THE PODCAST FOR ONLINE COURSE CREATORS GOING BIG!

 

Join business strategist Tina Tower as she explores how to build your empire by packaging your expertise into online courses, speaking, content, podcasting and credibility.

Tina has over 17 years of experience in starting, building and selling companies, she's a speaker, teacher, mama and world traveller.

She's unapologetic about living an intentionally big life and if you want too, this show is designed to show you many different options to help you gain clarity over YOUR version of awesome.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

  • Lead magnet is simple & gives people a quick win.

  •  Know what you need for a perfect lead magnet, 

  •  It's your job as course creator to show your people what you are good at. 

  •  Learn the secret of success. 

  •  What’s your marketing strategy? 

RESOURCES MENTIONED

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Show transcription 

 

Intro 

[00:00] Welcome to Episode 181, where today, we will be talking about how to make the perfect lead magnet for list growth. So I don't think that it matters, what stage of online course, entrepreneurship that you are up to, I think a lead magnet is something that is helpful at every single stage, if I was starting out, so brand new, decided, I'm going to launch my new Kajabi site, and I'm going to get into the world of online courses, then creating a lead magnet and a lead magnet pipeline on my website is the first thing that I would do the very, very first thing, before you make anything else, before you do anything else, I would create a landing page, an opt in email sequence, a thank you page, and the most beautiful, valuable lead magnet I could possibly think of. Because it is so vital to testing your audience to testing what headings work to seeing what people want, and of course, to list growth. So that is for the very beginning. However, for someone like me, so I do about 1.5 million a year in online courses. And the hardest part? Well, there's a few hard parts.

 

[01:23] One of the most challenging parts, there's hard parts at every level, right? But one of the most challenging parts when you're in growth mode is finding new audience is going:

How can I get the people that are watching?

Maybe they're entertained?

Maybe they're a little curious. 

Maybe they're sitting on the sidelines, but they haven't become customers yet? 

How can I get them to enter into my world? 

How can I show them that I have what they need to kind of on the outside looking in going might think I think she's got what I want, I'm not 100%? 

Sure is she the person that can deliver it to me, I don't know, a lead magnet is the perfect taste tester to be able to show your audience Hey, this is what I'm about. This is kind of my style, let's say if you like it or not. And if you like it, here are the next steps that you can take. And so in today's episode, I'm going to just kind of give you an overview of how to create that winning lead magnet and the whole ecosystem that goes around it. Because again, like with your online course, you can have the most beautiful lead magnet itself like say it's a PDF download or a white paper or mini course whatever it is, you can have that amazing thing. But unless you've got everything else around it, like unless you've got your nurture sequence happening afterwards, unless you actually getting it in front of the right people, then it's kind of all for nothing. And so that's what I'm going to run you over today as an overview.

 

[2:53] So today in the podcast episode, I'm going to give you an overview. But if you want to know actually how to do it, so I'll tell you the what today but if you want to know the how to actually say, Okay, this is the buttons that we have to press, here's some Canva templates for your downloads. And for your social media templates. Here's the email copy to put in your nurture sequence. Here's how to put together Kajabi landing pages for your OPT in lead magnet pipeline, I am teaching all of that and more. Four days live, like it's awesome. So it is running if you're in the US on the fifth of September in Australia, New Zealand, sixth of September. So four days live starting on Monday, the fifth of September, where I'll go live for an hour every day and run you through the different things. So day one will be going through deciding what type of lead magnet you're going to create and design that day two will be going through writing your copy for your Kajabi pages for your social media posts and for your email sequence. So a whole day of copywriting I'll be giving you samples of that so that you can use them as inspiration and adapt to your own language. And then day three, we'll be getting into the nitty gritty. So we'll be getting open your Kajabi site. And we'll be creating the full funnel. So your OPT in landing page and talking about what like elements are essential on your landing page and what variables there are. So depending on the industry you're in, can depend on how much content to actually have on that page and what converts. So we'll be going over that and then how to make the funnel how to add the email automations what to put on your welcome page, how to then encourage those customers to go into that next stage of your nurture sequence and then to become actual paying customers. And then day four will be marketing your lead magnet. So again, we don't want it to be a secret. We'll be going through social media designs, writing copy for that the templates and then all of the different ways that you can get it out and about into the world. So if you want to take part in that, you can register tinatower.com/challenge. That's tinatower.com/challenge. for the four days to creating a winning lead magnet challenge. Alright, that's if you want to know the how, but I got you covered today for the what? Let's get to it.

