Of course, live encounters remain the pinnacle of relationship building. However, most of the time, live encounters are earned, not given. People will give up their time when you have something valuable to give them.
Lead magnets are the catalyst for those meaningful live encounters that otherwise would not happen.
This article is designed specifically for RIAs who are looking to build stronger connections with potential clients and stakeholders that will help achieve your growth ambitions.
Specifically, we will explore:
Let’s dig in.
A lead magnet is a thought leadership piece or event invitation that offers exclusive, valuable insights to your audience.
It is designed to entice your audience to provide their email addresses in exchange for access to premium insights.
In the investment industry, examples of lead magnets include:
People are protective of their email addresses. So the offer must be highly valuable and relevant. Therefore, an effective lead magnet signals that you are a thought leader and worth following for similar quality insights in the future.
Lead magnets are crucial for your communications because they:
Therefore, you can start to understand how high-value insights can be used strategically. High-value insights are not transactional. They are the catalyst to meaningful interactions and an ongoing relationship that would otherwise not have happened.
And especially for those who are at the early stages of their discovery process on your firm, they immediately differentiate you as a value giver, not a taker. It is quite astonishing what a difference this subtle move can have on your brand perception.
The first step for how to use a lead magnet effectively involves setting up a landing page, either on your website or as a unique URL.
In simple terms, this is a form that gives a teaser paragraph about your thought leadership piece or event. To obtain exclusive access, the form contains required fields that include a name, firm, and email address. As an extra layer of security, you should also include a check box to declare that the reader satisfies the criteria you need to market to them (e.g. accredited investor status). Once the reader completes the process, then they receive a confirmation email with your materials or event invitation.
You can strategically set up the lead magnet in a few ways:
However you choose to set up the lead magnet, the form must be designed to capture prospect information simply and efficiently. At this stage, the reader is interested in something specific. Do not confuse them.
Importantly, for this process to build lasting relationships, you must integrate the form with a robust back-end CRM (e.g. HubSpot). Rather than manually syncing this to your email, dedicated software automatically uploads the data into a database that can be filtered, segmented, and visualized, allowing you to act on the data impactfully. This not only saves you time in the long run, but also gives you high-quality data on each contact that interacts with your firm.
As a bonus, it’s only fitting to share some best practices that will further advance the results you can achieve with your lead magnet.
First, develop different lead magnets for different prospects and purposes. Remember, each prospect is on a 4-stage journey and each one requires a specific communication strategy. For example, some prospects are at the awareness stage, others might be closer to a commitment.
Second, make the materials easy to consume. In general, people do not have multiple spare hours in their day. Nor are they desperately waiting to chop down a tree to hear what you have to say.
And third, ensure that the offer aligns with future insights you plan to share during your relationship. If a reader likes what the offer contains, guess what: they will want to receive similar insights in the future. For example, you could use the first part of a series of feature articles as a lead magnet to entice the reader to read the remaining parts of the series. You could also use a quarterly market commentary webinar to entice engagement with future quarterly webinars.
These points might sound obvious, but from experience, many investment firms overlook their importance.
If you can implement these best practices, your lead magnet does far more than establish you as a thought leader. It starts a flywheel that accelerates the process to grow your email list, strengthen your distribution efforts, and build momentum to bring on the stakeholders you want in your business.
Want to know more best practices to establish your firm as a thought leader? Check out our insights library here.
Get access to a consistent stream of insights that provides value to your clients in a way that scales your time, deepens your relationships, and elevates your brand as a thought leader.
