260 | Your “Free” Lead Magnet is Costing You Leads - Do This Instead

If you have a lead magnet and nobody's downloading it, the problem probably isn't your traffic, your landing page, or your copy. It's that your free lead magnet isn't actually free. You're charging your audience a massive price, and you don't even realize it. My name is Kev Michael, and this is Grow the Show. The podcast that helps business owners grow their business via podcasting. Lead magnets are a huge piece of converting podcast listeners to clients. And after working with over 500 business owners, I can tell you, the hidden cost of a lead magnet is the number one reason they fail to bring you leads. So today, I'm going to show you exactly what that cost is and give you a simple test to make sure that yours doesn't have it. Let's do it. Okay, so yesterday I was on a coaching call and one of my Grow the Show accelerator clients said, I need more leads. And so I said, okay, what are your lead magnets? Because that is how you get leads from podcast episodes. You must have lead magnets. And she showed me two things. And as soon as I saw those two things, I was like, oh, that's why you're not getting any leads. Your lead magnets are way too expensive. And she was like, what do you mean? They're free. And I'm like, no, they are not. So what were those lead magnets? And why weren't they free? Well, the two lead magnets that this particular client had was number one, she had a 10 episode podcast playlist. So the idea was, it was a playlist of 10 podcast episodes for them to, you know, access and download. Number two was a clarity call. It was essentially an hour long call positioned as free consulting. But essentially, it was a sales call. And again, she was confused. She was like, what do you mean? These are lead magnets. And I'm like, no, they're not. They are lead repellents. Why is that? The key thing that you have to understand about a lead magnet is that a lead magnet is when you give something to a prospect in exchange for their contact information. That is when they become a lead when they give you their contact information and essentially give you permission to contact them again in the future. Most commonly, that information comes to you in the form of an email address or a phone number. So every lead magnet has a little bit of cost because it's costing them the fact that you are now going to contact them and they know that they are going to be marketed to. And people are only going to give you their information if they want to be marketed to and or the value that you are offering them in exchange for their contact information is so good that they're like, yes, please take my email. I want this thing. So let's talk about why those two specific lead magnet examples were not as free as my client thought. We'll start with the podcast playlist. First of all, those podcast episodes are already available now for free. No email required. So why would someone trade their contact information for something that they can already get? Well, in this case, the real only value of the podcast playlist is that you took the time to pick 10 episodes for them to listen to. But here's the thing, even if they did find that valuable enough to give you their email address, that's really not that valuable because essentially what you're saying is if you want the promised result here, listen to these 10 hours of me talking. That is not free. That's in fact incredibly expensive. It is a massive time investment. This is the same reason why books are so hard to get people to read. On average, it takes seven hours to read a book. And so it takes seven hours to get the promise that the book makes on top of the purchase price, which is usually between 10 and 30 bucks. So a book does not just cost somebody $10. A book costs $10 plus seven hours of their life of reading, no less, which isn't everybody's favorite. So a 10 episode podcast playlist, first of all, isn't that valuable because presumably, those episodes are already available for free on the internet. Really, the only value you've provided here is curating them and putting them in one place. But it also takes up to 10 hours of their time to get whatever value the podcast episode is promising. The clarity call, quote unquote, is even worse. So if you're somebody who has been telling yourself that your sales call is a lead magnet, absolutely not. It's not no matter what you name it, no matter how much you mask the fact that it is a sales call, because when you offer somebody the opportunity to get on a call with you, there are so many extra costs in addition. And it cracks me up when people say, oh, it's a free call, right? Because it is so not free. Sure, they're not paying you for the opportunity for you to sell them on your thing. But here's what they are paying. Number one, they're paying mental load and logistics. So this is a new appointment on their calendar. I want you to imagine your calendar completely blank. Now imagine a blank calendar with one Zoom call at 2 p.m. Think about how you go, all right, that's cost. I'm going to have to get on this call. I'm going to have to watch my schedule. It is so costly to have a meeting in your day in terms of the mental load. That's not to also mention an hour of their time. They're going to have to call in and spend