Make It Visible

#158: 5 steps to create a lead magnet that grows your email list (and get paying clients)

Season 2 Episode 108

Drop me a line and share your thoughts!

Struggling to grow your email list and attract high-paying clients to your coaching business? You're in luck! 

Today, I'm revealing my tried-and-true five-step process for creating a powerful lead magnet that will have potential clients flocking to your doorstep. 

Listen closely as we dissect the importance of working backward, honing in on your audience, and crafting effective exercises to help your clients shift from fear-based decisions to a place of confidence.

During this episode, we'll dive into the common mistakes coaches make when it comes to lead magnets and how to steer clear of them. 

Additionally, I'll share my insights on maximizing multiple platforms to connect with your ideal audience. Don't miss out on these valuable tips and strategies that are sure to elevate your online presence and bring in more paying clients!

About Me:

Hey There! I’m Michelle! Your Visibility Marketing Coach, content and Email Marketing Strategist, Motivational Speaker, Author (…And soon to be your new business bestie!)

I’m an international speaker, Visibility Marketing Coach, and founder of Elevate LifeCoaching.

I help coaches like yourself to build your brand, attract high-quality 5-6 figure clients, and land paid speaking gigs.

I’ve been public speaking since I was 9 years old.

My dad helped me draft my first speech and signed me up for a contest. (Yep, voluntold!)

And since then, I’ve been the go-to person whenever someone needed a speaker on short notice.

At work, I was the one presenting, running workshops, and leading training sessions.

While everyone else stayed quiet, palms sweating, hoping not to get called on, I was the one grabbing the mic and taking the lead.

After working with hundreds of coaching clients to help them boost their visibility and market their businesses, I realized there’s a HUGE missing piece most coaches overlook.

This is the #1 strategy man top coaches use to grow their coaching business. are you using it?


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Michelle Kuei:

Hey, welcome to my podcast. This is a podcast where I'll be teaching you all the systems and strategies you need in creating your visibility so you can turn your passion for coaching into a profitable business. I'm your host, michelle Kway. I am a visibility coach, content and email marketing strategist, international speaker and author, as well as the founder of Elevate Light Coaching. That just say that I know a few things about overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles in life and in business. I'm on a mission to be the champion that helps you to get to the top of your mountain, one courageous step at a time. Welcome to the show.

Michelle Kuei:

If you're looking for a way to quickly build up your mailing list without sacrificing the quality and your own authenticity, you are actually coming to the right place. I am a huge fan of using email marketing. I will walk you through the five simple steps of how to create a powerful lead magnet that will actually attract your high paying client or high value leads and increase your conversion for your business. Hopefully, by the end of this, you will know exactly how to craft and attract using that lead magnet and actually get good results. There's a couple of different mistakes I'm seeing coaches are making in terms of creating the lead magnet. I want to point it out today so that you can avoid those common mistakes. All right, let's get started. How about that?

Michelle Kuei:

Step number one in creating your lead magnet, in creating that email list and growing that email list, is that you want to start working backward. I know it sounds like counterintuitive, but you wanted to start with an outcome, with a result, with a solution that you're giving people Right. Let's say you have a one-on-one coaching program and you want to help people with their mindset. Let's say you're helping people to build their confidence. So what you want to start is thinking backward. That step number one in creating your lead magnet, or creating something that would bring people onto your email list, is not asking around people. Hey, would you like to subscribe to my newsletter? Let's be honest, who wants another email newsletter in their inbox when I don't really know what do I get by joining you? I want you to start thinking about thinking backwards. What is that outcome that you're helping people to accomplish? What is that outcome you're helping people? What is that solution that you're helping people to solve? First of all, you need to have a really defined problem that you're helping people to accomplish. Let's say you're offering one-on-one coaching and you're helping people to get more confidence in themselves, that self-worth, that self-image Great. That confidence would be your outcome that you want to focus on. If you're helping people to get more confidence, what would be their step number one? And I bet you, 100% of the time, you're going to tell me that step number one is to become self-aware. All right, great.

