#88 Mastering Lead Magnets: Boost B2B Landing Pages & Elevate your Website Mission!

Jonny Ross: 00:00:15

Hello and welcome! It's the 90 day Website Mastery podcast with myself and Pascal. Fine, Tony, it's episode 16 and we are delighted to be here. We're celebrating the launch of our new program and the completion of our website Best Practice webinar series. We wanted to find a way to continue to share more advice and insights about making your website work harder, and for you to feel proud about your website again. We're live. We live on Facebook, we live on YouTube, we live on LinkedIn. And I have my very good friend Pascal with me. How are you, Pascal?

Pascal Fintoni: 00:00:52

I'm very well, thank you very much. You know, you just said episode 16 when you're not launched this series, we kind of say, well, once we run out of things to say, once we've covered all the questions, we'll stop. But it looks like it's such a vast project. We love website you and we've been involved for decades, but I think it's because it's multifaceted. You know, it's about the technical endeavor, but it's also business development.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:01:13

It's about audience engagement and extension of customer service approach. It's just so rich that I can see this little series running for a while.

Jonny Ross: 00:01:21

We don't struggle for content, let's be honest. And we're both really passionate about this subject. And in fact, we're just passionate about making websites look and act well for organizations and for organizations to be able to feel proud of them. And and so, yeah, we're not going to run out of content. Let's be honest. Um, and it's an every it's an ever changing world. So there's always something new, so much so each episode we have four segments. We have the answer, we have website stories. We have the website engine room and the website Call to Action, where we suggest one change or adjustment that you should be making to your website right now, something really simple and easy that you could be doing. But we all always like to start with you ask. We answer where we have a look at every question that's been submitted by the community or where we've researched online.

Jonny Ross: 00:02:15

And Pascal find something and then asks me about it. So we're going to start with you ask. We answer.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:02:30

Thank you very much. Is it 16? The question is almost in two halves. What are lead magnets? And can you show examples of creating compelling content to attract website visitors. Now this was during a workshop. So confession time I kind of cobbled two comments or two questions into into one for you Johnny. Well lead magnets people were having discussion and then people said, I still can't quite picture for myself what you mean, can you show me some examples? And I had some, but actually kind of a little call to action for you and I, we should maybe start to keep track of examples for our lovely friends because we have it in our heads, but there's nothing like doing a show and tell. And the conversation run lead magnets. During the workshops around the term, I could tell people was struggling. I would argue it's been done to death now. It's been overused. It's been abused.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:03:21

Of course, for people who are nowhere near as ethical and honest as you and now viewers and listeners, because for me, the whole concept is everybody knows about aftersales care. Typically someone's already been one of your customers have enjoyed the experience being looked after by you. When you talk about lead magnets or content hooks or the terms, I'm thinking more about pre-sale shared journey. This idea of showing enough of your approach to customer service and and looking after your customers, as I mentioned a moment ago, so that it feels like it's a safe bet to get in touch with. I'd sooner reform through popping into the shop, or to fill in the to ring or to fill the WhatsApp enquiry form. What's your view on lead magnets to begin with? As a term?

Jonny Ross: 00:04:08

Yeah, well, I mean, it doesn't sound great in terms of, in terms of the, the sort of real thing of what it is you're trying to to create this magnet where leads are just sort of, you know, they're just sticking to you and, and, and running in and giving their email address and giving, you know, can't wait to share their, their contact details with you.

Jonny Ross: 00:04:31

And and that's ultimately it's an organizing it's organizations, businesses that are trying to generate leads by creating what they call lead magnets on websites. And so I think you're absolutely right, Pascale. The term is questionable. And and also it doesn't really help the mindset in terms of what that content is. And I think that's possibly where you're coming from. And especially in the workshops that we deliver, we talk a lot about about this. So I think it's more about the value. It's more about what value can you offer and and how can that value inevitably put someone in a position where they, they want to give you their contact details? Because there's a there's a ton of value there. And, and all throughout your demonstrating your expertise, you're demonstrating your thought leadership, you're demonstrating your awareness and your your breadth of knowledge. So I think, you know, a way to think of it perhaps is is a value offer or perhaps exclusive content, bonus material, you know, some kind of special guide, premium content.

Jonny Ross: 00:05:40

It's that expert insight. It's the, you know, it's the ability to be able to sort of say, look, in return for contact details, we can give you a huge ton of value here. So that's in essence what a what we're referring to. And you ask for some examples. I don't know if you wanted to share some before I did.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:06:02

But yeah. So just to build on what you were saying, you know, for me what you're saying as well is that whatever decision you make in terms of what this would look like, in the end, it has to feel almost very natural and normal. You would do this face to face. I mean to say the advice would be shared face to face. You would give maybe a printout of a checklist or a guide, whatever. So for me, when people plan about the lead magnets, it has to be a very natural and very honest extension of what they would do in a physical world, so to speak, as opposed to some contrived, weird kind of, you know, result because you've be doing far too much research.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:06:42

It's almost like when you have the last conversation and you were super helpful to the other person. What was the conversation about? And can you then capture that for all those who could not be there that day? So yeah, what kind of examples come to mind for you?

