We all desire lots of lovely business leads, especially ones straight from our target market. So, we spend countless hours planning and creating valuable, relevant, and strategic lead magnets.
(By the way, I am totally including you in the ‘royal we’. I’m adamant you are owning your lead generation strategy and pumping out some excellent gated content.)
The thing is, I know that not all those in the ‘we’ are continuing to be strategic when it comes to lead magnet entry points. Some lead magnet sign-up forms end up plonked randomly on a singular, difficult-to-find page on one's website.
I know that written down, it might sound a little far-fetched. But believe it or not, it’s what we Ninjas see repeatedly. Businesses think that creating the lead magnet is enough, but the truth is it’s only one part of the puzzle.
Research has shown that 50% of businesses that use lead magnets have a higher conversion rate. But despite knowing this, many businesses don’t utilise their lead magnet positioning and they are leaving money on the table as a result.
It’s essential to consider the journey your potential business leads will take through your website and integrate the entry points of your lead magnets into this journey. This might include multiple entry points per lead magnet across different awareness stages.
In this blog, we’ll explore how to sprinkle entry points for lead magnets across your website to effectively increase your business leads.
What is a Lead Magnet?
I don’t want to assume that you know exactly what a lead magnet is. You may be new to this whole lead gen thing, which is cool. So, before we get into entry points, let’s first define what a lead magnet is.
A lead magnet is something of high value that you offer to your audience in exchange for their contact details.
It's basically a way of you asking for permission to land in your audience's inbox in return for something juicy that will add value to their lives in some way. It can be anything as long as it is valuable to them and doesn’t cost them anything to get a hold of it.
If it’s not valuable, potential business leads likely won’t want to give your their contact details in exchange for it.
Some examples of lead magnets are:
Once you have a lead’s contact details, you can nurture the business relationship, build trust and get them engaging with more of your content.
Related content: Why do email nurture sequences work?
What is a Lead Magnet Entry Point?
Once you’ve got a juicy lead magnet designed to rake in those ideal business leads, you’ve got to make it available. That means you need to decide where you will place your entry points.
But first, what even is an entry point?!
An entry point is any place that offers your audience a lead magnet.
Now, some consider this the actual form that a lead fills in to sign up. But that’s not entirely accurate. The form is the method of entry, whereas an entry point is every location you display the option to sign up/download the lead magnet.
It could be in the form of a button, a graphic/image, hyperlinked text, or a straight-up form if you’d prefer. The former means you will have a landing page that hosts the lead magnet sign-up form.
We always advise that a lead magnet has its own landing page. It’s a central point that allows you to build context around the lead magnet, helping to ‘sell’ it. Plus, you only have one key place to keep up to date, and it has the added bonus of allowing you to track the performance and conversion results of each lead magnet - rather than guessing.
Example of a Lead Magnet Entry Point
Here's an example of an Ninja entry point - made pretty by the beautiful, beaming face of our fearless leader Kenda 
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The Marketing Brainbox (one of our own lead magnets) is a regular delivery of nurture-first content. This entry point is an exit intent pop-up; therefore, we’ve included the sign-up form itself.
On signing up, our business leads get added immediately to our database so they can be the first to learn about all things behavioural marketing automation. And much more…
It’s at this point that I would like to point out that this is just ONE entry point for The Marketing Brainbox. We’ve got at least another 5 entry points, including our website footer, so it's on every page.
It’s not enough to have one entry point for your lead magnet, you need to have multiple access points across your website. The more tailored entry points you have - the more likely it is that the right people will end up on your database.
Related content: 6 common marketing automation mistakes and how to avoid them.
Where Should You Place Entry Points to Increase Business Leads?
Here are some examples of where you can place entry points across your website.
Home page - we suggest putting your core lead magnet/s here, don’t overdo it, as you’ll provide too many CTA options for your visitors.
Footer - you’ll only want one lead magnet entry point here, most businesses opt for a newsletter sign-up or similar (like The Marketing Brainbox.)
PS. A newsletter can be a great lead magnet - unless your newsletter sucks and isn’t valuable - we explain more here.
Blogs - blogs are a great place to go heavy on lead magnets. And, because you will be discussing different topics, you can pick and choose the most relevant lead magnet for each blog.
Resources page - if you’ve got a page specifically for useful resources, then add relevant lead magnets to it. You might not want to put EVERY lead magnet here, especially if you have a smorgasbord of them. It may become too overwhelming to navigate!
Exit intent pop-up - I already mentioned this in my example above, but these can perform really well if you pick the right lead magnet to offer. See HubSpots' Exit Intent Pop-up Examples.
Product pages - your business leads may want to get to the nitty gritty of your products, which is why we love a Buyer’s Guide. You should provide lead magnets like this on your product pages.
Online shop - not forgetting you eCommerce folk! If you want to offer exclusive discounts, which are one of the most popular types of lead magnets, you will want to use them in your shop. Among other places, perhaps?
The main thing to remember is to make it as easy and straightforward as possible for your business leads to find and sign up for your lead magnets.
Design Engaging Entry Points!
A bland, boring sign-up box - with unengaging copy and uninspiring images.
Sign me up….NOT!
The internet is a massively oversaturated place, and there is no shortage of companies vying for customers' attention.
Entry points are opportunities for you to grab your prospect's attention with beautifully designed and engaging graphics and copy.
You can do this yourself using Canva or In-Design, and then linking this to a landing page.
Related content: Behavioural progressive profiling - drive demand generation
How to use awareness to improve entry point placement and increase business leads
So, how do you ensure that your prospects have the right lead magnet to move them to the next point in their purchasing journey?
The key is tying entry points to awareness stages so that prospective customers find the right lead magnets and entry points at the right time.
Where a potential buyer is in their awareness stage will determine the type of lead magnet they want, and what pages you should sprinkle your entry points on.
What are the different awareness stages?
Let’s recap the five awareness stages…
You need to understand what pages your potential customers will visit during different stages of awareness, and present the right lead magnets to them in various ways to increase the chances of sign-up.
Learn more about awareness and how to create effective content - Go to The Clever Content Awareness Scale.
Get Clear on Your Entry Points to Increase Business Leads!
Entry points are a crucial part of the success of your lead magnets. You could have the most amazing, valuable, and relevant lead magnet, but if you don’t present it to your business leads at the right time then no one will download it.
Most companies spend all their time creating amazing lead magnets but don’t consider their entry point placement.
If you don’t think about this, then it’s likely your database will suffer, no matter the quality of your lead magnets. Planning your customer journey and thinking about the right entry points to coincide with the awareness stages will increase effectiveness.
If you need help with your customer journey, entry points or lead magnets, then this is something that we can help with, so get in touch.
