Educate Prospects With Lead Magnets

Many marketers accept the notion that products or services with relatively high price points come with a longer buying cycle, even in the B2C space.

More established businesses will typically structure paid media efforts to nurture prospects from awareness to purchase, but newer brands might not take this approach. This could be for several reasons:

• Budget limitations could prevent a more robust media plan

• The need to drive revenue now might tempt marketers to focus only on “capturing demand”

Despite those limitations, I’ll make an argument why focusing on audience education is necessary, and outline how direct response media efforts fall short for these types of businesses. I’ll specifically highlight:

1. The why behind longer buyer journeys, with some research and data to support this pattern.

2. Different approaches that advertisers can take to work with this type of behavior, and not against it.

Why Prospects Take Their Time To Buy

Products or services that carry a relatively high price require a larger investment from an emotional and cognitive standpoint, not just a financial one.

Once a price point surpasses a buyer’s discretionary spending threshold, it’s likely they’ll do some research to feel more comfortable about the value they’d be getting from that potential purchase. If people bought cars by scrolling on their phone, you know that Amazon would be selling them.

As buyers conduct their research, it’s important for brands to help these prospective customers understand the product they’re evaluating. Research suggests that it takes 1-10 repetitions for the average learner to understand a concept. If we apply that insight to marketing, it’s unlikely that a prospect will make a purchase or schedule a demo after seeing one ad, one time.

There’s a good chance that buyers will need to interact with a brand multiple times, and see multiple different selling points, before they truly understand that brand’s offer. This dynamic can become even more robust in the B2B space where the average buying committee consists of seven different team members.

If it takes one individual five interactions to buy, in theory it could take a buying committee of seven roughly 35 total interactions to align on a purchase. This directly translates to campaign structure.

For example, when analyzing the online deal sources for one of the partners I work with, I found that 45% of their online deals were attributed to direct traffic. Naturally, no one can enter a brand’s domain into their browser unless they had some sort of interaction with the brand before. This suggests that even “demand capture” channels like paid search might not actually be effective at driving direct-response actions.

Marketers may need to take a different approach to deliver results.

Educate Buyers With Lead Magnets

If people aren’t going to click on an ad they’ve seen for the first time, arrive on a landing page, and convert, then what are advertisers supposed to do?

When speaking with one of the clients I work with a few weeks ago, a member of their team said something that hit home.

“Marketers always need something free to sell.”

As I let that sink in, what I realized is that the long version of that statement really meant marketers need a way to show value and build trust among prospects in a way that poses little-to-no risk to the buyer.

This is where lead magnets can change a marketing program. By offering a free asset in exchange for some contact information, marketing teams can build an audience of prospects who are actively getting to know their brand.

I have a hypothesis that an effective lead magnet provides actionable direction so that its audience can improve their current situation enough to where they see value, but there is still more to be desired.

For example, if a business is selling online courses, an eBook outlining the different types of data analytics jobs currently in demand might not impress potential customers. However, offering the first two modules of a data analytics course for free can help aspiring students to actually build this new skill set, while getting to know the brand in a more personal fashion. Two course modules won’t get anyone that new analyst job, but they will have a much better idea of what they’re looking for than they did before. If these students want to continue their journey, chances are they’ll do so with the brand that has already built a relationship with them.

A strong lead magnet won’t have to do much overt selling. If a prospect is impressed with the value provided in the lead magnet, there is a stronger chance they’ll turn to that brand for its fully-fledged solution.

Wrapping Up

If you’re selling something that costs a lot, it’s going to take your customers some time to think through the decision to buy. It might not make sense to expect them to buy or book a demo after their first visit to your landing page.

Building out a quality lead magnet can help introduce your brand to your ideal audience, and present a low-risk offer to your future customers.

This is a strategy I’m currently working through with multiple partners, and I’ll be sharing updates around results in a future post!

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn and X (Twitter).