AP 1023: What Lead Magnet Should I Create for My New Business?

About This Episode

This week I'm talking with Amanda Brown, an entrepreneur who's launching a new website about working from home and writing a book on the same subject. She needs to create a lead magnet but isn't sure what route to go down. What should her lead magnet be?

During our call, we start out by discussing Amanda's current plans, and why she scrapped her first lead magnet idea. We then talk through several other options for strong lead magnets and how she can use her audience's input for choosing which lead magnet to run with. I give Amanda strategies for priming her audience for her upcoming book through her lead magnet, and she creates some next steps.

What You'll Learn:
Learn how to use lead magnets to support your audience, gain feedback, and prime your fans for an upcoming product or book release.

AskPat 1023 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 1023 of the AskPat 2.0. This is a show where entrepreneurs like you call in, we do a little coaching session, coaching them through some problem, pain or issue that they're having, or question—and by the end the goal is to transform their direction and just their thinking about that thing that's giving them a problem.

Today we're talking with Amanda, who has a really great business. She's looking to grow her email list, but she's not quite sure exactly what lead magnet or incentive she should provide for her new business. So we're gonna talk with her though that to make sure she selects the right one, but also doesn't overextend herself. A lot of people, when it comes to lead magnets, try to think that they have to create the biggest thing in the world when really you just need something that's really impactful. Actually, a smaller win goes a much longer way.

We're gonna talk about those things with Amanda and help her out just in a minute, so make sure you stick around. But before that, I do wanna thank today's sponsor which is FreshBooks.com. One of the things about being self-employed is getting control over your finances. You have to do that or else it's all for nothing. It can be a big headache because there's a lot of things that go along with that. The income, the expenses, the invoices that you create, just understanding what it all means, and numbers make people crazy sometimes.

Why not let a software do all the hard and heavy lifting for you, like FreshBooks? I've been using FreshBooks for a very long time. They just make it super easy for everything, right? Like keeping track of income and expenses, which they can do automatically. Keeping track of invoices—who has yet to even open those invoices so you can get paid on time. It just takes thirty seconds to create an invoice. Really just always updating software to make our lives easier and they're just such a great, caring team over there.

So if you wanna check them out for free, full access for thirty days, free trial, all you have to do is go to FreshBooks.com/askpat and just make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Sweet.

All right, now let's have this chat today with Amanda. She's awesome, here we go.

Amanda, thank you so much for taking the time to come on AskPat 2.0 today. How are you?

Amanda Brown: I'm very well thank you. It's actually a really sunny day here, I'm just north of London. It's great to be with you.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, you as well. You know, we got to see each other in London at Youpreneur in London in November last year. It definitely wasn't sunny and nice and warm, because it was freezing and I had lost my voice, so I'm glad that it is sunny there now. I'm excited to introduce you to the audience, and then we'll help you out. So why don't you do that right now?

Amanda Brown: Okay. So my name's Amanda Brown, I run an online agency here in the UK, but I am writing a book. It's going to be all about overcoming the challenges of working from home. I'm writing it with my two daughters, one has just become freelance and she's a freelance journalist. The other one works in international development. We're going to write this book together. So this is my legacy, if you like, to write this book.

So my background is, I worked in a corporate environment in the city for fourteen years before having my children. I then set up a completely different business, and about ten years ago I started my consultancy. Now I'm doing—well, I suppose what you could call another pivot to write this book under this title of Homepreneur. So that's another challenge that I have, is actually finding something, a lead magnet, which I know that you talk about a lot, that will suit my audience.

Pat Flynn: Awesome. I love that you're writing this book, I love it even more that you're writing it with your daughters. That's super cool, and Homepreneur tells me exactly what it is you're talking about.

So lead magnets are great. What have you thought about trying—or what's on your mind related to that right now?

Amanda Brown: Okay, well before I decided to put up my question to AskPat, I thought that I might write—and you're going to laugh at this—the ultimate guide to working from home. A lovely, chunky ebook. Then having watched your YouTube video recently, I scrapped that idea and then came to a full stop and thought, “Oh, it's a good thing I'm speaking to Pat next week because we can actually maybe come up with something that's a little bit more attractive than a heavyweight ebook.”

Pat Flynn: Cool. Yeah, we'll jam on that. Would you like to share with everybody why you scrapped that idea?

Amanda Brown: Well, I think on your advice, that you've said that people just simply haven't got time to download and read these things. I mean, they may download them, but whether they read them or not is another thing. So actually I think you want something that is really going to help answer people's questions quickly, because we're all suffering from that terrible information overload, if you like.

Pat Flynn: This is true.

Amanda Brown: So I'm looking for help.

Pat Flynn: This is true. You hit the nail right on the head, which is you need to answer people's most pressing questions. A great lead magnet is something where, when people see it, they immediately want to know what the answer is, or they immediately imagine them using it, or they immediately just don't think twice and they go, “Yes, that's exactly what I need. I need that now, here's my email.”

