What's A Lead Magnet? And 11 Ways To Use One To Grow An Amazing Home Staging Business

What’s A Lead Magnet and 11 Ways to Use One to Grow Your Biz

Having a lead magnet is an important part of your marketing strategy.

One of the unexpected surprises I had when I was growing my staging business, is that I actually had to be the Chief Marketing Officer even ahead of being the Lead Stager in my business. And as you grow your business, the scale will be tipped for a period of time in the direction of spending way more time marketing than staging.

In the beginning, I really resented the amount of time I spent marketing because it never felt like there was a direct return on that time. I had no idea that clients don’t start calling right away after a marketing encounter. But what I have learned is that there is typically a delay between our marketing efforts and getting new clients and that delay is totally normal in a business. Totally. Flipping. Normal.

That means you really need to embrace digital marketing because it takes time and consistency to nurture the seeds that turn into clients. Lucky for us, with the internet, we don't have to do all of the heavy lifting ourselves.

You can rely on one of my favorite digital marketing strategies–the Lead Magnet. It may not sound sexy, but listen in and it just might become your new favorite marketing buddy too!

Click here to sign up for the waitlist for the next enrollment period for Rethink You, the year-long mentorship program to help staging business owners see the road ahead, plan for it and grow, flow and thrive.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

Where digital marketing falls into your overall marketing activities
How to bridge the gap between your in-person marketing activities and bringing them into your digital community
What’s a lead magnet and what do you need in place to make it an amazing marketing tool for you
How to turn one idea into 11 different lead magnets

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:

FEATURED ON THE SHOW:

Get the Fab Free Lead Magnet Guide to growing your staging business by staying in front of your best clients in a non-salesy way
Lori’s Instagram
Rethink You Coaching Program

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

download transcript

What Is A Lead Magnet?

What is a lead magnet?

Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to be here with you and just happy all around that.

Today, we are talking about one of my favorite topics. We're talking about digital marketing, and I'm sure to some of you that does not sound sexy at all, but truthfully in the beginning of our businesses, we are the chief marketing officers for our businesses.
So we got to fall in love with marketing. And for me, it certainly was a journey. I didn't, you know, start out my staging business, loving the idea of marketing.

In fact, it was the exact opposite. But you do need to develop that skill, but thankfully due to the internet, digital marketing is so much easier for those of us in small businesses, we can do exactly what the big companies do and be on the cutting edge quite easily, which actually kind of makes it exciting to be able to do this work.

And truthfully digital marketing is really where it's at in terms of marketing your staging business. And I'll dive into that a little bit more in a few minutes, but it really is one of the very key components to growing a profitable, healthy staging business.

So it's really important that we get comfortable with the skillset of digital marketing. And today, specifically, we're going to be talking about the lead magnet and we'll dive into what is a lead magnet, why you need one for your staging business, how you can get started creating one.

And then I'm going to give you some fun, like 11 different ways or ideas to create a lead magnet for your business.

So let's just start in with some of the basics, what is a lead magnet? So, first of all, let me just say that a lead magnet can also be referred to as a freebie or an irresistible free offer or an IFO.
I call them any one of those things at any given moment, depending on my mood and the day. So just know that if I say freebie or IFO or something like that, it means a lead magnet, but essentially a lead magnet is something enticing free information that someone would give you their email address in exchange for.

So it's a way for you to give something in order to receive their contact information. But the key word in that is enticing.

Many of us have something on our website, typically at the bottom of the page called, you know, get my newsletter or sign up or subscribe to my newsletter.

And first of all, I applaud you for even having that on your website, because you already recognize that it's important and important component of your business to have a lead magnet, but let's make it a little sexier.

So let me just propose an offered you that there is a difference between wanting to give your email address to join my newsletter, to versus download my free guide, to style any coffee table with things you already own.

I think the second one is way more attractive. And we have to remember that people's email addresses these days are like a dang Faberge egg.

Like they are precious. They are priceless. People do not want to share them. They want to protect them at all costs.

So we have to make it a lot more enticing and irresistible for somebody to want to give us their email address.

But why do we actually want to get their email address in the first place? This is really really important. Lead magnets are critical because they are the bridge between your zip and click marketing strategies.
They are meant to take the real world actions that you take in your business and to bring those people into your online tribe community so that you can stay in touch with them.

It's really the foundation of what Seth Godin calls, permission-based marketing permission, marketing, where someone is giving you essentially permission to stay in touch with them.

So the lead magnet is the starting point for all of that. So let's talk about why you actually need that in a staging business, right?

