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Do you spend enough time mapping out your lead generation entry points? Or perhaps it's more of an afterthought that comes along in the wake of creating an awesome lead magnet.
It's OK if you do things that way. But you can do better than OK, right?
Be more strategic. That's something we marketing folk are often drumming into our skulls. And for good reason. We do need to be more strategic.
Mapping out entry points—not just deciding what content to create—should always be a key part of lead gen strategy.
Good lead magnets are gold in any successful demand gen and conversion strategy: 50% of businesses that employ lead magnets have higher conversion rates! But for lead magnets to be effective, you must ensure your prospects can easily find relevant lead magnets.
You might have the most valuable, educational, and wow-inducing lead magnet on the market, but if you bury it on one specific, difficult-to-find page on your website... how do you expect your potential customers to find it easily?
To increase signups via your lead magnets, you need to provide entry points across your website at different stages of awareness. Reverse-engineering your entry points allows you to help potential customers find the right lead magnet at the right time.
In this article, we will explore what entry points are and how to successfully use them to get people signed up and into your database.
What is a lead magnet?
Let's recap what lead magnets are before moving on, because entry points are inextricably linked to them.
Lead magnets are incentives in the form of free resources that you offer your audience members; in return, they permit you to contact them
Many people have a particular idea of what a lead magnet is, but it can take any form as long as it gets contacts onto your database.
The one thing it does have to be is valuable.
When you provide something of value to your prospective customers, they're more likely to hand over contact details in return (usually name and email address).
Lead magnets also offer an excellent opportunity to nurture relationships with prospects, allowing them to see that you might be a good fit for each other.
What is a lead magnet entry point?
Understanding what a lead magnet does is only half the story, you also need to know what entry points are and how to use them.
An entry point is a way of extending your hand out to potential prospects and presenting them with the opportunity to opt in to your database.
An entry point is the final stop of the route people take to enter your database; it's the point at which they sign up to access a lead magnet
Lead magnets are the tangible thing that people download or sign up for. Entry points are how people get access to the lead magnet.
All lead magnets work the same way: They get a prospect to input their contact details in return for helpful information, content, a trial, or something similar. That brief moment of handing over personal details is the entry point to the lead magnet.
For the most part, businesses understand signup forms and lead magnets. However, it's rare for businesses to consider the various entry points available to them.
It's also vital to have entry points scattered across your website, with clear intent regarding which awareness stage they are aimed at.
The more tailored entry points you have, the more likely you attract consumers via lead magnets.
Where should your lead magnet entry points be?
If you are looking for ideas on various types of powerful lead magnets, you can read this article covering lead magnets and segmentation here.
But, once you've created them, what entry points do you use and where should those entry points be?
It's not enough to put your lead magnets in just one place and hope for the best. You need to strategically place them in locations that coincide with the correct awareness stages.
(How many websites have newsletter lead magnets on their website and think that's enough?)
Some of the places on your website you need to include lead magnets:
Homepage
Footer
Contact page (something other than the contact us form)
In-line on your blog posts or articles (not just as the CTA)
Widget on the side of your blog/podcast
Popups
The main point: lead magnets should be in multiple places across your website, and especially on popular pages (e.g., blog posts). And they should be related to the traffic that your pages are likely to attract.
But don't stop there! Once you've got their attention, each entry point should take people to a specific lead magnet landing page rather than getting them to sign on the page they happened to have landed on. A bespoke landing page allows you to "sell" your lead magnet to potential customers and track the performance and conversion of each lead magnet.
How to design enticing lead magnet entry points
Your entry points should be well-designed and look engaging. Boring, bland, and downright ugly entry points aren't going to grab attention in an over-saturated internet marketplace.
You can create an eye-catching graphic (using something like Canva, or In-Design) that links to a landing page. Or, you can use your marketing software to help you design pop-ups, sign-up forms, and landing pages.
And while we're on that matter, convenience is king! People don't want to sit and fill in loads of contact details. Use the power of segmentation and behavioral progressive profiling to figure out where your prospects are in their buyer journey and stick to the essentials - name and email is usually enough.
How are awareness and entry points linked?
The need for a variety of entry points is, as we said, highly linked to awareness stages: Where prospects are in the buyer's journey will very much determine what type of lead magnet and entry point relates to them.
What are the various awareness stages?
Let's have a quick recap of the five awareness stages:
Unaware: The prospect doesn't know (or care about) you, and is dealing with symptoms of a problem.
Problem-Aware: The prospect is aware of the core problem but isn't yet clear on solutions—i.e., how that problem might be resolved.
Solution-Aware: The prospect knows that solutions exist, but not your product specifically.
Product-Aware: The prospect is aware that you offer a product and is starting to narrow down options.
Most Aware: The prospect is ready to buy and just needs to justify and validate the reasons to commit to purchasing.
To reverse-engineer the placement of the right lead magnets at the right entry points, you'll need to think about which pages your prospects will be on at which awareness stage.
For example, in the early awareness stages, they will likely land on blog pages answering questions; so at this stage you will need to create the right lead magnet and present it on those blog pages.
In contrast, prospects who are product-aware might look at more specific pages, such as pricing pages. Accordingly, you'll want entry points on those particular pages for a relevant lead magnet.
How to use entry points in your business
Marketers spend time creating wow-inducing lead magnets... without giving thought to their placement; they expect prospects to do all the work of figuring out where to find the right lead magnet.
However, you can't expect potential customers to do that work; you must lead them to the right lead magnet at the right time and place.
It's all about creating powerful, relevant lead magnets and presenting them to prospective customers in multiple places across your website.
If you need help engineering your entry points to enable increased downloading of lead magnets, then get in touch with us.
How to Increase Leads: Effective Entry Points for Lead Magnet Signups
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kenda Macdonald is a forensic psychology major, the Demand Generation Consulting Practice Lead at MarketingProfs, and the founder of Automation Ninjas, the UK's leading behavioral automation agency. She's an international public speaker, a multi-award-winning businesswoman, a doting cat mom, and the author of the best-selling Hack the Buyer Brain.
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