The Secret Formula For Profitable SaaS Ideas - Kyle Gawley
A lead magnet is something you give away for free in return for a first name and email address. The purpose of a lead magnet is so you can gauge the number of people that are interested in your product as well as contacting those that sign up with a follow up email to receive useful feedback, it is a form of validating your idea.
I first heard about the term 'lead magnet' in a guest talk with Kyle Gawley, co-founder of Get Invited and Gravity. His lead magnet product is a pdf titled 'The Secret Formula For Profitable SaaS Ideas', the landing page can be found at usegravity.app/secret. Noting his page only asks for a first name and email address because we want to keep the barrier to entry low, the more forms someone has to fill out the less likely they are to do it.
Something I think could potentially work as a lead magnet would be a travel checklist. Inspirock.com have a checklist section within their website and I thought it was a very useful feature. It outlines all the things you need to consider before heading on your trip - including the obvious ones such as book flights, stays, transport but more forgetful things such as visas requirements, passport validity, travel insurance etc. I think it would be good to create my own version that people can then download from my landing page.
Workshop Tactics - Charles Burdett
Now that I have an idea for a lead magnet, it's time to develop a landing page. We looked at Charles Burdett's landing page for Workshop Tactics as an example. It includes his brand name, pitch, image and multiple call to actions in the hero section, as well as providing additional information below such as features, testimonials, social proof etc. We want to capture the audience's attention through a strong pitch and accompanying visuals, enough to convince someone to leave their name and email address.
Charles Burdett shared this chart with us that shows the organic traffic to WorkshopTactics.com over the past 16 months (blue is clicks, purple is impressions). It shows from June 2019 when he was just testing his idea up until now where he's gaining great success. A good example of testing your idea and proving that raising awareness can take a number of months for traffic to drive upwards, therefore we need to start now.