Michelle Kuei:

Now that you know, your step number one is to become self-aware. What are some of the exercises that you can offer to your potential clients to help them to become more self-aware? It could be a wheel of life. Wheel of life would be a great option to offer to your potential client, because a lot of them are unaware that there's something that's going on that's causing them not having the level of confidence that they need. So your wheel of life would be a great option to offer if you're helping people to build that confidence as your outcome. So the problem number one is unaware of the self-worth or self-image is causing them not having the confidence that they want. So that would be the problem that you solve, and so that would be number one step that you're going to offer and create something that would help them to address this self-awareness issue. So that's step number one. Thinking backward, you want to start by thinking about what is it that in your program you're offering your potential client to solve? So that's number one.

Michelle Kuei:

Step number two is you got to know your audience. Why do we even want to build an email list in the first place? Well, if you think about majority of our time we spend on social media, we're going from platform to platform. You're on Facebook, you're on Instagram, you are on LinkedIn and there's all these different places and your people. Your audience is very large. Right, there's billions and millions of people who's hanging out on social media.

Michelle Kuei:

How do you know exactly who would be your ideal client? You may have this image of oh well, you know, i really want to work with women. I really want to work with I don't know. What comes to my mind is HR professionals. You really want to work with HR professionals, but of all the people that's hanging out billions of people hanging out on social media how do you identify someone who is HR professional? You got to give them something, to give them a hint. Hey, i only work with HR professional. Or hey, i only work with motivated, purpose driven people. And so you got to give people a sign that these are the focus area that you're going into.

Michelle Kuei:

So I remember when I first started out my coaching business, i wanted to help negative self-talker. I don't just want to work with everybody, i want to work with negative self-talker. So when I create my first lead magnet, i focus on helping negative self-talker to minimize that self-talk. And so I created tons of lead magnet that focus on addressing the negative self-talk. What are those exercises? These are exercises. For example, how do I help people to shift from being afraid to being more confident?

Michelle Kuei:

So one of the PDF that I had created was something about reframing their thoughts. So I created a PDF where their thoughts originally is this that say I'm being afraid of stepping out of my comfort zone and take that first step towards applying for my dream job. So I gave them an exercise where they can reframe themselves. So what would be in another way of saying that instead of being afraid? How else would you say that? So that's a simple one-page PDF. That was clear. And I made it clear to everybody that I'm going to help negative self-talker, not just everybody, but negative self-talker. I mean negative self-talker is so pretty broad right.

Michelle Kuei:

So I'm not saying that you need to narrow down to your target audience immediately. If you're still like in that early stage or trying to figure out who that person is, then identify some type of personality or identity that you can define, or adjectives that you can describe who you love to work with, and that's something that you're going to have to think about. Like, who do you love to work with? Like, at the end of the day, you don't want to work with everybody. There's one ideal person. When you sit down in a session, you're just all into it. You're very passionate about talking to that person. So who is that person And what would be the adjectives that you would use to describe that person?

Michelle Kuei:

So that you got to know who you want to offer this solution to. That would be your step number two. So, know your audience. Who do you want to attract as your potential clients? Are they motivated person? Are they action taker? Are they going to be mom? Are they going to be dad? Maybe single parents? How do you want to describe that person? And then that would become clear in terms of oh so, if you're offering me a exercise that address my negative self-talking, i happen to be a single parent. That would be something that I want to grab from you, and so that's step number two. Number two is to identify and know your audience.

Michelle Kuei:

Who do you want this PDF, this free resource, to be in the hand of? Step number three is to keep it simple and keep it easy to digest. Just the other day, i came across Lee Magnet. Someone offered it and they were like, oh, here's a free resources. So I went and I grabbed it, and this is something that I do a lot of time. I go around and I grab everybody's free magnet And I use it as inspiration. I wanted to see what's being offered in the world and what my competitors are doing, that maybe I can fill in the holes. And so I downloaded one of the PDF, and the PDF contained 21 pages 21 pages of free resources. And so I know this because I have made the same mistakes in the past, where I dump all my ideas, everything I want to offer, and this is so common. If you're introverted and if you're server's heart, if you're all about making a change, making an impact, i dump everything into that PDF. My first PDF contains 18 pages 18 pages.

