Show Notes:
Lead magnets, funnels, and ads – OH MY!
We talk A LOT about them – I know. But it’s because they’re SO important… More than important – ESSENTIAL to growing your business.
For some though, it may sound like jargon. That’s why today I’m taking a step back to define the terms, and pin down the reasons why you need to know what lead magnets are vs slow funnels and how to leverage them in your business.
Because one thing’s for sure—you need these strategies to close sales and see real results 💰💰💰.
Click that play button to listen to this episode and let’s dive into the pros and cons of lead magnets and slow funnels.
Key Takeaways:
❓ Lead magnets vs slow funnels + the pros and cons of using them for your business
🧲Lead Magnets
✅ Lead magnets are an inexpensive way to get customers because they’re free
✅ They can come in the form of files (like PDFs) that are easily digestible and take less time to consume
✅ Key terms when dealing with lead magnets: it’s tangible, it’s quick, it’s digestible
❗Messaging needs to be on point so your lead magnets don’t just bring in freebie seekers
🧲 Slow Funnels
✅ Slow funnels are also called “self-liquidating offers” because that’s literally what they do — they self-liquidate
✅ Self-liquidating offers can come in the form of templates that your customers can take and implement RIGHT NOW
✅ Self-liquidating offers must be customizable enough for your business, for your brand, and for your identity
✅ Self-liquidating offers work well when you set up order bumps that interested people can purchase
❗This strategy works if you’re ready to set aside a budget for your funnels
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Get the Transcript here:
How Best to Use SLO Funnels & Lead Magnets
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies.
Jessica Walman: What’s up everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing On Tap podcast with your host, myself and Jessica Wallman. And today we’re gonna talk about lead magnets verse slow funnels, which are self-liquidating offers. I get asked a lot on which one to use and. A lot of people want to come to me wanting to do a self-liquidating offer.
we’ll talk a little bit about why, and I’ll explain what each of these are if you don’t know what they are. but talking about really which one you should be using in your business. So talking a little bit about the pros and cons that you might not even be thinking about before you implement these.
It’s very easy for people to create a lead magnet and most people wanna do that. There are pros and cons to that. Same with creating a self-liquidating offer. There are pros and cons to that, and I want to kind of go through that with you so you can decide for yourself, which one of these should I be using for my business?
And you might say, well, really both would make sense, but right now I need to start with this one and then move to this one. briefly, lead magnet guys. Someone opts into something for free. Self-liquidating offer is where they’re paying for a small offer, and the goal of a self-liquidating offer is for to self liquidate, pay for itself.
Okay? So obviously one is free, one is paid. That is the biggest difference between the two. and again, really important to choose the right strategy for your business right now and what you can do for a beer business. What will work well for your business right this moment. To start, we’re gonna talk a little bit about lead magnets, then dive into self-liquidating offers.
Then talk about the pros and cons of each together and situations where one may be more effective than the other, and then we’ll go into choosing the right strategy for your business itself. Okay. So lead magnets, again, guys, a free thing. A lot of times lead magnets. consists of, PDF checklist, PDF swipe file, or just a swipe file of some kind, templates, things that are really easily digestible, the more easily digestible it is and the less time it will take for them to consume.
The more leads, honestly, you’ll get in at a cheaper rate. if someone’s doing this, like, you I’ve got a 60 minute audio with this 30 page workbook. Honestly, that’s gonna take a little bit more time for someone to consume than, let’s say this three page pdf or this, six page template or something that someone can just implement pretty immediately and they’re getting immediate actions and results from it.
when choosing a lead magnet, really it’s important to trying to create an effective lead magnet. Something that somebody can get a result from pretty immediately, in some way, right? You can provide something to somebody and they can get a result. That is a huge win. They’re now associating you with positive results, with positivity, with knowing that you can actually help them move further in whatever they’re trying to move further in.
And so if you create a lead magnet that really is just kind of blah and it doesn’t really give them action steps or it’s not, it’s just. Super long-winded or whatever it might be, then, that’s what they’re gonna associate you with. So I really love actionable templates, swipe files, quick PDFs, roadmaps, things like that, that are really easily digestible and quick.
those honestly do perform really well. And the advantages of using lead. Usually, especially when you do it the way that I just said, is you’ll get in pretty inexpensive leads like your lead cost if you’re running paid ads to it, which I highly recommend you do because your goal should always be to be built in a list in some way, shape, or form.