 

[5:15] Hi friend. I'm Tina Tower business strategist and digital online Empire Builder. I've been in business since I was 20 years old and have since built and sold for businesses. I started in the world of online courses in 2017, and grew to a seven figure annual turnover in just under two years. To say I love the game of business is an understatement. I'm a world traveler, a mama, a wife, a best selling author, and I love the freedom that we have to create the business and life that we want to live. It takes courage to break the rules and shake things up and do it your way. Through Her Empire Builder, I share my experience and bring you lessons from some of the world's best to help you dream big plan well, and take massive action, it is absolutely possible to run a thriving, growing business that positively impacts the world and have a beautiful personal life without hustling and working yourself into exhaustion. I want that for you. Let's enjoy the journey my friend. 

Main episode 

[6:21] So a really great lead magnet is something that provides massive value, and leaves customers wanting more. So it opens up that law of reciprocity, and you're giving something of value. So people are going Hmm, that was really nice. I wonder what else they've got going there. So there is a lot of debate around how much value to put into a lead magnet. I have always been of the school of thought and have had a lot of success with quality lead magnets, because I think that, you know, you'll hear people say, don't give all your good stuff for free. And yes, definitely, you have to keep your like amazing stuff for paying clients, but you want to give you good stuff for free. So you section it off. So it might be something like so say you are running, say you're running a program on photography, right? So you are teaching people how to mask, it could be supination, master their new Canon DSLR. So say you're running that. And that's what your whole course is, is here's how you get the different aperture and shutter speed and the different modes and how you can do manual focus and running people through how to get super high quality professional photos with their camera when they're novices. So with the lead magnet for that, if you were to just give something that is not helpful at all. So say it's just like here is a sheet of the different functions of the camera, then people that are getting that are like, Well, I kind of knew that already. But I don't know how to do anything. And what I'm seeking is how to actually operate this camera of auto mode. Right. So say that person that's teaching the camera course, gives a little mini course ongoing, okay, I'm not going to teach you everything in this. But what I want to show you is how to manually focus so that you can get, say someone who is got their head in the trees or something in the foreground and the and the background and how to change between focusing on both of those things. So whatever it is, if you teach something of high value that people are going, oh my gosh, now I have this one skill. Now I have a beginning step. And I want to take that next step with you, because you managed to teach me something that I wanted to know, that was of huge value to me. And now I want to go on to the next thing. That's a winning Lead Magnet, a lead magnet is usually simple. And it usually gives people a quick win. So you want to make it achievable. But you want to stay away from crappy, give them something good, that makes perfect sense to move from that into the next stage in your journey. So whatever it is that you're trying to sell on the back of that lead magnet, the lead magnet has to be the perfect precursor to that it has to be something that's like, Oh, that makes perfect sense. Well, if I've got the lead magnet, then my natural next step is to become a customer of yours. So that's how you know you're on to the winner kind of want. So we've got kind of the funnel for the lead magnet is you're going to your customer is going to find it on social media here and in a podcast like now, my lead magnet for our launch is the challenge. So you can go to tinatower.com/challenge. And both learn something really, really cool and also see the way I do lead magnet marketing. Because I'm practicing what I'm preaching here I'm giving in this challenge. It's not a free challenge. It's a paid challenge. It's $44. So a very nominal amount and the only reason I do that is to improve show operates like that's it.

 

We did the free challenge. This is the interesting part. So what I'm talking to you about is like a simple lead magnet. So download, but live challenge can be a lead magnet also. And just a little bit of a segway into something that we found really interesting was with the free challenge, we had about the same people register as a paid challenge, which surprised me in itself. But in the free challenge, we had around 14 to 15% of people show up live every day, with the paid challenge we had between 25 and 35% of people show up live every day. Now my best chance of getting people results is for them to show up live. And the only way people are going to want to do business with me is if they get results, right? Sometimes people go why do you do the paid challenge so that I can help people and it sounds really like counterintuitive, but the best way I can help someone is to charge so they show up and actually get the result that they're desiring.