an hour with you in order to get whatever it is that you're promising, whether it's clarity or a consult or whatever it might be. And the big one and the most important reason why a sales call is not a lead magnet is that people know it's a sales call and they know that there is risk that they are going to be uncomfortable, that they are going to be pressured into buying something that they can't afford or they don't need or worse. They might be afraid that they're going to buy something that they can't afford or don't need because some people are people pleasers. I can tell you I don't get on sales calls unless I know I want to buy something because there's a risk that I'm going to buy something that I know deep down I don't really need or want. There's the awkwardness of saying no, they're trying to get off the call. They don't let you get off the call when you say no, but why? What is it that you're going to think about? So think about how much it sucks to get on sales calls when you're not really sure. That is incredible cost. So the free clarity is not worth the exchange. The potential upside of getting clarity does not weigh all of that risk and time and energy cost and mental cost and logistics cost and getting all of the reminders and the confirmations. It is incredibly costly. So here's what you need to remember if you want to get more leads from your content so that you can ultimately grow your business from content. It's this. Every lead magnet has a non-monetary cost. Time, effort, risk, mental energy. Your job is to make that cost as truly close to zero as possible. You want to make it so that hopefully the only cost that they are going to incur by taking you up on this lead magnet is they give you their contact information and ideally the value of the lead magnet, whatever it is going to do for them in exchange for their contact information is going to be really strong. So let's go back to that client. This client is someone who without being super specific, she offers a coaching service for couples that are in a certain type of conflict. And when I explained this to her, I said, what is something that you can offer totally for free that genuinely is valuable and has very, very low cost? And immediately she was like, oh, I'd give them a script. I'd give them a script for how to bring up a difficult conversation with their partner. Here's exactly what to say. I know almost all of my prospects are struggling to bring up this conversation with their partner. So if I gave them the script, they would want that. And I was like, yes, now that is a lead magnet. Number one, it is a better outcome. So rather than saying, you'll get clarity, which is what she was offering before. She's saying, this will make a dreaded conversation really easy to have. Think about how valuable that is. But also, there's virtually no cost. They give their email, they get the script. It's done. There's no risk. There's no time commitment. There's no calendar appointment. It is immediate value. So here's how you can implement this now to get more leads and sales from your podcast and your content. Look at your current lead magnets and ask yourself, what is the non-monetary cost of this lead magnet? How much time will it take them to consume it? How much risk is there that something that they don't want to happen might happen like they'll be pressured on a sales call? How much effort will it take for them to get the value? So sitting there and taking a course is incredibly costly. It takes you immense effort. So a free course is one of the least free things. It costs so much time. What about calendar space or mental load? Is this lead magnet going to open a loop in their brain? So if they schedule a call for two weeks out, that's two weeks that there's this open loop that's unresolved in their brain. So there's the mental load as well. So look at your lead magnets and say, OK, what currently is the true cost of my lead magnet? And how can I lower that cost as close as possible to zero while still delivering something genuinely valuable? And again, the gold standard is they give you their contact information and as close to immediately as possible with no further pain or investment bank, they get something useful and they get something valuable. So that's going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. If you found this valuable, let me know below in the comments and let me know any questions that you have about lead magnets. And by the way, lead magnet creation is something that can be a little bit of a pain in the neck, but for my clients, we actually create a lead magnet for you for every episode that you publish of your podcast. So if you want my team to be in charge of not only growing your podcast and getting more audience and subscribers to your show, but creating dedicated lead magnets for every episode so that you don't even have to think about it, all you have to do is hit record, send us the file, and we handle publishing, growing, and getting you leads. If that's interesting, click the link in the description and see if you qualify. Note, that's not a lead magnet. There's cost. I don't have a lead magnet for you for this episode, but that's what I can offer if you want us to take care of it. Okay, that's it for this episode of Grow the Show. I'll see you next time.