And so if you’re building your list through ads with your lead magnet, your lead cost will be pretty inexpensive. You’re able to bring in people at a lower cost versus let’s say you’re doing like a webinar or a challenge or vsl. those are free offers. They’re like a lead magnet, but they’re. longer, right? They take more of someone’s time. You’re asking for more of that person, which is fine cuz those ultimately lead to sales. That’s the goal of those, I call those sales vehicles. but they cost more, for someone to say yes to it, they have to think about it a little bit harder, a little bit longer.
And so for a lead magnet that just seems really good. They can grab it at their fingertips. They don’t need to spend time with anybody. They don’t need to spend an hour sitting down. They’re more likely to just say yes and give you that email. The common mistake that I want you to avoid though, when creating your lead magnet is really ensuring that one, it aligns with what you do and your main offer and you it’s great to create these juicy lead magnets that are really, really cool.
People want ’em and they’re opting in, right? you want a low lead cost. You want to bring in people as cheap as you can for sure, but you also want them to be. . So if that means that you need to, position it a little bit differently, add in some verbiage, do something to make sure that it’s really calling out your ideal avatar, then that’s important to do.
And if that means it increases, which sometimes it will when you do this, that increases your lead cost a little bit. That’s okay. at the end of the day, what really matters is bringing in your ideal client, right? No one just wants leads to have leads. It doesn’t really matter at that point. , making sure that it is tangible, it’s quick, it’s digestible.
You can get a great lead cost in, but you are speaking to your ideal client and that the lead magnet does really align with your offer down the line. it’s not bringing in the freebie seekers, right? So again, really having your messaging on point, so that it doesn’t just bring in freebie seekers like, Hey, you wanna learn how to have a six figure business follow this roadmap?
That sounds great, but you’re gonna get a lot of people in who really aren’t. who would never invest or who are just curious or, you know, just aren’t really there in their journey yet. maybe it’s like, Hey, how to add, I don’t know how to shift from a low ticket model to high ticket model to increase your revenue by 10 K a month or something.
Well, now you’re speaking to somebody that is already making some money, that already has a low ticket and they’re looking to sh. You know what I mean? Yeah. You are still going to get people in there that are just curious, but you’re reducing that by getting more specific really speaking to your ideal avatar and where they are at in their journey.
So really important notes about the lead magnet. That’s what a lead magnet is. That’s how you can use it effectively, and These are some points that you should avoid doing when you do your lead magnets. Now, when we go into a self-liquidating offer, selfing offer defined by the name, we call ’em slow funnels, but the it literally self-liquidating.
The goal is to run ads to it, and if it sells for, let’s say your average order value is $60, you want your cost proposition to be $60 or less so that it self liquidates and really all of these leads. Quote, unquote, free, right? and when I say average order value, it means you could be selling your offer for $37.
There’s an order bump for $27, and then there’s an upsell for 97 or 1 97. on average, when someone buys from you out of 10 people or 20 people, a hundred people, on average, they will spend X amount whatever that X amount is, is your self liquidating point, and that’s what you should be aiming for at the bare minimum with your ads.
Okay? That’s the goal, right? So examples of really effective self liquidating offers are. templates or, things that they can take and implement right now. But when I say templates, like really good templates like you put together, like, well, we’ll talk about mine. So I’ve got editable ad graphic templates literally from clients from our seven and eight figure clients in our agency that have performed really well.
We’ve got ad copy templates that hour, seven, eight figure copywriter at our agency use, as a base frame for their copy. And it goes into legion and self offers on live evergreen launches. and then from there we also give away our messaging matrix. So how you can create tons of hooks with this matrix in just.
So that you never run out of, you hooks and copy to write on for your ads. this is all already done. And all it is is like it’s filled in the blank, but it’s customizable. It’s customizable. So you can customize it for your business, for your brand, for your identity. that’s really, really important, right?
You don’t want just like a really cookie cutter type thing. then there’s bonuses in there as well, cuz you always want bonuses. having a really juicy self equipent offer that’s this easy. Yes. Like for $37, I’m gonna get all this, something that I can implement in 30 minutes or an hour or whatever, and get these results potentially.
It’ll save me time, it will save me money, it will save me headache. When your self equipent offer can do those things, that’s fantastic. Um, and then of course you have to look at, you need to have an order bump in order to have an effective self-liquidating offer. you’re self like an offer.
We have clients that, can convert anywhere between 10 to 20%, on the front end. then, for our order bumps, oh gosh, I love when I have clients that convert at like 80% plus we look for 60% or higher, but. I mean, a lot of times we, our clients order bumps are just like mine.
