Website Conversions: How to Generate More Leads from your Website using Lead Magnets

You’ve invested time and money into a stunning new website, and it’s a good feeling when you finally launch.

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the process.

At SOtechnology, we design beautifully branded, user-friendly websites, but we’d be remiss if we said that’s all you’ll need to make sales.

Once you have your new website, you’ll want to get leads and sales from it. And getting these from your website requires more than good branding and user experience (although these things are hugely important).

That’s why in this article, we’re going to explore how you can generate more leads from your website using lead magnets.

If you work with an agency like us, these elements should be considered during the discovery stage of the website build; that way, they can be designed and developed right from the get-go.

Use a free lead magnet across your website to entice leads

A lead magnet is a valuable resource that you give away on your website in exchange for someone’s contact information. Generally, this will be a person’s name and email address.

Lead magnets work well because they give your website visitors something of value without them having to speak to anyone. Using a lead magnet will also allow you to build up a list of prospects who may buy from you later.

The problem with your standard lead magnets

You’ll have likely seen a lead magnet before. It’s often in the form of a checklist, cheatsheet, or free training video. These tend to be easy to create but, unfortunately, people just don’t value them. You have zero control over whether someone actually uses it (hint, they often don’t!) and you have no idea what they’re actually struggling with.

So when clients ask us the best way to collect leads from their website, we usually recommend lead magnets that are a little bit different.

The lead magnet quiz

A quiz is an interactive way to get leads. Quizzes work well because they are actually fun and engaging, your audience can take part in them in the moment (rather than go download a checklist from their emails later), and they give you a lot of insightful data.

You can even personalise your follow up messaging and emails to your audience, depending on how they’ve answered the questions within your quiz.

This is generally referred to as a quiz funnel, and some of our clients have found this an effective way of turning website visitors into warm leads.

A newsletter

A newsletter is a big commitment, but, if you do it right, it can be a great way of increasing your leads, building trust and authority.

The problem with newsletters is that they can sound a tad dull. When we see the words ‘sign up to my newsletter’ it doesn’t exactly sound enticing.

So make sure you sell your newsletter. You can do this by giving it a name and outlining the benefits and what’s included.

For example James Clear, author of Atomic Habits calls his newsletter the ‘3,2,1 newsletter’. He has a dedicated a webpage to it where he explains that the newsletter is sent out every Thursday and includes, ‘3 short ideas from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 question for you to ponder.’ This is a great way to get people joining up to his email list, because he sells the newsletter.

A book

Now, we’re not for one second saying that you should go and write a book just to gain leads from your website. But if you do already have a book, you could use it for lead generation (without you having to create something new from scratch).

Some business owners share a chapter of their book, while others share the entire book in exchange for an email address. Of course, this is entirely up to you.

One of our clients, Daniel Priestley, CEO of Dent Global, offers his best-selling books on his website for free. This works incredibly well for gaining leads and transforming them into sales.

Content upgrades

A content upgrade or content asset is simply a piece of content that accompanies public content on your website.

This is where you can use checklists and cheat sheets to your advantage. For example, let’s say you’re an interior designer and you create an article about how to make small rooms appear bigger. Accompanying that article you could also have a checklist someone could download, going through the key points of what they can do to make a small space look bigger.

This works because you know that the person reading the article will find it incredibly helpful (they’re already interested in that exact topic), and it won’t take too much extra work to create your checklist.

The buyer’s journey and different lead magnets

It’s also worth remembering that you can have different lead magnets for people at different stages of the sales process. For example, you could have a quiz to capture leads when your audience are at the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey, i.e. they’ve become aware of their problem and they’re researching things to help.

For example, a fitness coach might have a ‘check your health score’ quiz on their website.

A lead magnet for people almost ready to buy

You could also have lead magnets at the consideration or purchase stage, when someone has decided to invest in a product or service like yours, but are comparing different service providers.

This is where you could create things like buyer’s guides, product demos, and trials etc. The idea is to help someone make a buying decision, plus you get to capture their email address in the process.

Where should you place your lead magnet on your website?

For your website to generate leads, you will have to feature your lead magnets prominently. You can work with your website developer to do this, but as an example you could feature your lead magnet:

On your homepage – you could even have a button in the first third of your homepage so your audience sees it (and clicks on it) straight away
Featured in all of your content – for example, within your blogs and the sidebar of your blogs
As a button in your main header menu
On your sales pages or services pages (particularly for lead magnets like buyer’s guides)
In the footer of your website
On your contact page

Should you have a landing page or a pop-up?

A landing page for your lead magnet is essentially one dedicated web page for you to capture leads. It gives you the space to explain what the lead magnet is, explain the benefits and includes testimonials.

They also work well because you can easily share this landing page on your social media channels too.

A pop-up is as it sounds, a message that pops up on your website asking if you’d like to sign up to something. You’ll have probably seen them (or been slightly irritated by them) before.

They can pop up when someone takes an action by clicking on a button, or automatically after a set period of time.

Both work well, but we’d recommend getting a good web developer to help you with this.

Need a website that generates leads? Come talk to us.

We’ve helped brands showcase their products and services for over twenty years. We have a talented team of designers and website developers who work together to build beautiful, conversion-friendly websites for unique and exciting brands.

If you’d like to know more about what we do, don’t hesitate to get in touch.