In today’s ever-changing technological world, having a solid social media marketing strategy in place is crucial for small business success. However, you shouldn’t rely solely on organic posts, stories, and paid advertising to grow and evolve your brand. These tactics alone aren’t enough. Instead, you have to find additional ways to use your social media platforms to provide value, capture qualified leads, and pull them into your sales funnel. New strategies that will help convert them into paying customers.

One of the best ways you can do this is to use downloadable lead magnets.

What are Downloadable Lead Magnets?

A lead magnet (also known as gated content) is a downloadable piece of marketing content that you can offer to prospective customers in exchange for their email address, phone number, or other type of contact information. Lead magnets are free incentives that usually come in the format of PDFs, such as a tip sheet, checklist, case study, eBook, or other forms of educational material. These incentives are valuable resources that build audience trust and warm up cold leads.

How to Use Content to Build a Loyal Audience and Convert Leads

Now that you know what a lead magnet is, you might be wondering: what exactly makes a good piece of content that my readers will find useful and want to download and even share with other people?

 Great question!

Here are a few tips that can help:

  • It should be easy to digest –– Organize your content into bite-sized sections, so it’s easy to follow and understand. Don’t make the resource too overwhelming.
  • It should solve a real problem –– Consider your audience’s pain points and offer a solution to meet those needs.
  • It should be super specific –– Offer specific benefits that allow you to position yourself as an industry expert. Don’t create something too general (aka, you don’t want them to Google it and find the answer).
  • It should be actionable –– Provide advice and tips that can be quickly and easily implemented into your audiences’ marketing plan.
  • It should demonstrate your unique selling proposition –– Most importantly, it should set you apart from your competitors by providing value.

4 Types of Free Seasonal Downloadable Lead Magnets to Offer

  1. Holiday Checklists
    The holiday season lends itself to great ideas for lead magnets. Put together a helpful list of practical strategies and planning tricks for navigating various holidays, or even summarize your most popular blog posts into a digestible checklist format.
  2. Templates & Worksheets
    These types of lead magnets offer a starting point for your audience to accomplish a specific objective then provide a step-by-step process so that they can easily follow and repeat over and over again. 
  3. Glossaries
    If your industry is constantly changing or there are new phrases, technologies, and explanations that your audience may need, create an informative guide for new terms and information all in one place. Our social media glossary is one example. 
  4. Webinars
    Live interactive Q&As are huge selling points for your small business because they allow prospective customers to get to know you on a personal level and learn more about your brand, plus, what services and/or products you have to offer. Not to mention, this type of gated content has one of the highest ROIs of all. 
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