Michelle Kuei:

Those of you who graduated from iPad coaching, you know that we have the energy leadership, so I use that whole framework. I created 18 pages of ebook that I was going to offer to my audience, and 18 pages doesn't sound a lot for us coaches. I mean, we love resources, we love learning, right. But if you think about all these people that you want to work with, a lot of them have no coaching background. They have no idea what coaching is, and when you give them 18 pages of free offer or resources, not only do you overwhelm them, you put them into a space of I don't know what to do next. I don't know how to digest this. I need someone to help me to walk through that process. So I know exactly what am I missing? What am I doing wrong? that I am not getting my results? So when you give 18 pages or 20 pages of resources to someone, it's very overwhelming. It's very overwhelming. And what do you do when you get 20 pages of resources and you just don't have the time right?

Michelle Kuei:

That's another problem that a lot of people are experiencing is that people don't have the time to sit down and read through all these pages. People want the McDonald's, the fast food way of addressing an issue or problem. So what they're looking for is something that's quick, something that's easy, something that's doesn't take a lot of time to digest and read. They want a quick solution. Can you help me to minimize or address this negative cell talk? That's what people want to know about. And how can you help me, within the shortest amount of time that required the shortest amount of attention, that it doesn't take me a lot of time to do?

Michelle Kuei:

And if you give people 18 and 21 pages of resources, that takes a long time to actually digest. I mean, think about it. You have a coaching program that takes someone from six months, three months to 12 months of program and you're giving all your resources to that person in one shot. That's a whole lot of information to digest, and not only do they feel overwhelmed, and they just don't want to do it in the first place. All right. So you want it to keep it simple, don't overthink it. So it's not going to be 11 pages, 18 pages of e-book or resources that people need to download and read through. That's the biggest mistake I have made in my early coaching life. I created 18 pages of resources on energy leadership. Those of you who graduated from IPEC you know what I mean. So energy leadership And I created the whole framework around how to eliminate your judgment. I will never make that mistake again, and so you want to keep it very simple, like what is the shortest amount of description and ways that you can describe how to eliminate your judgment?

Michelle Kuei:

Just helping people, giving them a one-page exercise, and I think Katie Barron actually did it perfectly. She had a perfect one-page exercise of helping people to identify the judgment that they have against their neighbor, against themselves, and that's a great exercise to have for negative self-talk, because a lot of it has to do with that negative self-talking, right, critical self-judgment against yourself. And so it's just a one-page exercise and you can download it, you can work through and you can identify. If you want more, then guess what? You're going to come back to the website anyway. You're going to need to find out more information about what that person has to offer, but that would be your initial step. Just one-page exercise, and so keep it very simple.

Michelle Kuei:

I know, as a coach, we have a tendency of wanting to pour our heart out and we give all the resources away, but you're giving away 12 months of coaching session in one shot. I mean, think about that. How would you feel if you have resources that walk you from not knowing anything to actually completing your 12-month coaching program. I mean, that's 12-month coaching program. So keep it super simple, keep it easy to digest, don't overwhelm them. There's some example, some ideas for you Things like a checklist, a one-page checklist for how to set up your goal or how to become more aware of your critical judgment, or how to be aware of your inner critics.

Michelle Kuei:

That's a simple checklist. It could be a simple guide How do you gain more motivation? It's a simple guide that you give away, then exercise, exercise worksheet one-page, right. Give it to people to reframe their thoughts. How would you say it in this situation? How would you say it in different ways?

Michelle Kuei:

I actually created a self-judgment journal because of this, and that was not a free offer. It was a journal. It was actually a planner that I created. It's called 52 Weeks of Journal. In that journal I had exercises and this is back then when I was doing a live coaching and my side coaching. So just to give you an idea of what you might want to create, not to the extent of you're creating a whole planner, but you're welcome to take the idea as well. But I created this PDF that was going to be a free offer and then that will lead into people buying my planner. That's an example of exercise that you can create.

Michelle Kuei:

You can also do a Go setting worksheet or a quiz. These are all options that you can keep as simple. Keep it easy and keep it entertaining for people, that it doesn't overwhelm them. But invite them to join your email list Because potentially, this is a topic that they have raised their hand and they want it to be part of. They want to hear more about this topic. And by inviting them into your community not just sending them some newsletter that they have no use for you're actually inviting them to a very specific, focused topic that you can keep sending them information on or resources on once they join your community. And this is how you turn someone from just someone who's in your audience into paying clients.

