered, recommended and referred.
To find out if we can help you, reach out to our team by emailing [email protected]