What are some questions that people who are working from home—what are some questions that they absolutely are looking to answer most immediately, before even they can get started?

Amanda Brown: Okay, so what I've done in order to help me write the book is to send out a survey. So I have a survey that I've put up on my website and I've been sharing through social media. So at the moment I have nearly 390 responses to that survey. Actually, the question, or the factor that is worrying most people is obtaining great work-life balance. So that's the challenge that people face, switching off when work should finish and family life should start. So that's been the number one, but actually the answers to the questions are quite . . . the frequency of the responses is quite similar. So things like focus and distractions is very popular as an answer, as is productivity. So those are the three most popular answers from my survey so far.

Pat Flynn: Mm-hmm (affirmative), I like it. So work-life balance is number one, focus and distractions, and productivity. They all kind of relate, don't they?

Amanda Brown: Sure. Yeah, they do. Very much so. So I'm going on with this survey because I'd really like to make it a publishable piece of research. It's a very quick survey, but it's given me some great insights and I mean, I'm really pleased with the results so far.

Pat Flynn: Well good for you for putting it on. I think that's a very smart thing to do. Now you have some clear answers from your audience and you can build accordingly. I think a lead magnet related to all three of these things can be done in a way that's not an extensive overloaded ebook, but something that could potentially be even quite short. Because I obviously help entrepreneurs as well, and they all struggle with work-life balance. I've struggled with work-life balance. Focus and distraction, that plays a role in that, and obviously that all is related to productivity.

So through that, what are some ideas that you have related to answering or discussing these three things in a much quicker way? I mean, you saw that video that I have on YouTube—we'll make sure to link to it in the show notes. It's basically a video that shares seventeen different ideas—and maybe that's the problem, that there's seventeen choices that you could have related to this. But which ones are most exciting to you, or which ones are you thinking of maybe going down?

Amanda Brown: Okay, so the first one that I actually have had a go at is an A4 pdf, and it's the top ten Homepreneur productivity apps. So I've pulled that together on a piece of software called Canva, that everybody's familiar with.

Pat Flynn: That's the one you sent to me?

Amanda Brown: That's the one I sent to you, yes. So your thoughts on that would be quite good.

Then for charity, I created a planner which I sell—it's a not for profit planner. I could offer a download for that, a free download. So it's a weekly planner tool that people can use. It's a piece of paper essentially, divided up so people can plan their week. I'd obviously explain how I use it. I've sold quite a lot of them actually. So that would be a second idea.

The third idea related to productivity is a habit tracker, which matches the planner.

Then one thing that I . . . you might laugh at this. I went to a talk by Chris Guillebeau in London, he was promoting his Side Hustle book. We all had to come up with some ideas of side hustles. So I came up with the idea of preparing 100 daily quotes that people could use on social media. Well, I could give them as well, because people love a good quote and I've already prepared them, so maybe I could use that.

Pat Flynn: You know, all of these ideas are great ideas. You could use them all. Not all in one transaction, but what's really cool about this is you have different types of lead magnets available for different types of people. I think you had mentioned in your application how you were thinking of creating specific lead magnets that were targeted related to the different facets of working from home. You're kind of doing that already.

So you have people who are really into apps, so apps obviously for people who are into technology and there's a certain segment of your audience likely who would just drool over this. Then you have your planner and your habit tracker, pieces of paper that are really helpful because you're helping people organize their thoughts and mostly organizing their day. Honestly, you could do each of these. I would recommend that you do each of these. If they're there already especially, I would recommend that these would be great opportunities for sure.

What's stopping you from doing that?

Amanda Brown: Nothing's actually stopping me, apart from the fact that I've only just started writing the website. So the website is only technically a few weeks old. I mean it looks older than that because I've got quite a lot of content up there, but essentially, if I'm interpreting what you're saying right, I should put the specific download attached to a specific blog post. So if it's in the productivity category of blog posts, you'd put the productivity lead magnet at the end or in amongst the text.

Pat Flynn: Yes, that's correct. Although if you want to know . . . because on websites typically there is a lead magnet that is the main one, right? The one that people mostly download or the one that's at the—by default, here. You might want to be a little bit curious about which one of these that you have—or maybe you have some other ideas—which ones might be best.

So one thing that you could do—it seems like you have this great connection with your audience if you're taking the time to run a survey. You could also tease the fact that these things are coming to them by replying to those who had responded and saying, “Hey, thank you for your response. Here's a list of various items that I have or that I'm about to create for you to help you, related to a lot of the problems that we're having. I'm here to serve you guys and I want to serve you in the best way possible. Which one of these five things is most interesting to you?” Even though you have these all already, you don't have to say you have them all. But you're just trying to gauge, okay, of these things, which ones in your particular audience is the one that hits the nail on the head for them? Then they'll tell you.

Amanda Brown: Yeah, that's a great idea.