Michelle Kuei:

And this is something that a lot of people are struggling. I know a lot of you who came into this group. You are struggling with getting clients, and getting clients is a number of different ways that you can get clients. You can do that traditional one-on-one DEM. You can send people DEM. You can reach out to people. You can say, hey, you know we're connecting. Are you open to conversation and things like that? That's more like traditional one-on-one outreach. But as women and as someone who may be still in that nine to five and someone has a job that pays the bill, that allows you to have fuel this passion, you may not have the time to do that one-on-one outreach. So you want it to work smart and not harder. The one-on-one is really harder way of working it. So the smarter way of working it is how do you create social media online presence? And by creating so, you're inviting people who are interested to hear more topic into your community. So start building a community on your email list. It's really easy to maintain that list.

Michelle Kuei:

I don't need to be on social media 24 seven. I can actually schedule out my email and keep it up to date. That's a. I'm sending out an email tomorrow. I can sit down tonight and I can plan it ahead. I can think about oh, this is happening this week, what do I want to talk about on Friday, what do I want to talk about tomorrow? And so there's a lot of flexibility in terms of your time and the freedom of where you do this, where you write your email, instead of feeling like I have to be on social media all the time, and so that is a great benefit for people like me who want to be somewhere else, having the freedom of doing other things. I enjoy outdoor activity. I joined two hours in the gym, so it gave me that flexibility of not having to be tied down to social media. Do I still use social media? Yes, absolutely. You know you do want to create that online presence, but I don't have to stress out, feeling stressed out and feeling overwhelmed that I have to be on social media all the time. I could share my resources, my blog posts and I could be somewhere else and people would still be connected with me in my email community. So that is the whole reason why we want to have an email list.

Michelle Kuei:

Let me guess you are an amazing coach but don't have enough clients to pay the bills. Most coaches struggle not because they don't coach well, but because they are not good at marketing. They haven't discovered how to tell their story in the way that attracts their perfect clients, like bees to honey. Let's fix that. I've been there, done that and I struggle until I figure out how to tell my story well. Because storytelling matters, i put together a profitable messaging formula. It is written especially for introverted female coaches like you, people who want a proven method for attracting paying clients. You can grab a copy at pmfattractclientthoshtorytellingcom. That's pmf profitable messaging formulaattractclientthoshtorytellingcom, and click on the download button and that sends some paying clients your way.

Michelle Kuei:

And so far, i have shared three steps, right? So first step is you want to think backward in terms of what is that outcome that you're helping people to accomplish? So what is that solution that you're helping people to have? And based on that, let's say it's confidence. Confidence was one of the things I gave you an example. So if confidence is what you're helping people to accomplish, what would be that step number one? Maybe it's awareness, all right. So let's take that awareness.

Michelle Kuei:

And who do I want to offer this to? Well, i don't just want to offer to everybody. I want to offer to those people who have a lot of inner critic. Maybe they have a lot of negative self-talk, maybe they have a lot of self-judgment. I want to offer to those people. And then, so you would identify the specific people that you want to have as your potential clients from your large billions and millions of people in your audience. And so from that, that was step number two knowing your audience and knowing that who will get these resources to.

Michelle Kuei:

And then you want to create some type of simple and easy to digest resource. It is not going to be 11 pages or 18 pages. What you want is something like a one pager, maybe a couple of pages. When you look on Canva search on the workbook, there's a lot of workbook free lead magnet. If you're typing lead magnet, it's even better Lead magnet. It's going to give you like four pages and five pages. It's never 18 pages of stuff that you give it away, right? 18 pages of stuff is something that you do once they join you inside the program. So step number three is to keep it super simple, keep it easy to digest.

Michelle Kuei:

And step number four is you want to be concise, you want it to be benefit oriented, and this is another common mistake I see, right, people are on social media and then they're saying that oh, join my email newsletter. So here's what happened In the past people don't mind joining newsletter. People actually like newsletter. Newsletter is something that you get once in a while and is something that would just have a really high level of what's going on, you know, for that month or for that week, and so a lot of time coaches would put onto their website newsletter. You're going to get newsletter, which is great in the past, but it's no longer working because people are bombarded by tons of email and nobody wants another email to cluster in their inbox. So tell me exactly why should I join your email list? What am I getting from your newsletter? What am I going to receive in your newsletter? It's not just going to be join my newsletter. That's not really helpful. So you want to be more concise. You want it to be more benefit oriented so that you tell exactly what is in your newsletter. When you see my post, you don't see me saying, oh, join my newsletter, no, you're going to join my community And this is what you're going to get in the community. Or you're going to get a free PDF. This is what you're going to get in the PDF. And so you want to be very concise and very benefit oriented so that you tell people why should I care when I can have all these other newsletters in my inbox? So give people some concise reason and benefit of why I should join Now.

