Boosting Your Facebook Sales With A Lead Magnet

In an immaterial universe filled with Facebook, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram, one thing remains: your email address.

Your email address has unwittingly become your identity card on the web, as it gives you access to many platforms whose content you consume on a regular basis.

What's more, it is the gateway to your secret garden: your inbox.

Because you’re surfing from network to network, it’s difficult to capture your attention for more than a few minutes, which is why email addresses are valuable for an advertiser.

How does one manage to obtain your email address in these conditions? It's simple, we offer you content in exchange for your email address.

The Lead Magnet could also be called an "e-mail magnet", as it offers targets what they consider to be high-value content, in exchange for which they are willing to give, without hesitation, their email address to receive it. On a large scale, this content will attract a significant number of emails for a low cost, hence the name.

To make it easy to understand, here is an example of a (fictitious) business that sells sewing equipment on the Internet: Crochet.

Crochet would like to set up an ad that would allow it to:

• Quickly build an email database
• Raise brand awareness through educational content
• Identify prospects for retargeting
• ... and, of course, sell!

Let's not forget that Crochet is advertising on Facebook. Having an email database will allow it to: Create a retargeting audience with these emails for its next ads

• Put its pixel to work by tracking conversions on its website
• Create a lookalike audience from its leads (and thus improve its customer acquisition cost)
• Send emails to its new prospects

As you can see, a Lead Magnet is quite beneficial and is far from negligible if you’re on Facebook.

Crochet decides to give this method a try and must now choose among a multitude of possible Lead Magnets:

• The Guide: a long, technical document, which provides tons of information…
• The Checklist: shorter and more concise, it allows you to read up quickly on a subject
• The Cheat-Sheet: a "secret" method to achieving a specific result
• The Explainer Video: your guide or checklist in video format
• The Quiz: a fun way to call upon someone’s curiosity
• The Webinar: a free course for your target audience in your field of expertise

Now, let's have a look at what Crochet’s Lead Magnet would look like if it selected one of the formats mentioned above:

• The Guide: How to Sew a Sweater from A to Z
• The Checklist: 10 Methods Used by Sewing Professionals
• The Cheat-Sheet: Darning a Sock Without Using Any Additional Thread
• The Explainer Video: 3 Videos To Get Better at Sewing!
• The Quiz: What is Your Sewing Skill Level? Test Your Knowledge Now!
• The Webinar: Benefit From the Tips and Tricks of a Sewing Professional Live (and Get Your Questions Answered)!

If sewing is a passion of yours, one of those titles has likely piqued your curiosity. One thing leading to another, you click on the link and give your email address in order to get access to the content.

Now, discussing theory is fun, but what about practice?

To satisfy your insatiable curiosity, I've analyzed a lead magnet, even if it's technically the second one in this article (where were you!?).

Without further ado, here is the Lead Magnet that I’ve selected.

J7 MEDIA : A FACEBOOK AGENCY’S LEAD MAGNET

Let’s analyze the lead magnet that we used in 2017 as well as its results.

A - Brief

To create this lead magnet, we asked ourselves 4 questions:

• Who is our target?
• What are their problems?
• What type of information would they like to obtain?
• How?
• What do we want to sell them afterwards?

Questions which we answered as such:

• Our target: Facebook business pages owners
• Problem: they’re having trouble selling on Facebook
• Information: detailed case studies and strategies to implement
• How: using video (which is a popular format on Facebook)
• Sell: a form to meet with an agency representative

B - Process

In terms of advertising, this is the one that we use to drive traffic to our Lead Magnet.

The ad copy clearly highlights our targets’ problem and gives them a very simple solution: watch the 3 videos. In addition, we mention the technique outlined in our article on writing Facebook ad copy.

The video on Facebook follows the same pattern, but in a more dynamic way.

The ad makes a clear promise to the user: for free, you will discover the secret to growing your business on Facebook.

Then, when we get to the Lead Magnet’s landing page, 3 key pieces of information are requested:

• last name
• first name
• email

No need to ask for more; that’s enough information for you to be able to send emails and write personalized copy.

Here is an outline of the steps that you will follow.

First, you consume content, then you get to a meeting form.

Chances are, you don't want to fill it out right away (no time, not ready, etc.).

All right, in this case: retargeting begins.

You may have noticed that the colour of the ads/funnel and of the images used are the same.

