Holiday glee: Creating a lead magnet for free!

The Holiday season is almost upon us, so let BottomLine be the first to spread holiday cheer!

Here’s a gift on how to build your Lead Magnet: 100% FREE

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is any information, item or service that is given away for free in exchange for contact information (email, phone number etc). This is done strategically so that you can gather or grow your contact list, which in turn you can use to grow your customer base and seek out warm leads.

You can link lead magnets to a simple social media post, include it in your next newsletter, use it as a landing page for your ads or even drive traffic to your website. The possibilities are endless!

So, what will you need?

You’ll need the following tools:

(1) Website
Let’s use WordPress.(invest in a website with a professional domain name and reliable server, but since we were talking about 100% free – you can create a free wordpress account here.)

Why WordPress? As of writing, 35% of all the websites on the web today are created using WordPress and that translates to 455 million websites with happy users because of its flexibility, sustainability and stability.

(1) CRM tool

Let’s use Mailchimp. (create a free account here)

Why mailchimp? Its friendly user interface doesn’t shock beginners. It has a very friendly free account feature that allows you to create forms, sort email audiences, and store up to 2000 contacts.

(1) File Hosting Account

Let’s use Dropbox. (create free 2gb account here)

2GB storage eh, too small? Technically, you only should be hosting documents and infographics here – but yeah sure, for the sake of value (earn more free space here) do this when you’re done with this guide tho. 😛

Why use dropbox? User friendly interface, cross platform access (computer, web, mobile) and ease of use – no really, the only difference that you have with paid accounts is the storage size.

(1) Your File Magnet

This is totally up to you, this can be a report pdf file, infographic, a video embedded into a page. Anything really as long as it’s unique and provides value to your visitors.

If you’re curious about building lead magnets, social media tools, content marketing and more, let’s talk! At BottomLine, we’ve got the know-how to use dozens of tools to grow your client base!

Let’s start cooking!

Step 1: Create 2 pages on your website…

1. Name your page however you like, it would be better if it’s connected to your Lead Magnet content.
2. Name the page either Thank You/Download Page be sure to publish it under the File Magnet as the Parent Page.

Step 2: Create the form in Mailchimp

1. You can edit which fields to show by editing in the form builder (important fields are first name and email – make them required values, other than that we can remove).
2. Once done you can copy the code in the Embedded Forms section.

Step 3: Paste the code to the landing page

Step 4: Edit the page content of the “thank you” page.

Step 5: Updating the download link of your thank you page so that visitors can download the report.

1. Upload your Lead Magnet file to dropbox.
2. Copy the file sharing code, don’t forget to change the link’s last digit from 0 to 1. This allows the file to be downloaded immediately without having to visit the file page in dropbox, it will give us the appearance that everything happened within the thank you page.
3. Update the download link of your “thank you” page with the dropbox link.

Step 6: Change the confirmation page from Mailchimp’s default page to your landing page.

1. Copy the url of your thank you page from your site.
2. Add it in Mailchimp’s form confirmation thank you page.

And Done! Let’s do a test run 🙂

What did we say – 100% free, right? 😀

Want to learn more about leveraging lead magnets? Drop us a line here: info@wearebottomline.com – we’re always happy to have a conversation!

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