Creating an Effective B2B Lead Magnet

When it comes to B2B marketing, efforts generally need to be a bit more substantive and valuable to attract prospects and nurture relationships with them. B2B purchases are more complex, expensive, and tend to involve a larger number of stakeholders.

That’s why the lead magnet can be such an effective medium with which a B2B company can attract leads. A lead magnet is an in-depth piece of content – often an eBook or guide – that helps a company’s customers or prospects deal with one specific kind of problem or challenge.

Lead magnets are typically offered in exchange for a conversion of some sort, often an email list signup or the booking of an appointment with a company’s sales team. If you’re looking for some of the other ingredients of a quality B2B lead magnet, we’re breaking them down in this post.

Make it comprehensive

People making a purchase on behalf of their entire business have much more to consider than a consumer buying something for their home. There’s typically more at stake, which is why the sales process is longer and marketing assets likewise need to delve a bit more deeply into their subject.

If you’re creating a text-based guide, you’ll want to aim for at least a few thousand words in your lead magnet. If you’re making a video, you’ll want to go for at least ten minutes – possibly more depending on your industry and target audience.

Be certain, however, that you aren’t just adding information to the lead magnet for the sake of making it longer. Everything you add should be relevant and valuable. To illustrate this point, let’s say you’re creating a lead magnet for your company that sells business phone services.

You don’t want to spend too much time going into the general importance of phone communication or talking about how your firm provides the most advanced phone technology for its customers.

Instead, it’s more valuable to your audience if you educate them in a context they can relate to. In this case, you may spend some time elaborating on many of the challenges a company can face if they don’t have sufficient phone service in place.  

By doing a deeper dive on the subject of your lead magnet, the reader or viewer can learn things that directly relate to their specific challenges. Providing this kind of in-depth analysis of problems in your prospects’ world will also help establish your brand as a reliable one.

Use Multimedia

Even if your strong suit is video or content, it’s always beneficial to have another option for your audience to consume your content. This is especially true in the B2B marketing sector, where the increased number of stakeholders means there may be more people involved.

Increasing the number of formats your lead magnet is available in will conversely increase the amount of opportunities prospects have to engage with it.

At Credo, we do this frequently. Many of our blog posts are in-depth, text-first guides, while others are presented in video format. We recognize that some of our audience likes to learn by reading, while others prefer watching or listening. 

In the scope of a case study, there are many different opportunities to blend media types. For example:

• If you’ve created a single long video lead magnet, break it up into shorter chunks and release them on a social media site like LinkedIn or Instagram. From there, convert each chunk into a written blog post that offers the full lead magnet video download as a call-to-action.
• For a text-based lead magnet, convert each section or chapter into a blog post and include it in a separate email to people who download the full guide. For two or three of the most important sections, you could record yourself talking over a screen share video that explains the points mentioned in each section.
• Create individual infographics based on statistics or research included in the lead magnet. These visuals are great for including in internal emails or for helping prospects support their buying decisions to supervisors.  

You don’t need to publish full-length content across every possible type of media. But providing your audience flexibility when it comes to how they absorb a larger piece like a lead magnet will help expose your brand to a larger number of prospects. 

Present an actionable takeaway or insight

Throughout the entire process of planning and developing your lead magnet, remember the problem and solution format. Your content should present a tangible challenge and how your offering can help the prospect overcome it.

In their guide on writing case studies – a common format for B2B lead magnets – HubSpot has a great way of summarizing the main takeaway: “What will the client have succeeded in doing by the end of the piece?”

Try to be as specific as possible as you are defining the problem. B2B buyers aren’t interested in hearing generalized information about common challenges faced in their industry: they want to feel like the content was designed specifically for their own needs.

This is a good time to reference your existing buyer personas. Reviewing these profiles can help you put an exact pin on the challenges being faced by the specific audience you’re targeting the lead magnet towards.

If you have multiple audience personas, it’s typically best to target only one of them with a B2B lead magnet. Being as specific as possible may exclude other members of your prospect pool, and that’s okay. When it includes in-depth information about the problems faced by a particular group of people, it’s only natural that your lead magnet won’t resonate as much with others.

Don’t overdo the brand promotion 

It’s okay to mention your company and its products or services throughout your lead magnet, especially if it’s in case study format. Sharing the story of how your offering helped a past client means you’ll obviously have to talk about it.

But there’s a fine line between natural mentions of your products and services and the kind of excessive promotion that will push away prospects who might otherwise have moved further down the sales funnel. 

B2B buyers are more sensitive to excessive promotion simply due to human nature. Most of us have evolved to be naturally suspicious of overt sales messages, thanks to years of cultural messaging about the dangers of slick salespeople and overzealous branding. 

If you’re too salesy, you run the risk of turning off even those who you might have been able to help with your company’s offerings.

Tying it all together 

You now have a sufficient framework for creating an effective lead magnet: do a comprehensive deep-dive with a specific, actionable solution meant for a particular audience. When possible, offer content in multiple media formats so that people with different consumption preferences can engage with your lead magnet. 

Credo can connect you with our network of vetted digital marketing providers who have deep experience across the most common digital marketing disciplines like SEO, Facebook, content marketing, and more. Whether you’re looking to improve your SEO rankings or develop a comprehensive content strategy, we can match you with the right providers for your needs.

If you’re ready to shorten the amount of time it takes you to bring on the marketing team you need for consistent growth, schedule a free consultation with us today to learn how to get started.