This technique is called Ad Scent.

Understand that if an image, ad copy, a colour, an emotion made you click on an ad, then that probably means that you would like to find it all along your journey and not only at the start.

If you decide to click because of the yellow tones and you are shown brown on the next page, you’ll feel lost: avoid having this effect on your customers.

The second step of retargeting: emailing.

In this case, we opted for 5 emails over a period of two weeks:

The first 3 suggest blog posts that might be of interest to you (we continue to give you high-value content).

The 4th gives you client testimonials (which in turn gives credibility to our message and piques your curiosity toward us).

The 5th gives you the opportunity to reply directly and schedule a meeting without having to fill out the form.

Don't forget to include a call-to-action in each email to make it easier for your prospect to convert.

Now, let’s talk numbers: what has this Lead Magnet brought us?

Since its launch in mid-2017 to December 31 of the same year, we have :

• Collected no less than 5,849 email addresses for $2.03 each
• Generated 323 meeting forms with our acquisition advertising for $36.77 each
• Generated 90 meeting forms with our retargeting for $7.42 each

Of course, some months were better than others. Here's an example for the month of August.

• $1.90 per lead
• $25 per meeting form while in the acquisition phase
• $0,5 per meeting form by retargeting!

CREATING YOUR LEAD MAGNET: SETUP GUIDE

Now that you have understood the importance of having a Lead Magnet, a question arises: how can I get mine up and running quickly?

It's pretty simple, we'll teach you how in 6 simple steps.

1 - Find your Magnet

Before thinking about Leads, you need to think about your Magnet, i.e. the document/video that will trigger hysteria among your prospects.

I've given you a few examples with Crochet and J7 Media, now it’s up to you to find what works for your business!

Don't hesitate to look to Lead Magnets used in your industry (those of your competitors) or in neighboring markets for inspiration.

2 - Put your Magnet online

Here, you have to create a dedicated page to sell your "Magnet" as well as the funnel that your prospect will go through until you get the desired conversion (ex.: purchase, meeting form, etc...).

If you have a website and know how to create additional pages, great!

If not, I suggest that you use the services of Instapage or Clickfunnel.

These are very simple page creation tools that are adapted for this kind of strategy.

3 - Set up Facebook Ads tracking

This is an essential step as we will be using a Facebook advertising campaign with a “conversion” objective and, if your Pixel is not set up, launching such a campaign may prove to be difficult.

Here are the steps:

• Ensure that your pixel works on all pages of your funnel.
• Create custom conversions in the Facebook Ads Manager to track sign-ups, but also purchases/form completions.
• Activate these conversions by manually loading the pages.

4 - Create your Facebook campaign

• Design a few ads to be tested by carefully following our guide here.
• Set up a test on multiple audiences (if possible, do so right from the start).
• Select a "Conversion" objective when creating your campaign and select the personalized conversion that you created at step 3.
• After launching the campaign, create a report with the metrics that you’re interested in tracking by customizing the columns.

5 - Prepare your email sequence

Unless you already have an emailing platform, I would recommend using Mailchimp, which is a free tool as long as you don't exceed 2,000 subscribers.

• Create a list of subscribers named after your Guide
• Integrate your Mailchimp account (and your list) to your Landing page
• Create your campaign (automation) in Mailchimp
• Set up your first email to be sent when a new lead is introduced
• Launch your automation and test it out by inputting several email addresses in your Lead Magnet.

A few tips when it comes to sending emails:

• Do not send multiple prospecting emails on the same day.
• Do one follow-up per week, taking good note of the results. This will help you with your future optimizations (editing email copy, subject, etc.).
• Create a sequence of at least 4 emails, the first ones being additional content (with a subtle call-to-action at the end) and a more direct sales pitch to finish.

6 - Launch!

That’s it! Give Facebook some time to test your different ads/audiences before optimizing anything.

Ultimately, your campaign should look like this:

Note that your cost per Lead is likely to be higher than our own funnel. Don't panic, your first few weeks are used to determine your cost per Lead; only then should you try to lower it, if possible. Otherwise, you can try to increase the customer conversion rate through the funnel (by modifying your retargeting ads, emails, content, etc.).

Keep in mind that a $0.50 Lead and a $4 Lead are not only different in price; quality should also be taken into account!

For some complementary reading, we recommend our article: "The $220K Per Month Funnel".

Thank you for reading!