Pat Flynn: Good. They'll tell you, and then that one can be either the first one that comes out, and obviously those people, you already have their email address so you can just give it to them. They're gonna be super happy about that, but obviously they're telling you which ones people like them would also want, to come into your email list.

Amanda Brown: Yeah, that's a perfect idea.

Pat Flynn: So part of my role here on AskPat, or just in general, is to help people take the guesswork out of the decisions that they're making. The answer all the time is to go to your audience, right? You've done that already for part one, to understand, “Okay, what should I be creating things about?” No go back to them and go, “Here's what I'm creating. Which one do you want first?” Then have them continue to tell you what to do instead of guessing.

Amanda Brown: Yeah, that's a really helpful idea, because my list basically relates to my current main job, which is more B2B and is more finance orientated. So my clients, I just have a handful of clients. I've been working with some of them for over eight years, so I don't really have a very big list. So actually, this is a good way of helping solidify my list.

Pat Flynn: Perfect. Maybe you might ask an open-ended question in there as well to just say, “If none of these seem to really resonate with you, reply with something that would and I'll do my best to see how I might be able to incorporate it.” That could be a blog post, it could be a podcast episode, it could be a video, it could be another infographic.

I love the infographic by the way. I think it looks great. It's playful, it's not too busy. If you set up a landing page for this for example, I'd love to potentially link to it, or at least your website once it's up and running and everything's good to go. Actually, what is the website?

Amanda Brown: It's Homepreneur.co.

Pat Flynn: Homepreneur.co.

Amanda Brown: I couldn't get .com.

Pat Flynn: Okay, well we'll definitely link to that in the show notes for everybody, and then maybe the audience will have fun and see which one of these are available so we can go and check that out. But does that help? Does that answer your question?

Amanda Brown: Yeah, that really, really does help because then the step afterwards would be, do I do a short video course, which I can do on Camtasia, or do I do an evergreen webinar, something like that to build on my learning? I think you're so helpful in saying that re-asking the audience and taking the guesswork out of these decisions is definitely the way to go with that. So that's super helpful, thank you.

Pat Flynn: You're welcome. The last thing I want to say is related to the book that you and your family is writing. If you mention this book and potentially in their heads, make them feel like you're almost giving them something that could be in the book early. For example, “Hey, my daughters and I, we're writing this book. One thing that I know is really important is planning your day. So this is gonna be a part of the book, but I just wanted to give it to you now, give it to you early. A lot of you said you needed help with this so I didn't want to wait. The book's coming later, but I just wanted to give you this worksheet now.” That way you're not selling the book, but you're just planting that seed that it's coming. That could be a great way to get people ready to get it when it comes out.

Amanda Brown: Yeah, I've been very open about the fact that I'm writing the book.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, very good.

Amanda Brown: I'm following the lovely Joanna Penn, who we met in London, because she's writing a book about how to write a non-fiction book at the moment. She's a super helpful person.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, she's great.

Amanda Brown: She's great.

Yeah, so I will definitely do that as well Pat, that's really useful. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, you're welcome. So I mean, we're basically here at the end of the call, but I'd love to hear from you what your next action steps are, and then we'll maybe check in with you later. Obviously we'll go to the website, and then we'll see how it is. So what's next on your plate?

Amanda Brown: The next thing I'm going to do is to put up the pdf productivity apps, the ten Homepreneur productivity apps. I can do that straight away because I've done that. I'm going to tidy up the weekly planner and the habit tracker, and pop those next on my email marketing service. But I'm going to definitely also go back to the people who've left their emails for the survey and ask them which of the five they would like best.

Pat Flynn: Love it, sounds like a great plan.

Amanda Brown: So that will be absolutely great, thank you.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you so much, and that website, one more time for everybody?

Amanda Brown: It's www.Homepreneur.co.

Pat Flynn: Thank you Amanda, well done.

Amanda Brown: Thanks very much Pat, lovely to speak to you.

Pat Flynn: You as well.

All right, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Amanda. Thank you so much Amanda, thanks for being here and allowing us to dig deep into what's going on to help all of us, actually. So, appreciate you.

For those of you listening, thank you so much for listening all the way through. If you have a moment, make sure you subscribe to the show if you haven't already. Just pull out the device and click subscribe on the show, because this is what we do here. We coach entrepreneurs like you through these processes. You can actually get coaching yourself potentially, because there's a lot of applicants, but you can apply right now on AskPat.com. You can get coached just like Amanda and all the other people who've been coached in the past here. They've all gone to AskPat.com to apply. I select one every single week to dig deep into so we can help everybody.

Again, just, the show wouldn't be possible without the people who were asking these questions, or who applied. So I need you guys, and I hope that you will apply because we've got a lot of great, great sessions coming up and we're gonna need more after that too. So hey, make sure you subscribe.

Thanks so much. I appreciate you, and I look forward to serving you next week when we talk to another entrepreneur and we help them out. So cheers, take care. We'll see you.