Michelle Kuei:

Another common mistake I see people making, or coaches making, is that when I go and click on that button to download, one of the common mistakes I see is that you see immediately this PDF jump up And, yes, the idea is to give them the download. But when you open up so once I type in my email and then I open up this website and there's a pop up window and it allows me to download right away. Okay, and this is something that's very technical What happened is I can download that PDF from you. You'll see how often you download this UK and I would never get to your email again. That's an extra step for someone to open up, putting their email, opt in and go to their inbox to receive that PDF.

Michelle Kuei:

If you have a pop-up window on a browser and you immediately send out that PDF, people don't get to read your email at all. One of the problem around that is that your email will always sit into the promotion folder and that person will never get to see your email at all period. This is something that a lot of people don't talk about. A lot of coaches don't talk about, gurus that they don't tell you about, and this is another mistake that I have made in the past where my idea is you gave me your email and I'm going to give you the PDF. I'm going to have a pop-up window that shows you the PDF and you'll just grab it and you'll go. But the problem is that a lot of email marketing platform require people to opt in to say okay, yes, i raised my hand, i really want this resources. Please give it to me. If you don't have that extra step, what's going to happen is your email will always sit in the spam folder or promotional folder and your email list will never get to the point where it needs to be in people's hand.

Michelle Kuei:

What you want to do and this is step number five you want to have a dedicated landing page and opt-in page that will allow your audience, allow the people that you want to attract, to provide their email. And once they provide their email, what you want to do is you want to tell them on the next page hey, go check your email, go look at my email inside your inbox. They need to go look for that PDF. They need to go look for that download in order to get your free resources. You spend hours and maybe days putting together this free, great resources for them. You want to make sure that it gets into the hand of the right person. So having that extra step, having a dedicated landing page and telling people that, hey, go check your email before you get my PDF it's going to ensure that your email get to the right hand of the people. So let's just summarize what you have learned so far Five steps to create a lead magnet that will grow your email list and then, potentially, will get you paying clients. And email marketing still works.

Michelle Kuei:

A lot of people think that, oh, who still reads email? Everybody still read email. Think about your own behavior. The first thing that you go to is open up your email. Whether you're reading or not, you still go to your email. So people who still reading email? I read email. I have people. I follow the people. I adore people. I really enjoy reading their email. I go to their email every single day. So email still works. So five steps in creating your lead magnet that will allow you to grow your email list and get paying clients.

Michelle Kuei:

Five steps are number one, you want to think backwards. Think about the outcome or the solution that you're offering to people and how you're helping them. And number two is you need to know exactly who you want to attract. Okay, who are those people? What are some of the adjectives that you would describe them? Is it? are they motivated? are they action taker? are they mom? are they dad, single parents? who are they? And step number three is you want to keep it simple and easy to digest. Don't give them 10 pages, 18 pages of free resources, and don't give away your everything. Right, think that one shot. It's not good when you give everything, not just because they won't buy your program, but also because you're overwhelming them and they'll never come back. So you want to keep it simple, keep it easy to digest. And number four is you want to keep it concise. It needs to be benefit oriented. Don't tell people that you just come and join my newsletter. Nobody wants another email to cluster in their inbox. Right, Just straight up. Nobody wants that. Number five is you want to have a dedicated landing page or an opt-in page where you give people that option of providing their email to you, but then you want them to make sure that they go and check their inbox in order to get your free PDF.