 

[11:09] Anyway. So we set that up. So with the funnel, we've got the opt in, we've got people opting in. And then when they go to the thank you page, they're then going, Okay, what's that next step? Where should we go after that. And then the most important thing is that you can then convert them to customers. So you want to create the perfect lead magnet. And the way that you do that is to know who it's for knowing everything about them, knowing what their pain point is, knowing the thing that is at the forefront of their mind. So if you're selling your course, and say it's a six week course, or an eight week course, or whatever it is, what is one element of that course that people find the hardest. So what is something that could stop them from doing the course, because the number one reason that people don't join courses and programs is that they think that they can't get the desired result. Right, they want it. But they're like, What, like there's something stopping them. Either they think it's not, you know, they're not good enough, they're not smart enough, they're not whatever enough it is, you know, the most common reason people will tell you they didn't join a class is because they couldn't afford it. But people will only say they can't afford it, if they don't think the result is possible for them. So like take mine, for example. So for her Empire Builder, it's $444 a month, right. So it's not a cheap, cheap course. But it's not a very big expense, when you take into account the return on investment. So I've had people that join my programs that you know, they do the first launch and they make $10,000, or we've had people don't do their first launch, they make $60,000, we've had people that make six figures in their first year. 

 

So for me, I go to teach people the skills and give them the knowledge and the tools and everything that they need the community the support, to be able to help them to build a six figure business in their first year, on $444 a month, I'm like, that's a really great return on investment. No one's not doing that, because they can't afford it, people are not doing it, because they don't think they're going to be the person that's gonna get that result. So in their mind, they can't afford it, because they're not going to get the ROI. So you've got to figure out, what is that pain point. And for me, the reason that I do the lead magnet challenge is because I know a lot of people that join Her Empire Builder are great at what they do. They're experts in their field, they have their content matter, nailed. They don't need me to teach them the thing that they're trying to teach, they've already got that sorted, what they need is exposure, they need to be able to find their perfect customer and get more of them. That's that's really the crux of it. Right? And you may be in that situation to where you're going? Well, yeah, I'm pretty good at what I do. And the people that I've got to having really good results, I just need more of that place. And so that starts with the lead magnet. So I know if I can get people a really great results in a four day live training and a lead magnet challenge. It's like, this is one out of hundreds of strategies that I have to grow your online business, let me knock your socks off, you know, it makes perfect sense. 

 

[14:06] So that's what I want you to think of is what's the thing for your customer, that's going to help them take that next step with you?  What's that customer journey going to be? And then it's choosing what sort of lead magnet you're going to create. So inside of the lead magnet challenge, which if you haven't joined already, tinatower.com/challenge. That's $44 you will spend. We're gonna go through the different ones of these and I've got some Canva templates for you for them as well. But there's a few different things that you can start to get thinking about in terms of what lead magnet you're going to create. Are you going to do a PDF download. The most popular is a checklist like most popular, very, very easy. A guide, a report a template script, swipe, copy, cheat sheets, resources, ebooks. There are so many and then like they're the easy ones and then you can take it a bit of a step up. So if you're wanting to step it up if you if this is not your first rodeo and you're like, you know, I've created like 10 PDFs before I'm ready to try something different. There's the videos like a mini series, there's how to instructional so sharing your screen and showing something really, really useful. doing quizzes, quizzes are fabulous. And assessment, a template giving people templates gets a lot of click throughs a free trial or demo, I'm actually not a fan of a free trial. But it is good in list building. I will say that not great in conversions. So that's something to think of there as well. Or are you going to use a webinar or are you going to use a little bit of a short course. So there's different ideas that you can use to figure out what sort of lead magnet you're going to use. And then you get down to designing it. So always, when can designing it keeping the next step in mind. 

 

So making sure that you're giving people things of value, but then also seating that next step so that people have at top of mind, the bait and switch sales is gone over, don't bait and switch ever. You don't want it to be a secret, and you don't want it to be a surprise. And people are like, Oh my gosh, did they just give this to me to sell to me, you want to be upfront at the start in going, this is going to give you massive value. But also, it's going to show you the next step, if you want to take it the thing is now the markets so sophisticated, no matter what industry you're in, so especially if you're serving business people, but even without it, the online industry is very sophisticated now. So were the kind of traditional online marketing was a bit of that bait and switch kind of icky sort of marketing, but it was highly effective. Now, it's like gross. So now you can go from the very beginning, which you know, suits me? Well, because I would have been a terrible traditional online marketer because I always upfront, maybe sometimes too much so. But I think that your market is sophisticated enough that they can make their own decision. And they've got plenty of decisions to make. And so there's always different comparisons. So your job as the course creator is to show what you can do to show what you are good at so that people can decide, do I want to go with you now, or maybe I need to go with someone else first, and then maybe with you later, or let's go just show me the next steps. And then you want to make it as easy as possible to be able to take those next steps and buy from you.

 

[17:30] So then we look at writing copy for conversions. So when you write your copy, again, I think one of the most important things with copy is that it's you. So your secret sauce to your whole business success is you. That's That's it when people ask like, what's that silver bullet? What's that secret to success, it's really owning who you are. Because the world is so big and vast. That really the point of difference that you have is you your own interpretation, your own take your own ability to teach your customers the thing that they're wanting to learn. So like I know, my superpower is that I can teach people things in a really simple way. I can take things and go, Hey, this thing that you are really confused about and overwhelmed by hear it is broken down into steps, just follow the list, click here, click there, and you're done. And people like, oh, and then it kind of sounds too silly and too simple. And people try to overcomplicate it.

 

Everyone's got their superpower with that, right? So you want to when you're writing, copy can for convergence, your writing copy for a few different things your writing copy for your lead magnet name. And I would recommend testing lots of different ones, your writing copy for your opt in page copy for your thank you page for your email sequence and for your social posts. So there's a few different things there. To write copy for. If you're doing the lead magnet challenge, I do have like a template for the opt in page that you can use and just kind of switch out your language for my language. That is a highly converting text that we have tested and measured a lot. So then we create your email sequence. So you always want to have a nurture sequence. So when people are coming into your opt in page, they're opting in, they're then getting bounced to the thank you page, but then also getting set out for what we call our new friend sequence. So we have the automation set on Kajabi. That if it's a contact that's been added in the last seven days, so not if they've been on your list already, because if they're on your list already, and you're doing a good marketing job, you're communicating with them at least once a week in a newsletter. So you don't want them to get the new friend sequence. And it's like, Oh, Hi, I'm Tina, nice to meet you. And they're like, Well, I've been on your list for two years. So you want to make sure you're using those automations correctly. And so we go through all of that and then you're going okay, here I am. Here's what I'm about. Here's the next step that you can take. 



[19:58] Here's credibility so your story you're telling them about, like your background. So don't assume that people know who you are. Sometimes they might see your lead magnet on social media and go through that looks interesting, click through, but this is their first exposure of you. So you want to introduce yourself, and then you want to tell a customer story. So that people can see all right, people like this do business with you already. So you can start, they can start to get a feel for is this going to be similar to them or not. So you kind of got that, we go into a whole lot of detail in writing copy, because, well, there's a few things to cover to make sure that they convert. So that's really, really important. And then we want to create the funnel. So we want to use automations, like I said, for good, but not over automate the customer journey. So what I see sometimes is that people are over automating. And then it gets impersonal. So I try and automate as much as possible, as much as possible to make our job easier. But try not to do too many automations that it can feel like your customer has ended up in this machine that they can't get out of right. And you've probably been on the receiving end of that a few times where you're like, what, what lead magnet train Have I got on and how do I get off.