It sounds like it's something more meant for digital businesses or people who have online businesses. But what I figured out years ago was that we can use this really cool strategy of a lead magnet to again, bridge that gap between our zip code, kind of in-person based activities to bring them into our online world.

So I like to talk about the fact that there are kind of three steps to the path, your path to having a fully booked calendar.
That's getting noticed, getting known and getting new clients. So let's break those down a little bit. So getting noticed is part of your zip code based strategies.

That's like, you know, when you're doing your networking or your presentations and speaking events, maybe you teach a class, maybe you do a webinar for your in-person contacts, but essentially it's all of those activities that you're doing, where you're meeting human beings in person that is your zip code based strategy.

That's your getting noticed, getting known, which is the next step to getting new clients is really all about staying in touch.
And what happens very often with our zip code based strategies is that we end up ghosting people. We end up not staying in touch with them because we don't want to bother them.

We don't want to feel salesy or pushy, but I'm going to share with you how you can bridge the gap with a lead magnet so that you can stay in touch with people in a really kind of organic feel-good kind of way.
Okay. So that's your zip code based strategies? Your Cullick based strategies would be like your social media. So your static posts your lives.

It could be videos on YouTube or something like that. And we want to take all of those zip code based strategies, all of those click-based strategies.

And we want to funnel them all toward your email list. So all roads end up leading to your email list, because even if you're on social media and that's considered a digital, a part of your digital marketing strategy, we don't actually own that traffic.

We don't own the contacts that we have there. Those belong to Facebook and Instagram. I guess those are the same now YouTube, which is Google, right?

So we want to be able to be the owners of our contacts. And we also want to be able to be in front of them when we choose to be in front of them, not have to worry about an algorithm.

That's where your email list comes in. So your lead magnet takes people from your in-person activities, from your social media based activities and brings them into your email list.

And the cool thing is, is that when you use a lead magnet, this free irresistible offer, it helps you identify people who have an interest in you and your services.
So if they're willing to give you an email address, they are also willing to learn more about you and what you offer.

So they're essentially giving you that permission to stay in touch, where you can nurture them, the relationship that you have with them, by volunteering, your expertise, volunteering, your experience, and how you work with clients.

I call that your value bank. You grow your value bank there when you stay in touch with people. So think about how that feels.
So if you meet somebody in person and you have a lead magnet that you can share with them, so let's say you are at a presentation and you have a lead magnet.

Let's say, for example, it's that coffee table example. And you say, you know, if you'd like to get my my guide to how to style any coffee table with things you already own, give me your email address.
I'll be happy to send that to you. You send that to them. And then you start staying in touch with more ideas, how to style a bedroom or a bedside tables, or how to pair you know bedside lamps with nightstands, that kind of thing.

All of that keeps you in touch in, in front of people, sharing your expertise, sharing your value in a way that keeps you top of mind.
It helps you build that know like and trust factor, right? So if you're willing to share your insight and people are going to say, oh, look at her like that person is or him that person's always in front of me, always sharing great information, helping me, help my clients, helping me you know, whatever, provide more value for my clients.

Let's say in the case of a realtor it helps show people what is possible when they work with you, right?

So there are going to be plenty of people who don't have the skillset to make anything happen in terms of staging a house and they know that, but they actually get to see through you creating that value bank and sharing your expertise and experience and ideas about staging.
It shows them what is possible when they work with you. So it's a really amazing thing to begin to bring people onto your email list and begin to stay in touch with them.

So I'm sure at this point, you're probably wondering, well, how do you even start to create a lead magnet, especially if you haven't created one before.

So do not worry. I got you, not a problem. We can make this happen. So the first thing is that the best lead magnets do a few things.
They solve a problem. So think about the coffee table example. We'll go back to that. So if somebody has a coffee table and they're not sure how to style it, and we see this very often, your lead magnet can solve that problem.

It can show them that they can find things in their own house right now, to style that it has to be super specific.

Just like that example, it's very, very specific. We're going to style coffee tables and we're going to use what they already own.

Your lead magnet also needs to be easily digestible. What do I mean by that? It needs to incorporate little, maybe bullet points or little bit of text with some pictures to make it very easy for somebody to consume it.
If it's too long, too wordy, too many paragraphs, it might be difficult for a person to get what they also need to get, which is a quick win.

It's another great key to having an excellent lead magnet is that that easily digestible material gives them a quick win.

So if they follow your formula for coffee tables, they will end up feeling great about how they've styled their coffee table, using things they already own and things they probably never imagined.
Could we use to style a coffee table and the best lead magnets, as I said, demonstrate your expertise. So when someone gets a quick win, they're like, oh, dang, this person knows what they're talking about.  I should absolutely hire them because this is what it looks like to work with them.

So the way that you start to create one of these really great lead magnets that solves a problem and creates a quick win is you start paying attention to what others have that have enticed you is a really great place to start because if something has enticed you most likely it will entice other people.

So that could be a really great place to start. One of the things that I you know, thought in the beginning of my business was I had followed somebody who had had a style, a dark sofa, because I was coming across a lot of dark sofas in the beginning of my staging business.
And it was a great little tutorial and guide about how to style a dark sofa. It was super helpful to me.

So even though I didn't turn that into a lead magnet, that is something that could have been turned into a lead magnet.

So start paying attention to the things that you have liked. What do people ask you? I'm sure when you go out into the world and you tell people that you're a stager, they have questions like, oh, I never know what to do with whatever, you know, do we change the wallpaper?
I, I never know how to style my coffee table. What do you think would be helpful for people to have?

So, you know, when you, when you start your journey again, you might be co encountering. What I did, which was like a lot of dark coffee tea, or a lot of dark sofas.

And I thought, you know, it would be helpful. You know, what if I thought it would be helpful to give these people a guide to style their coffee or their sofa with lighter accents or something like that, that could be very helpful or how to update furniture that you've had for 20 years to make it feel fresh and new or something like that.

What do people struggle with the most?

One of ours is a no-fail neutral pink guide. And that is because I had a lot of people that were struggling with paint colors that, you know, they would never knew what to paint it, or they painted something and they didn't like it.

And then it also helped my team when I was onboarding new team members. It was a resource guide for my team members to know what neutral paint colors we found work best.

So all of that should start to get your creative juices flowing. You can go out and start to see what interests you and start thinking about what are people struggling with, or people ask you that can guide what you create.

And so when you go to create your lead magnet, there are a few things that you need to have in place.

So the first thing is your lead magnet needs to be in a PDF format or a deliverable format. So that could also be if it's a video or audio, but it needs to be in a format that can be shared.  And can't that can't be edited by someone, right? You want to make sure that your lead magnet stays intact and somebody can't take it and, you know, use it or change it.

You want to have a way to have someone give you their email, your name, their name, and email address, right?  So there's that you need to have a way to deliver the, the lead magnet. So you need to have the lead magnet in kind of a shareable format.
You to have a way for somebody to give you their contact information and then a way to deliver it.

So let's look at those each individually.

So as a lead magnet in PDF form is really simple. You can use a Google document. You don't have to get super fancy with this, and you can just save it as a PDF.  That is one very simple way to do it or a Microsoft word document, but save it as a PDF. The other tool I love is Canva.
I can't say enough about canvas and canvas allows you to save things in a PDF format. So that is a great place to start.  So get your lead magnet in PDF format.

The next thing is having a way to let someone give you their name and email address.  That's called a landing page or an opt-in page. And that's how you collect the email addresses. Now, most customer relationship management tools, like, you know, a Weber flow desk, convert kit.

They all have their own landing pages built in. But if you have a a CRM that doesn't have that you can use something like lead pages, lead pages has beautiful templates that are really easy to customize that enables you to do that.

You also need a way to deliver that lead magnet, and that is your customer relationship management tool. Again, you're a Weber your flow desk, your convert kit.  So you'll need each one of those things in place in order to send your lead magnet.

Now, I know this probably sounds super complicated and overwhelming.

And at, in the beginning, it really is. Once you see the process, it becomes a lot easier, but you can very easily hire someone to help you do all of this and put all of this together.
Your biggest thing is you just need to get the idea out. You need to get the, maybe the words together, the images you want to use together, and your colors, your brand colors and fonts and things like that.  And just package it up and send it to somebody at a, at Fiverr to create it. And then you can also hire someone through Fiverr to set up your landing page and connect all the dots for you.

So you don't have to be super techie to get this done. Remember, you are, you don't have to be the Dewar of everything in your business, right.

So, all right, so let's dive into some really fun lead magnet ideas, and we'll probably riff on our coffee table idea, and I'll show you how you can turn that one idea into 11 different lead magnets.

Okay. So and before we do that, we have a fab free resource guide to show you the pros and cons of many of what I'm going to share with you.  So download that that's in the show notes, and go ahead and grab your copy of that. And I want you to choose whatever is the easiest format for you to create.

If you don't feel comfortable doing video or audio or something like that, then don't do it. Start with something really, really simple.
And I'll share with you some of the simplest ones on here on the list and choose something maybe that you've already created for your in-person clients.

You might have something already like a checklist that you can just easily turn into a free lead magnet for your clients or for your online contacts or your to convert those in-person people over to your digital space, be open to experimenting.

This is really important. Not everything will work in the beginning of my business. I had a three-part audio, a video series, and it didn't really get me a lot of people onto my email list.  So I had to tweak it. And it was, I think the no fail neutral paint guide was the first one that really started to help me grow my email list.

So just experiment and in, in between the video tutorial and the no-fail neutral paint guide, I had a few other guides that just, you know, didn't really do the trick, but it was the no-fail neutral paint guide that really did it remember to share this resource with your in person contacts really important.

So when you give a presentation, like I said before, make sure to offer it up. If you want to get my free guide for this, give me your email address.
I'd be happy to send it to you that as the start of the permission marketing you want to make sure it's on your website above the fold.
So this means you don't need to scroll down to see it. So many of us have it on the bottom of our websites.  It really needs to be at the top of our websites where people can see it typically that could be in the upper left-hand corner because people start to consume things there, or it could be kind of center of the page in a big spot on the center of your page.

So make sure you're sharing it there, share it on your social media. You want to share it with as many people as possible.

That is the key to growing your, your list of warm contacts and prospective clients. Okay. So all that said, here we go, let's take our coffee table, well idea and turn it into 11 different lead magnets.

So our first step is the checklist. This is probably the easiest one to do so you could have a checklist of all of the things that could be used or potentially used to style a coffee table that is really easy.
And you could break that up by what would be best to use and are on a round coffee table, what would be best to use on a rectangular coffee table?
But it could be a checklist that says, first measure your coffee table. Second, decide which of the following items you'd like to you use on your coffee table.

And if you could just go from there, next is a favorites list. So this could be great. You could use, here are my favorite accessories for styling any coffee table, and you could list things like, you know, trays and books and candles and vases and all of those things.

So it could be a favorites list and you might even provide links to some of your favorite styling elements, because most PDFs and in Canva, if you create a link to your text or an image, when you save it as a PDF, those links are active for people to click on.

You could create mood boards. So you could go into Canva and create a mood board. I love creating mood boards in Canva.  You could use something like design files to create more mood boards of all of the favorite elements you would use to style, you know, around coffee table or a rectangular coffee table.

Next up is a cheat sheet, a cheat sheet could be an image of a coffee table that's already styled, and you could share what height each item was and you know, kind of how you arranged it and kind of break that down for them in the form of a cheat sheet.

A photo gallery, you could have a photo gallery of several different ways to style a coffee table.  And then you could share that photo gallery with your potential clients, super easy. You could have a guide or a how to, so you could talk about things like, you know how is the room used, will dictate how you style the coffee table.

If you have young children you know, what the things you want to think about, how do you want to prepare to style your coffee table?
You also could use a video, how to, or a video library where you record yourself, styling a coffee table, talking about how you, you know, divide up the coffee table to create balance and symmetry and all of that, and how you maybe use the rule of threes.

All of those things could be done in a video format. You could do a podcast style recording where you just simply talk through the ways that you think about styling, a coffee table and being as descriptive as possible.

You can have a resource guide or a resource library. This could be like your favorite stores online to shop for accessories or something like that.

You could have a planner where somebody creates a list of the items that they think they need for their coffee table.  Maybe they don't have them all in their home. So a little, you know, shopping guide planner could be useful.

And then maybe you even just have an email list that you have established where you say, I'd love to send you my coffee table guide.
And when you do that, I will send you weekly inspiration for more ways to style every space in your house.  That could simply be an email list, right? So all kinds of ways. So that's 11 different ways to turn one idea into a lead magnet.

So I hope that what this has given you is some inspiration. We're creative people to get out there to have fun, let your creativity run wild.
And don't overcomplicate this like set a deadline for yourself because you might start spitting in research. And remember the thing is that, like, you're not going to know if this works until you produce it and you try it, right?

You want to get out there and get doing your in-person networking in your in-person presentations and start trying it, see where it leads, right?

You also want to fall in love with whatever you create, be its biggest cheer squad. Make sure that you tell people about it.

And I mean, especially anywhere you think it will be appropriate and helpful, but be its biggest cheer squad. Be proud of it.
Not everybody creates these things in order to move their business forward, but you have so cheer it on and make sure that you put a call to action everywhere.

So that is what I have for you today. Remember to download your fab free guide and I will look forward to seeing you in the next episode!

Having a lead magnet is an important part of your marketing strategy.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:

FEATURED ON THE SHOW:

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

What Is A Lead Magnet?

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