As a professional marketer, I have always been very keen on eCommerce marketing.
If you are running an eCommerce store, then you are in the right place. In this article, you will see 9 ideas of lead magnets for eCommerce.
For any eCommerce store, lead generation is of utmost importance. But did you know that lead generation for eCommerce sites are different?
Everything you know about lead generation may not work for your eCommerce sites.
If you want to know more about lead generation outside the eCommerce family then you can go through Neil Patel blogs.
As far as eCommerce owners are concerned, you must be thinking where you are going wrong.
Well, this is why we are here to discuss some of the best ways to boost your eCommerce lead generation.
The first thing you need to understand is that eCommerce customers behave in a different way than patrons of other businesses. This is the main reason why other lead generation techniques won’t apply here.
If you want to get more customers to your eCommerce site, then you need to suit your lead generation techniques specifically to an eCommerce audience.
There’s nothing to worry about as I am going to help you understand in detail.
What is a Lead Magnet?
Before going into any further details, you need to first know the meaning of lead magnet. To clear any confusion, I have explained the term below.
In simple words, a lead magnet is a type of incentive that is offered by the marketers to the potential buyers in exchange for their contact information or email address.
Lead magnets usually offer a piece of downloadable content. This may include a free PDF checklist, eBook, video, report, whitepaper, etc.
By using a lead magnet, you can do a lot to your conversion rate.
All you have to do is follow these three simple steps.
- Promote the lead magnet to drive more traffic to your email list.
- Once you get these new subscribers, you can market your products to them.
- Make a profit out of your new subscribers.
Now the question is why do you need a lead magnet or why it is so important for your E-commerce business?
Let’s find that out.
Why is Lead Magnet Important?
When it comes to marketing, we have different goals such as brand engagement, brand awareness, building trust, boosting credibility, etc.
Apart from that we also have more tangible goals like increasing traffic, getting more sales and building an email list.
All these goals are achieved with the help of lead magnets. This makes it easier to measure as you can keep track of the number of downloads or any other action performed by the customers.
Lead magnets are important for various reasons. They provide exposure and linkability to your eCommerce site. Along with that it also helps you to create awareness and earn the trust of the customers.
You can say that it provides the customers a reason to think and decide, whether they want more of your site before you expect them to make a purchase.
One important thing to take note of is that the higher the price tag, the more steps you have to take.
Tips And Strategies To Follow To Increase Lead Generation
Now that you know about the importance of lead magnet, it’s time I share some of the useful tips that can help you increase lead generation for your site.
As I already mentioned before, lead generation for eCommerce sites is a bit different than usual. Keeping that in mind, let’s discuss the most effective things you can do.
1. Use Coupons
Using coupons is considered to be one of the best ways to increase lead generation.
That’s because your customers can assign a specific amount to its value.
For example, let’s say you are offering a 10% discount on a $50 boxer.
Your customers will quickly do the calculation and discover that the value of the coupon is $10.
The moment they realize that they are getting $10 for the email list, they will quickly sign-up for it. They will buy the boxer and apply for the coupon.
For example, in my case, here’s an email that I got from LinkedIn.
As you can see, it was an active coupon from LinkedIn advertising platform.
This not only increases your conversion rate, but you also get a new customer who considers your eCommerce site to be the best.
2. Offer Free Shipping
Another great lead magnet idea could be free shipping. This idea is similar to offering coupons on your products.
We can all agree to the fact that no buyer likes to pay shipping charges. For them, it’s an unnecessary extra charge that they have to pay.
They think of shipping charges to be a waste of money. This is one drawback of online shopping that every customer has to face.
For example, Blissoma, a digital store selling skincare products, leverages their customers’ dislike of free shipping to get new email subscribers.
Note that their store requires your order value to be more than $65 US or more than $125 Canadian so that you can avail free shipping option.
This is a good way of avoiding the abuse of your lead magnet.
3. Social media giveaways
In my opinion, giveaways are always a great way to please customers.
After all, we all love to get free stuff. They will participate in the event, even if there are more than a thousand other people.
Well, such is the power of giveaways.
By using this technique, you can benefit in several ways.
Let me tell you how
- People will share your giveaway with their friends.
- Winners will become loyal customers of your brand.
- More people will get to know more about your brand.
- Customers who did not win will end up buying the product anyway.
You can avail so much for your brand with just one giveaway event on social media.
All you have to do is host a giveaway event for one of your products and pay the shipping charges.
If you want to get the most of your event, then I would suggest you run a contest.
You can ask your visitors to submit user-generated content such as their photos using one of your products. In this case, you pick a winner at random for the giveaway.
For instance, take a look at a $100 giveaway contest for SEMrush. They asked their fans to create content about SEMrush.
4. Optimize the checkout process
By simplifying the checkout process you can boost lead generation and convert to more sales.
Wondering how?
You see even when a customer abandons his/her shopping cart, you can at least get the person’s email in the process. You can now send a follow-up email to that person.
What you have to do is get your users to register first. However, you should provide them an option to continue as guests or else you may lose out on sales.
Make sure that the rest of the process is hassle-free.
You can consider providing more payment options to the customers and also make your shipping policy clear at the starting of the checkout process. You should also use more than one page with a progress bar.
Below is a good example of a clear shipping policy:
5. Use email marketing strategically
Even email marketing is considered to be a great way to produce more leads.
What you have to do is collect as many emails as you can. But at the same time, you have to use your marketing messages strategically. That’s the most important step in this technique.
For example, if you are selling a complicated product, you can use an explainer email. You should give a complete explanation of your product to the users.
It uses an explainer video as it is more effective.
On the other hand, if you are selling cheaper or regular products then using coupon codes would be the best idea. You can even offer free shipping.
If you want to collect more emails, you need to offer a monetary incentive to the customers.
For example, when you join BigLots, you’ll be awarded $5 on your first purchase.
6. Create search ads with extensions
Search ads are also great for eCommerce lead generation. They can be extremely useful when you use them with ad extensions.
The main advantage of using ad extensions is that you can include extra information in the ad.
For example, Amazon display ads show up in Google SERPs with site link extensions. This allows them to add extra links to pages on their site.
This helps Amazon to direct customers to their landing pages or about pages or any other popular page on their site.
The main purpose of these ad extensions is that it tells your customers more about your site and the different products you sell.
Another thing you can do is include a link to your discounts page. It can help you boost conversions.
7. Optimize your sales page and content for SEO
It is needless to mention the importance of SEO. As a part of the online marketing world, we are all aware of the power of SEO in digital marketing.
It doesn’t matter what type of content is there on your site unless you optimize it, nobody will ever get to see your content.
I am not just asking you to optimize your content marketing campaign but also your sales pages.
You must use relevant keywords along with metatags to help your audience find your products.
For example, Getresponse does a great job of optimizing its sales copy.
The keywords I’ve pointed out throughout the Getresponse sales copy are directly related to their service, so they’re more likely to be found in SERPS.
So, you need to make sure that all your keywords are directly related to your services or products. This is likely to increase the visibility of your page in the search engine results.
8. Benefit from remarketing campaigns
When it comes to lead generation for your eCommerce site, remarketing campaigns are considered to be extremely effective.
Once your audience visits your site, they might get to see your ads on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, or any other site where you are running these ads.
This will help you to increase brand awareness. When your customers realize that they have to buy that particular product, they will come to your site.
The market is filled with competition. In such a situation, you need to put more stress on brand recognition.
You need to take steps to make sure that the customers remember your logo, the look of your site, etc. In other words, you need to find a place in their minds. This can be achieved only by advertising your brand in front of customers.
9. Make your customers stay on the site
For every eCommerce site owner, they want to keep their customers on their site as long as it is possible.
In this case, I would suggest you try out various opt-in forms.
For example, Brian Dean the founder of Backlinko does a great job by adding a strikingly simple opt-in feature box to his site.
Your main goal should be to get hold of your customer’s contact details so that you can get back to them later.
Another thing you can do is put a lot of internal links throughout your site. You can also make use of anchor texts to stroke excitement in the customers.
Conclusion
Increasing lead generation for your eCommerce website is easy if you know the right techniques to use.
The techniques that you read here are all 100% effective. If you can use them correctly, you are sure to gain great benefits from them.
To find the most effective method, you can make use of a split testing strategy. In this case, you will have to make use of tools for a/b testing.
In my opinion, understanding your customers is the first important step. Once you know the type of audience you are dealing with you can choose the right lead generation technique.
You can try out multiple strategies at the same time to benefit your online store.
All you need to do is make sure that you are going in the right direction. You cannot do things at random. Good lead magnets generate conversions and increase sales and your eCommerce revenues.
For an eCommerce website, the best way to get more leads is by offering them a monetary incentive. The moment the customers realize that they are getting free money from gifts, they will automatically be more interested in your site.
At least, that’s what I have learned from my experience.
If you find this article helpful, do let me know.
Don’t forget to share it, others may benefit from it as well.
About the Author
Bill Acholla is a digital marketer working with small business owners building their brand through growth hacking strategies. For more actionable marketing tips, check out his business blog at BillAcholla.com.