I think it was converting 75 or 80%, order bumps, you they’re lower cost than your main offer. And, that needs to be just like the easiest yes possible. Because if they’ve spent 37 and you asked for like 19 more, and it’s like this really, duh. Like, yeah, you’re gonna get my entire system on this for 19 bucks.They just click a button. That’s what an order bump is. They literally have already put in their credit card information. They just click a button, it adds it to the order. Boom, you’ve now increased your average order, From whatever. and then once they buy that, then, and so that needs to be an easy yes.
And like I said, we’re looking for 60% plus conversion on that. But I mean, we’ve had clients 80% plus. Then after that you have your upsell. That should be minimally 97, if not 1 97 or higher. So definitely 97. , if not higher. And that should be a really juicy offer too. And you want a certain percentage, like 10% of people who buy into your main offer to upsell into that.
being able to create these and making sure, like you’re trying to track these numbers and it’s working, that’s what’s gonna make self-liquidating offer work. It is not about just having the first offer work. It is not just about having the order bump, but it’s not just about having the upside.
You need to have all. Okay. that’s a mistake that people make is they’re really just focusing on. They don’t have an upsell or they don’t have an order bump. And really to make yourself liquid and offer work, you need to have all three working, and you need to make sure that they’re all optimized and converting well.
so again, self liquid offer, great advantage of that is you’re bringing in buyers into your list. They didn’t just opt into something free, they literally bought something from you. So that’s the whole point of the self flow grain offer is to bring in these buyers. Quote unquote, higher quality leads,
That then will hopefully convert more to your other tier offers because they’re buyers now, right? if they’re buyers and they actually absorb the information that they purchase from you, that’s even better. But they’ve already spent some money with you, and so that is supposed to qualify them higher, which a lot of times it does.
So now if you’re talking about lead magnet, like pros and cons of each strategy, like I said, lead magnets, you will bring in cheaper. if you wanna bring in, a hundred people and know, it’s $3 or $4 or $5 a lead, you know, it’s only spending three, $400, whatever it might be, and when you do self-liquidating offer, if your average order value is $60, I’ll be honest with you, for someone to actually break even on their self-liquidating offer, it’s very difficult.
people talk about, oh, you should, it’s very difficult to do that. , I’ve been able to do that with my own. and we’ve had a couple of clients be able to do that and majority of clients are not breaking even. But here’s the key when it comes to self liquidating offers is that if you can be okay with not breaking even, and let’s say your average order value is $60 and you’re spending 80 or 90, if you’re able to take a 20 or $30 loss on the front end per person that buys.
Because you know that they’re higher quality and you have a backend system set up to upsell them into your next offer, and it works then you’re okay. you don’t have to break even. we have it in our mind. We have to, but you’re doing that and you’re turning off all your ads because they’re not breaking even, then who’s
gonna get those sales? Your competitors, somebody else. But if you are able to say, I’m okay taking a small loss, I can take up to a 20 or 30 or $40 loss because I know that an average, a certain percentage of them will purchase my $3,000, $5,000 offer or $2,000 offer, whatever it might be. So really an average, I’m making this much per person.
Then you’re okay. So you have to know your numbers to really make a self-liquidating offer work now. starting off with a self-liquidating offer, you need to have more budget. If you’re going to run ads, that is just the case. Either you have to have a really good list already in place to launch it to, right?
Or if you don’t, then to launch this to a cold audience and ads, it’s gonna cost you, like I just said, to bring in one buyer. It could cost you 80 to a hundred. It could. we’ve had some people, they spend 120 to acquire buyer, just based on the offer and how well it sells and how all the page is converting.
so you have to have that budget. So this is where it comes into like situations that where one might be more effective than the other or where to consider for your strategy because, . I do think that the slow funnels are great and if you have the budget to be able to do that and you have the know with all the support to be able to, optimize that and really get that to convert where it needs to.
that’s great. But you do need to have a backend for a slow funnel to really work. Right. Great. I was personally doing this. I had my slow funnel set up. Everything was converting great. I didn’t really have the back end done, and. , I was bringing in sales and it was breaking even, which was cool.
But then I just kind of put like a training in there. I’m like, watch this training and book a call with me. And like, it wasn’t working And I didn’t really take the time to think about the backend, which you should do to send people up. So what I think is really cool is self quitting offers, which I actually spoke about in a previous episode.
I think either in the marketing or the funnels that work for 2023 is. , if you’re selling higher ticket, is to get people on a phone call. So in your offer, you can offer, as part of a bonus is a one-on-one call, like a one-on-one, whatever you wanna call it.