 

[21:17] So you want to kind of measure that carefully to make sure that you know, you've got the right volume for your audience that you're not, you know, you've got that sweet spot, and you're not like going at them like a fire hydrant. But you're also staying top of mind to give them the chance of taking that next step in there as well. So we look at funnel goals. In going, what are your normal key metrics? Now I am a massive fan of data. I love a spreadsheet, I love measuring things. I think too many people are winging it and flying by the seat of their pants and wondering why it's not working. If you watch your data, and you're not guessing, but you are actually making changes based on the story that the data is telling you, you will leapfrog ahead. So damn quickly, because often people will change or alter something that is working and keeps the thing that is not. So we use a few different tools with how to measure the effectiveness, we split test things, we use hot jar to measure consumer behavior on our website, we use Google Analytics, and we use our own KPIs to kind of work out alright, every month, how can we be just 1% better on all of these touch points. So what we try and do is go say 1000 people visit the lead magnet opt in page, right we want 30% of them to opt in. Now this 30% will be different depending on different companies and depending on how they got there. So what I mean by how they got there is are you funneling warm audience or are you fun funneling cold audiences in. So if I was talking to you now, like, like I am, and I gave you a different URL that only I only dropped on my podcast, I could measure how effective it was for my warm audience. Because I would say you're listening to me now. It's probably not the first time you've listened to me, you've probably been listening a while I would call you a nice warm lover. In going you know, you know who I am, you know what I'm about. And so I would expect around 30% of people that are listening to this podcast episode to go to tinatower.com/challenge and opt in.

 

So that's it 30%. So out of those 1300 people, then in a thank you sequence. So if I was selling so with this one with the lead magnet challenge, I'm actually not converting straightaway, because our doors to Her Empire Builder are closed right now. So they don't open until the challenge is on. So I don't bounce people straight into a sales page and try to sell but if it was an evergreen funnel, which most of the lead magnet funnels that we do throughout the year are an evergreen funnel. If that was the case, 30% of them opt in for a free lead magnet, then 1%. So out of those 300 people, three people convert straight away. So three people out of the 1000 visits to the page 300 converting to opt in three people going into the sales page and buying. So that's 1% Convert straightaway, and 2% converting through the nurture sequence. So nine people out of the 1000 so that's why sometimes when people look at their page statistics, and they're like, man, oh man, like there's been 10 people have gone to my landing page and no one's bought what's going on? It's a numbers game. And this is why I love the data. And I love watching the data and measuring the data is because it tells me when I'm doing a good job and when I'm not. It tells me when something is broken. It tells me when something is a winner. And I'm not just going off, you know something that I Googled online that told me what good conversion rates I'm going off my own conversion rates and always going okay, I know if I do this. This is the expected result for my audience and I can tweak and measure each of those levers to try and get those numbers just slightly slightly up. So that's one thing I would very much encourage you to do is spend some time like just looking at your data, thinking about it, tweaking some things, getting really comfortable with them. And then, of course, it's marketing. 

 

[25:21] So the final thing that we look at when we're doing this whole lead magnet process, is marketing, creating your marketing plan for it, not just kind of doing one post about it and going okay, well, that's done, right. It's not enough. So we look at a whole marketing campaign around that, doing different social media tiles, sending it out to your database, adding it to your homepage, looking at wherever else you can market your lead magnet. So is it on other people's podcasts? Is it on your own podcast? Can you write an article about it a blog post, can you do alive about it, like there are so many different things that you can do to be able to market that. So in the lead magnet challenge, we actually giving you the social media tiles on Canva that I use to do my own lead magnets, so that you can implement them as well. And that is it, then of course, it's just reviewing and refining. So looking at each of those touch points, knowing that it's a constant, curious experiment, and always trying to do better with your own numbers, and always trying to give massive value to your customers. Because I think that when we're playing the longer long game in business, if you are always focused on giving massive value to your customers, you're always gonna win, always. So if you want to see how I do it on the inside, go to tinatower.com/challenge And I hope to see you online for four days live. Have a beautiful day.

 

[26:50] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Her Empire Builder. If you loved it, please share it on Instagram for your friends and be sure to tag me @tina_tower so I can say thank you. And if you really want to deliver me smiles, you can pop in review on Apple podcasts. I would love to hear from you. So if you have any questions at all, email me at [email protected]. And if you would like to work with me further, all of the free resources and my courses can be found at tinatower.com. Now I truly hope this podcast gives me so much value, and you can use it to dream big plan well and take massive action in building your very own empire. That's just for you. Have the greatest day