Show Notes

Welcome back to The Designer Practice Podcast, and I’m your host Kayla Das. In last week’s episode, we had discussed how having an email list can help you grow your private practice, especially if you intend to add passive income streams inside of your private practice. And this could include selling digital courses, digital templates, writing blogs, launching a podcast, or even starting a therapy or coaching group.

If you’ve missed last week’s episode, you can go back and listen. It’s episode 15. So, you can check it out at kayladas.com/episode15

In today’s episode, I’m actually going to bring you a step further and I’m going to teach you how to create an offer-aligned lead magnet or freebie that gets people signing up for your email list so that you have people to sell to and to create those relationships with.

So, first of all, let me explain what a lead magnet is.

A lead magnet, a freebie or an opt-in, people call it all different things, is basically something of value for people to sign up to your email list so that you have their email so that you can continue to create a relationship with them via email.

Importance of a Lead Magnet

So why is it important to have a lead magnet when expecting people to sign up for your email list? And this is really simple. People are so inundated with emails every single day that people are not likely to sign up for just a “Sign up for my newsletter” section on your website. It’s because people value their emails just as much as they value their home address.

So, for us to encourage or entice a person to sign up, it’s important to provide them something of value that they want to exchange their email for that thing. So, your lead magnet, your freebie, or your opt-in, whatever you would like to call it, should be something of value and it should either help them solve a specific problem or make their life just a little bit easier in some way.

And in today’s episode, I’m going to give you the seven steps for creating an offer-aligned lead magnet. And what I mean by offer-aligned, it’s really important that when we have lead magnets, that they somehow connect to the offer that we want to sell, whether it’s a physical product or whether it is our one-to-one services.

And that’s important because we want to make sure the people signing up for our email list are those who are actually our ideal client, who will eventually buy from us or seek help from us. So, we’re going to go into the seven steps.

Step 1: Choose a Problem that Your Lead Magnet Aims to Solve

So, the first step is when we think of creating a lead magnet, we want to choose a problem that your lead magnet aims to solve.

And this is really important because when we think of valuable or helpful content, we want to start with the problem first. What is the problem that your ideal client is experiencing? That they want help with, that you can help them with a freebie, so they are more likely to sign up for something. And it’s important that your lead magnet aligns with the problem that your offer will eventually speak to or look to solve or to support your client with.

So, let’s pretend that I am your ideal client and I’m in need of enlisting in your service or product. Maybe I’m doing my research, maybe I’m looking around or maybe I don’t even know I need your service yet, I just know I have a specific problem that I need solved, but I don’t know how to solve this yet. What do I need to know, try, or do before I reach out to you to buy your product.

So let me give you a couple of examples to kind of share what I mean by this:

Let’s say that your main offer is selling a digital course about the seven ways to overcome workplace burnout. Your lead magnet might include a quiz determining if someone is experiencing workplace burnout. Maybe your ideal client doesn’t even know they’re experiencing workplace burnout. They know that they’re feeling stressed, or anxious, or exhausted at the end of the day. But they have absolutely no idea that they’re experiencing workplace burnout. Maybe your free lead magnet is a quiz so that they can learn that yes, they are likely experiencing workplace burnout. So that then helps bring them through the journey of, “Yes, I want to buy this person’s seven ways to overcome workplace burnout.”

Or maybe you have a group helping women to overcome the fear of public speaking. Your lead magnet might include a cheat sheet that provides them grounding tools to helps oneself ground or cope before the speaking event.

Or maybe your one-to-one services focuses on teaching parents how to manage anxious attachment. Your lead magnet might be a free webinar or a workshop explaining first what anxious attachment is and it might also go into some of the signs that parents may notice if their child has an anxious attachment. Because again, some parents may not necessarily know what’s happening. They might see something within their children and they might worry, but they might not yet know that it’s anxious attachment or that they should buy your services. So at this point, you’re more teaching people about what they might be seeing.

So that’s the first step.

Step 2: Identify one solution that you have to solve the problem

The next is for your lead magnet, once you have that problem that you want to solve, is identify one solution that you have that can help solve this problem.

No one is expecting for you to give out everything that you know about a particular topic. That’s where your offer comes in. But if someone is, let’s go back to the example of maybe public speaking. If someone is experiencing fear of public speaking and your lead magnet is a cheat sheet, you can give them a handful of tools to help them ground before the speaking event. It may not necessarily be everything that you know, but it’s giving them some helpful tools or wins so that they can help themselves with that specific issue.

Step 3: Breakdown your solution into digestible steps, strategies or content

The next thing, and of course this depends on what type of lead magnet you will choose, is breaking down your solutions and steps, strategies or digestible content.

This will go back to the previous example about public speaking. It’s what you’re helping someone with now is grounding strategies before the speaking event. So, you might list maybe three or five strategies to help them ground in that moment. So, break it down into very easy, digestible steps, strategies that can help them.