Tape call in there. So now they buy their higher quality they booked a call with you. So now you’re on the call with not just someone who booked it for free, but someone who booked it after paying something who sent you money. now you’re on the call with those people and you can then, , support them, provide value, see what offers of yours fit for them.
or maybe not yet. Maybe it’s later on down the road, but you’ve built this relationship with this now higher quality buyer. So I think adding in a phone call is really powerful. but lead magnets might be your first route to go. And what’s cool about lead magnets is you can still try to bring in revenue by, once they opt in, you can offer a tripwire.
At the back end. So they opt into a free lead magnet. On a confirmation page, you can offer a 7, 17, 27 dollar. I’m just, I’m just naming random numbers here, but somewhere in that range. offer and see if you can get buyers that way. That can also help. supplement some of that ad spend and also get you some buyers on your list, but you’re paying less per person to get on cause you will have some free people on there.
just because they opted in for free does not mean they’re not a quality person at all. Right? If you have the right lead magnet positioned to the right person, . That’s amazing. And that’ll help you bring in the right people to your list. And yes, you’ll always have at that point, freebie seekers.
But even people who buy a $37 offer, I’ve bought so many, I sometimes I don’t even open them. SoI’m not a quality person to that person at least. Cause I didn’t even open it. So knowing what’s really best for your business, what you can afford? I think both strategies are great.
I think for lead magnets, we have clients right now that use it because their big strategy are Facebook groups, so they have a lead magnet. People opt in to grab it. and on the thank you page, they invite them over to the Facebook group and sometimes they, I think they might even tell ’em that’s where they can access it.
and then people go to the Facebook group and then they nurture and they get people on calls that way. It’s usually higher ticket. understanding like what are you trying to do? Were you trying to lead people, lead magnets to a trip wire, lead magnets to a Facebook group? Those work really well, depending on what your backend strategy is.
we’re about to switch a client right now. Her masterclass page isn’t converting well. we’re gonna be working on that. But in the meantime, we’re just not getting eyes on her training. So her checklist, her lead magnet is doing really, really well. So we’re like, well, you know what?
When they opt into that on the confirmation page, instead of it just saying, Hey, , your checklist is on its way to your inbox. We’re now gonna say, Hey, it’s on its way to your inbox, but stop, wait, we’ve got something special for you. And then we’re gonna have the broadcast, so the training right there.
And so we’re gonna be able to get, hopefully, a good chunk of these checklist people that really wanted this checklist on her training and watch her training to hopefully then, move them in the right direction. least in the interim while we work on her masterclass landing page. Because I love doing masterclass to cold audiences.
It still does work. So again, kind of know. What your end goal is and how you can position each of these to work for you. my slow funnel, I’m about to put right back up. but I’m shifting the backend, right? Great. it was self-liquidating, which is cool, but like I didn’t have the backend set up, so now redoing the backend.
I’m gonna add in a call. I’m redoing the upsell so that it makes more sense, and I’m gonna position it so that I can get more sales and I can get more book calls, et cetera. Through this self-liquidating offer on autopilot, but it will cost more, right? It will cost more out of pocket for me to do that than a lead magnet.
so that’s why I’m making sure I’ve got this slow funnel set up correctly, not just on the funnel itself, but the backend, which is super important. So again, this is what you need to consider when you’re trying to decide which strategy to use. I don’t think one is right, one is wrong.
I think that you just need to figure out what works best for your business right now. and maybe one doesn’t work for your business at all. You’re like, you I don’t really want to do a slow funnel. It just sounds super expensive. Or, I know that when I bring in people through this one lead magnet mine, it does really, really well.
but, you Jessica gave me a great idea of putting the masterclass on the backend or putting a trip wire, putting them to my Facebook group or whatever. And so I wanna stick with that. Like you just have to figure out what works best for you. But hopefully, Helpful in just explaining each of them the differences, the pros and cons, you common mistakes that you wanna avoid, and really being able to decipher what’s gonna work well for you to hit your revenue goals, and build your list.
Cuz you do need to build your list. That is a never ending thing. You should always be doing that. so guys, if you have any For your own business, like, which is better for your business, and you have a specific, question you wanna ask about it or, you even just want me to take a quick glance, honestly at your sales page just to say, Hey, this is, you a really great offer.
Hey, here’s the suggestion I would make. Feel free to DM me. I try to provide as much support to you, me and my team try to provide as much support. So DM me, I’ll respond to you personally and, I’ll let you know so you can DM me, on Instagram at Jessica underscore Wallman. and we can chat.
hopefully this was helpful and you can take away, a couple of key things and implement into your business and, I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye.