Landing Pages and Lead Magnets: Everything You Need to Know

Did you know that email marketing can produce $44 for every $1 spent? That's an ROI of 4,400%!

What's more, email marketing is also 40x more effective at converting leads than Facebook, and Twitter put together. 

However, to enjoy these types of results, marketers first need to know how to get email leads. And the secret to this lies in being able to create effective landing pages and lead magnets for email list growth. 

If you are a marketer, learning how to set up landing pages and lead magnetics that drive email signup is an essential skill. 

What's more, it's not that hard to implement once you have the right insider tips up your sleeve. 

Want some more good news? We are about to share these insider tips with you, so keep reading as we unpack everything you need to know about landing pages and lead magnets. 

What Are Landing Pages?
For those of you that are new to marketing, let's quickly take a look at what landing pages are. 

Landing pages are standalone pages on sites that are specifically designed to capture leads. The sole purpose of landing pages is to capture visitors' information, thereby turning them into a lead. 

Landing pages will always have a form field where visitors can enter their details. Typically, they will also offer an incentive for visitors to sign up, such as a free e-book, access to exclusive content or updates, a discount code, etc. 

For the record, pages that have signup forms on them but display other content as well, are not landing pages. For instance, if a website has a box where you can signup for their newsletter on their homepage, this does not make the homepage a landing page.

Landing pages are aimed exclusively at converting visitors into leads. 

What Is a Lead Magnet?
Congrats! Now you know what landing pages are. But what is a lead magnet?

We mentioned above that landing pages often offer visitors an incentive for signing up. These incentives are called lead magnetics. 

Instead of simply asking visitors for their email address, you give them a reason to go through the effort by giving them something in return. 

Lead magnetics can be a variety of things. Access to videos and webinars are popular examples of lead magnets, as are templates, checklists, ebooks, free courses, webinars, etc. 

Although you can choose just about anything to be a lead magnetic, most people choose digital material. 

Choosing the Right Lead Magnet
The first step to creating a landing page is to select a lead magnet. After this, you can then craft the supporting copy and design the landing page. 

Selecting the right lead magnet is essential to the success of your landing page. Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind when coming up with a lead magnet for your target customers.

Don't Pick Something Random
First up, do not pick something random as your lead magnet. Random offers won't get traction, they will look off-brand, and will probably erode consumer trust. 

For instance, say your client has a site that sells meditation recordings and related wellness products. If you offer visitors a discount code to an online gaming store as your lead magnet, this will just look confusing and tacky. 

What's more, a very low percentage of the target market is likely to want this lead magnet. Sure, there might be some potential leads who have an interest in wellness and gaming—but the number is likely to be on the low side.

On the other hand, you already know that almost anybody who lands up on your client's site is interested in meditation and wellness. Therefore, you will experience much higher conversion rates if you choose something like a free meditation recording as your lead magnet. 

Target Your Audience With Your Lead Magnet
We just talked about how you should pick specific lead magnet offerings over random ones. But besides just picking something you think visitors will like, you can take this targeting a step further. Pick something that serves a need.

To carry on with our above example of the online wellness store, instead of offering a "free meditation recording" refine your lead magnet further. Something like "free anxiety-busting meditation recording" or "free money-making abundance meditation to re-program your mind" is likely going to be much more enticing.

Why? Because it's hyper-specific and serves a need, in this case, the need to combat anxiety or the need to create more financial security.

Choose a Lead Magnet That Ties Into Your Sales Funnel
One of the hottest tips when it comes to online marketing and landing pages is to create a lead magnet that ties into your sales funnel. 

Why is this? Well, at no point should a lead be left at a dead-end in your sales funnel. If you offer a lead magnet that does not walk prospects further along the sales funnel, that is a wasted opportunity. 

Lead magnets can act as the perfect stepping stone if you design them with your sales funnel in mind. For instance, say you are marketing online courses. A great lead magnet, in this case, could be a free training, mini-course, or guide. 

Within this material, you can incorporate hooks that touch on information that is offered in the paid courses.

Say the courses are on blogging and the lead magnet is a free mini-course on how to write better blog posts. You could set up a reference in the course to the fact that search engine optimization is an important part of content creation. Then you can say "...and if you want to learn more, we have an entire course dedicated to blogging SEO which you can check out by clicking this link."

Tips for Writing Killer Lead Magnetic and Landing Page Copy
Once you have decided on a top-notch lead magnet for your audience, you can then move on to creating the associated landing page.

The number one secret to crafting a killer landing page is, of course, knowing how to write good copy. However, there are also some landing page specific tips and techniques that you should keep in mind. 

Keep It Short and Simple
When writing copy for sales pages, marketers typically have a few thousand words to work with. You want to describe the product/service in detail and go over every reason why it will benefit the buyer. 

Landing pages are a little different in that you want to convey the value of the lead magnet in as few words as possible. The longer you take to explain why the reader might want the offering, the bigger the chance you'll lose them in the process. 

Instead, you want to sum up the benefits of the lead magnet in a few sentences at most. 

Have a Hook
Hooks are essential for just about any type of marketing effort. Generally, The best hook for a landing page is attention-grabbing headlines. 

To maximize engagement, many landing pages make use of two headlines, in the form of the main headline, with a subheadline elaborating underneath. 

After the headline(s) you can then describe the offering, keeping things as compelling and concise as possible. 

Eliminate Distractions
As mentioned above, landing pages shouldn't have a lot of text. What's more, they shouldn't have a lot of other distractions either. Busy backgrounds, confusing graphics, and cluttered sidebars are all things that can take away from the effectiveness of your message. 

Make sure that you eliminate as many distractions as possible so that your copy and the signup area can stand out. In some cases, you might also want to eliminate elements like navigation bars. 

Do A/B Testing
While you are setting up your landing page, there will inevitably be some areas where you aren't sure what option to choose. Should the signup button be green or blue? Should there be an arrow pointing to it or not?

You might also have a few different header variations you want to try out—or nuances in the copy. You may want to also play around with graphics and imagery. 

It's almost impossible to know for sure which design variations will perform best on your landing page. This is where A/B testing comes in. 

For those of you who don't know, A/B testing is a technique marketers use to test different formats of the same page. For instance, you can make version A of the landing page have a green signup button, and version B a blue button. 

Through A/B testing the two variations, you can then determine which has the highest conversion rate.
Statistics show that thorough landing page targeting and testing can increase conversions dramatically, so do not skip this step.

Are You Ready to Hone Your Marketing Skills?
Lead magnets and landing pages are essential components of a successful online marketing campaign. However, not all marketers know how to execute effective landing pages that convert. Now that you know some of the best practices associated with lead magnets and landing pages, you'll be able to stand out from the crowd.

Do you want to stand out even further as a marketer? If so, there's no better way than honing your copywriting skills. 

Ready to take your copywriting to the next level? Our in-depth course Copywriting 101 covers everything from the basics to how to leverage your copywriting skills to advance your career.