When it comes to breaking down your solutions steps, strategies into digestible content, it’s important to know that less is more. One thing that a lot of people choose as their lead magnet is an e-book, and an e-book is a type of lead magnet, but sometimes when people expect that they have to have 60 or 70 or 80 pages in an e-book. But one of the reasons that someone might not either use your lead magnet once they opt in or take the next steps when it comes to implementing the content that’s in your lead magnet is overwhelm. So less is more. So, we want to make sure that we keep it simple, easy, and digestible.

Step 4: Choose the Type of Lead Magnet to Use

Number four, choose what type of lead magnet best aligns with your content. So, this goes back to the solution that you’re going to provide, as well as the steps or strategies or the information that you’re going to share.

You can choose from a variety of different types of formats for your lead magnet. You can create a cheat sheet, a checklist, a questionnaire, a guide, an e-book, a worksheet, a pre-recorded webinar, or even gated podcast episodes. And what I mean by gated podcast episodes, they’re episodes, but they only get them if they obviously sign up for your email. They’re not available to the public. Digital templates or just templates in general. Quizzes and there’s so many other types that you can create, but something that you know that is a format that really supports what you want to teach someone.

Let me give you an example. In my business I sell digital templates, so one of my templates are social media templates and that way therapists and coaches who sign up can see what my templates look like. They can try them out even if they don’t buy any, they’re on my email. I have them on my email that I can eventually sell to again. But they have gotten free templates that they can create for their social media so that they don’t necessarily have to go out and create them themselves. So, this makes their life a little easier. It might not a hundred percent solve a problem unless a problem is that they don’t put themselves out in the world because they have been avoiding social media. But it helps make their lives a little easier so that they don’t have to necessarily start from scratch.

Step 5: Design your Lead Magnet

The next step, so step five is to design your lead magnet. Now you can use multiple different software or whatever it is that you want to create your lead magnet. But when it comes to whether it’s cheat sheets, checklist, guides, worksheets, even the templates that I create, I always use Canva and you can use the free plan in Canva so you don’t have to necessarily pay for it. They do have a pro version and I personally use the pro version and love it. But the free still has lots of customizability that you can use, especially if you’re starting out.

So, then you start designing your lead magnet. But the key here is not to get too lost in the creation stage because you can always edit your lead magnet over time. So, I’ve changed some of my lead magnets up. I’d say maybe even eight times since it’s been available. So just know that if it’s not the prettiest version or if you feel like you want to add something in the future, that is totally okay. You can always change it. And that’s what I love about Canva, that you can easily go in, you can change the visuals, you can change the fonts. You can change everything to really fit who you are. So even though we say design your lead magnet, it doesn’t have to be perfect.

The key here is that it helps your ideal client solve a specific problem. It’s what the lead magnet solves that’s going to be the reason someone opts in to your lead magnet or your email list. And that’s because people want that win, right? They don’t necessarily a hundred percent care that it’s like the most prettiest thing out there. But if it gets them what they originally signed up for, that’s the most important part.

So again, don’t get too lost into the creation stage. Really, what I’d say is spend more time in the marketing stage. So that’s going to be stage seven because the goal is for people to know that your lead magnet is out there so that they can then sign up for it and then get on your email list. And if you’re stuck in design stage, you don’t get it out in the world. And if you don’t spend enough time in the marketing stage and putting it out there, then people aren’t going to know it’s out there, and you’re not going to necessarily get people on your email list.

Step 6: Choose an Email Marketing Provider

Number six, set up your lead magnet to an email marketing provider. Now, this isn’t your Google account or your Hotmail account or whatever it is that you use for your email. It is a specific email marketing provider. In my practice, I use Convertkit. There are multiple out there. There’s AWeber, there’s MailChimp. But overall, I use Convertkit.

And why these are really helpful is for a few reasons and I spoke about it in episode 15. So, like I said, if you haven’t listened to episode 15, go back to that because that’ll tell you more about email marketing. But when it comes to email marketing, it helps one, automate everything in the sense that it automatically sends people your lead magnet so you don’t have to send it to them by hand. But it also provides that unsubscribe button that is important to be compliant with most spam laws. So, it’s really important to use an email marketing provider.

This really does help automate your practice as well because you can have emails created in advance and then they just go out when you schedule them. And I do that quite frequently. A lot of my podcasts and my blogs, I have done weeks in advance and then I’ll have the marketing up and I’ll just have it automatically go out Tuesday morning, even though I might have it scheduled for the next two or three months. That really helps me automate because my email subscribers are getting the emails every week, but I don’t necessarily have to put all that extra work into doing it. So, setting your lead magnet up with your email provider.

Step 7: Link Your Lead Magnet to Your Website and Share with the World

And then link it to your website and share it with the world. So, if you have a website, which hopefully you do, you can link it to your website, either as a popup, a button, or a tab on your website. You can share it on your social media platforms. You can even add it into your signature on your email.

And I use my signature quite frequently to almost advertise for certain things. So, although I don’t have a lead magnet on there now, my specific email signature actually says, check out my Designer Practice podcast. So even though I’m not necessarily writing it there every single time and people can tell, it’s a part of my signature, it helps advertise. And I think that’s a really great way instead of having to tell everyone that you speak to, that you have this particular freebie or this particular resource that they can see it in your email signature as you’re writing back and forth with clients and so forth.

But you really do want to spend time marketing because this is what gets people on your email list. It’s not as much of the design process. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But if they can’t find it, if they don’t know it’s out there and it doesn’t solve a specific problem that’s important for them, they are not going to sign up. So, make sure that you do share it with the world in some capacity.

Even what I do, sometimes I don’t do this a lot because of course it costs money, but it’s even buying ads, right? Whether it’s with a specific organization, I don’t specifically use at this point in time Facebook Ads or Google Ads, but those are definitely things that in the future I might do. But those are definitely things that people could do, but sometimes I’ll buy ads with specific organizations that I know my ideal client sees. And of course, I’m paying, but then I’m getting people on my email list who are my ideal client. So those are also some other options as well.

Example of an Offer-Aligned Lead Magnet

So, before we move on, I want to give you a larger example. I gave you a couple of examples earlier in this episode. But I want to give you an example from, say, an ideal client to a potential offer to an offer-aligned lead magnet.

So, let’s just imagine that your ideal client are people who are experiencing workplace burnout.

Maybe then you’re creating a digital course topic, and this might even be your course’s title, “How to find your Dream Job and Exit your Toxic Workplace Environment in 90 days.”

Then your potential lead magnet might be either a questionnaire or a quiz, and then that can help them identify are they experiencing workplace burnout or are they in a toxic work environment? So, your title of your quiz might be, “Are you working in a toxic work environment?” And that is super simple because people might just want to know, am I, am I not? And of course, you’re getting people on your email list as they do this quiz.

And when we think of quizzes, they are a little bit more challenging to complete than the other types of lead magnet. And typically to automate quizzes you would need a specific software. Like in my practice I use Interact for my quiz. But if quizzes are something that you enjoy, those are definitely things that you might find helpful.

Private Practice Lead Magnet Worksheet

So, I want to bring this a step further for you. So, I have created my own lead magnet on how to create a private practice lead magnet. And it is called the Private Practice Lead Magnet Worksheet. So, it does bring you through these seven steps, but it’s more of a worksheet to help you hone in on your offer-aligned lead magnet.

So, if you’re interested in signing up for this free worksheet, go to kayladas.com/leadmagnetworksheet

That’s kayladas.com/leadmagnetworksheet

Or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the link.

Key Takeaways

Now I just want to go back and go through some of these key takeaways that I think is really, really important for today’s episode.

It’s first that your lead magnet should always be value-first. It is important that what you say, you’re going to provide your ideal client, that you are providing that, right? If you’re saying that you’re giving, seven steps for creating an offer-aligned lead magnet, you’re going to want to make sure that you provide seven steps for creating a service aligned lead magnet, right? You want to make sure that you’re being very transparent and authentic with what you give them, especially when they sign up for your lead magnet.

Less is more. So just because you want to put value-first does not mean that you have to have 60 pages of something. Sometimes a one-page checklist, or one or two digital templates or a 10- or 15-minute webinar or gated podcast episode is enough, right? You don’t necessarily have to provide a lot of content, because the more content you provide, the more overwhelmed people are going to experience. So, making sure it’s value first, but really digestible so that people can actually solve or get support with, or have their life made a little easier by what you’re going to provide them.

And don’t get too last, the creation stage. I know the research and creation. We can spend so much time and lose so much time and never put what it is we need to out in the world. Your lead magnet does not have to be perfect. I am giving you permission. If you’re listening to me now, please know that I’m giving you permission that you do not have to have it perfect. If you know that it’s valuable. If you know that your ideal client is going to get some sort of solution or their life is going to be made a little easier by your content. It does not have to be the prettiest worksheet or the prettiest checklist because you can always update it.

And really where you want to focus more time is the marketing stage. And I don’t want the marketing stage to feel too overwhelming either, but it’s really making sure that your lead magnet is out in the world. So, sharing it on your social media, linking it on your website, sharing it on your email signature, potentially you don’t necessarily have to, but paying for ads on where your ideal client is for that free content because people love to sign up for free content that is valuable and that can help them with a problem that they are experiencing.

So please, please, please don’t let fear stop you from putting your free lead magnet in the world. And the other thing, which I haven’t already shared is you don’t need to go out and make hundreds of lead magnets. Now, I have lots now, but I’ve been in my business coaching for around two and a half years. Almost three years. So, it would make sense that I would have multiple lead magnets. Start with one. Then if you want to start creating more, please do. The more lead magnets, the better. The more problems you can help to solve, the more people you can get on your email list. But start with one.

Don’t let this process be so overwhelming for you that it stops you in your tracks and prevents you from moving forward.

Conclusion

Well, I hope you enjoy today’s episode. And again, if you want to check out the free worksheet to help you really hone in on your lead magnet, please go to kayladas.com/leadmagnetworksheet.

And I hope you found value in today’s episode. If you have a friend or colleague that you know that would find value from either this episode or the podcast as a whole, please share this podcast with people that you know.

Thank you everyone for joining me today on The Designer Practice Podcast.

Until next time, bye for now.

Credits & Disclaimers

Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay

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