Michelle Kuei:

Now there's a bonus tip that I'm going to give you is that you wanted to make sure that how you position your message is in the way that they want your help, and so a lot of time, you know, i see people not being very super clear in terms of what are the benefits? Why should I care? Why should I even bother to get this download in the first place? And that has to do with your messaging Right. That has to do with how you connect with them. Are you relatable? Can they see themselves in what you have gone through? And that has to do with the story that you're telling them, how you are the go-to person for them. And so what I did was I put together a profitable messaging formula, and now you can grab a copy of that at memberselevatelifecoachingorg. Slash profitable messaging. I just created this. This is brand new And so when you download it, it's going to help you to walk through that process of how you position your niche so that you can be seen as the go-to person.

Michelle Kuei:

And this is one of the problems that I see a lot of coaches are experiencing is that they're not positioning their story inside the benefit. Like when you tell your story, it needs to go somewhere, it needs to lead to something, and so you always want to base on the outcome If you're helping people with their confidence. You need to have a confidence story in order to position you as the confidence expert. So it has a lot to do with the messaging. If you're seeing people not opting into your lead magnet or if you're seeing people just passing your post by, that's because you haven't had a positioning messaging that actually convince people or make you believable that you are the person. You are the go-to person. So that is something that I just created so you can get a copy of it. All right.

Michelle Kuei:

So let's just quickly sum up five simple steps to create a lead magnet that will grow your email list. They're very simple And I guarantee, if you follow these five steps, it's going to grow your email list. Now, where do you offer it And how do you get people to opt in? That would be another day and another topic which I will cover. I'll put it into my calendar so that I will make sure I cover it. So how do you offer it and where do you offer it so that people will start opting in? That would be another topic, but today we're focusing on how to create that in the first place. So here are your five steps.

Michelle Kuei:

Step number one is you want to think it backward. Think about the outcome that you're offering to the problem that you're solving. Okay, number two is you want to know your audience. Who do you want this lead magnet? Who do you want this free resources be in the hand of? Like? who is that person? Who do you want it to be? Is it a mom, dad, single parents, relationship motivated action taker or someone who's confused, lost? Who is that person? And number three is you want to keep it simple. Keep it easy to digest, not 18 pages, like I did, 18 pages of resources that you're giving away, your whole entire coaching program, not that right. Something simple, something that's just. Step number one This is what you do Awareness. Here's some exercise that you can do to amplify your awareness. Okay.

Michelle Kuei:

Step number four is you want to be concise and you want it to be benefit oriented. You don't want to tell people, hey, join my newsletter. Nobody wants a newsletter. All right, and that's just straight up. Nobody wants a newsletter. People want something that's helpful. A newsletter is not one of them. Step number five is a dedicated landing page that has nothing else but one option, and one option only is to for them to give you their email and so that you can send them that free resource inside their email, not directly onto the next page, but inside their email.

Michelle Kuei:

Okay, and I also gave you a bonus tip, which is you wanted to make sure that when you are writing, when you are saying what you're offering, you wanted to make sure that it is positioning your niche as the go-to expert, and that has to do with your messaging. And this is something that I do for all my clients. I give them feedbacks, right. When they send me something, i always give them a feedback of how they can make it better. So hopefully this is helpful for you to get started to think about what is your lead magnet?

Michelle Kuei:

And next one I will talk about where can you offer your lead magnet so that people would actually opt in? I think one of the obstacles for a lot of coaches is that there's a lot of Facebook group that you're in, but Facebook group do not allow you to promote those lead magnet right. So you probably want to know. Maybe you have one already created and you're just wondering where do I actually promote it to actually maximize it and to make it work to make my email list grow? So I'm going to share some ways that you can grow your email list organically without the paying ad, and the ad is always an option, and I'll tell you more about that in another video. But that's it for today And hopefully this is helpful. Ladies, go out and get them. Hey, beautiful. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast and found value from this episode, i would love for you to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform and leave me a rating and review.

Michelle Kuei:

One thing I was struggling in my early years in business was finding the right people to connect with. It feels like I was on this entrepreneur journey on my own, and sometimes we all just need friends who can share our dreams and hopes, someone who can relate to what we're going to do as we grow our business together. If you are a woman coach who is ready to grow your coaching business and looking for strategies to get seen, get heard and get hire, i want to invite you to come and find me in our community on Facebook at Get Client with Storytelling. This is a community of women coaches who want to grow a coaching business by creating engaging, visible and authentic content with storytelling for their business to get more leads and attract more clients. I will see you at our next tea party.

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