Jonny Ross: 00:06:57

Yeah, that's really good. How you've explained it, to be fair. And it's about that additional content that you may not have thought about having on a website that's come up in conversation in a, in some kind of client meeting or pre client meeting and it's it what how could you take that conversation and turn it into a value piece. And so it could be anything from ebooks checklists, quizzes. It could be even a free trial. It could be a white paper. It could be it could be discount codes even. All sorts of different things where there's added value. Um, you know, you see in a lot of cases where someone's developed some kind of calculator or some kind of planner or calendar or all sorts of different things, really.

Jonny Ross: 00:07:45

And, you know, sometimes you might include case studies into these to, to back up what you're saying, but it's about going back to helpful, resourceful content that's filled with value loads and loads of value in there. And that goes back to really thinking about your value proposition. What is it you're offering clients that's going to help you stand out and and be at the forefront of the product or services that you're offering.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:08:13

I love that, and if I may link it back to the 90 day Website Mastery program, we have quite a meaty session on that where we ask you to reflect on your audience, and it's all about what can you do to make them understand something faster, and what can you do to help them do something better. And I think once you start to make the those to this like column system, as you can imagine, and then in addition to it, you can have the discounts and and the special offer. You have a lot to consider. But this is this idea of.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:08:43

Pre-sales care. That is almost like the two bookends of Aftersales care. So before we move on to the next segment, over to your viewers and listeners. What do you think of the term lead magnet, and do you have a more elegant one that you could suggest to Janina so we can maybe in future? You sound so. I love this segment. You ask me answered, because I never know what you're going to say to begin with, but also it helps us clarify a few things. But let's move on with website stories. Now in this segment, Gina, choose an article, a video and infographic and e-book. Something can help the Rivian react so that we can bring about some lessons about being a website marketer and owner in today's economy. So for this episode, we've gone for a video, short video, video was recorded for Moz. We found of of that brand and platform. Jason Dodge was the the speaker, presenter, founder and CEO of search marketing firm Black Truck Media Plus Marketing.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:09:50

And the title is fascinating to me. The title is as follows making industry lending pages engaging for B2B companies. And this is part of the Whiteboard Friday video series, which I know you're very fond of as well. And it was fascinating because in the space of five minute, which I think is also a lesson in there, and Jim was able to share not only advice, but some warning as well, and allow you to just go and reflect. And that could be almost a precursor of a team meeting or some exercise during a training session. And this all to do with this kind of accepted wisdom that if you want to target and attract a particular sector, currently the practice, by and large, is about rushing headlong and creating a landing pages to show the world how much you know about that sector, you know, the sector page or the industry page and so on. And Jason is kind of warning us about two things. One, typically those pages will not perform so well in search. So you're going to already put stuff in danger of being criticized for the poor performance of that page, because it is quite rare for future customers to search for themselves, if that makes any sense.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:10:59

And then the other thing, therefore, to watch out for is even if you were lucky enough to get people to land on that page, all they're going to see is a summary about an industry they know all too well, if they may know better than you. Yeah. So Jason's advice is great to forget about this. Think of more about this idea of the B2B landing page to facilitate the sales process, to start dealing with that customer journey, what he calls sales enablement and quite simply saying, please understand that the reality is your B2B customers are looking for a solution to a problem. They're looking for a mirroring repetition of who they are and what they do. So really, for a B2B landing page to be engaging, Jason says, challenge yourself and ask yourself to what degree do I understand my audience as humans to begin with? Their challenges, their pain points, their wishes for the future? And so he goes on. So really, what you would call, of course, the audience profiling or persona and then find ways for that knowledge and that discovery and that findings of problems, solutions in our results to be present on that landing page to make it engaging, do not use, you know, any other measures.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:12:23

So just closing on that because I want people to go and follow the hyperlink in the show notes and watch the video, but you get your reaction, you know, Jason finishes with this saying, the B2B landing page is the virtual handshake that brings people in and make everything more engaging for your brand.

Jonny Ross: 00:12:40

Well, I think sectors are really important. However, I think the primary thing to focus on is the pain. Point is, what solution are you solving? What, uh, what pain point are you fixing? And it's only after that that someone's then thinking about the sector itself. So I think he's absolutely right in terms of if you want a landing page to win and you want it to win really well, it has to talk in the right language. It has to straightaway tap into what the problem is. What what are they looking. You know, you've got milliseconds for someone to decide if they're going to engage with a page or not, and even a website, never mind the page. And so you've got milliseconds to grab the sort of the big pain point and, and to then filter them through some kind of funnel in terms of the content, in terms of, of, of that sector, how you introduce that sector content instead of leading with sector content, saying, you know, we know everything about manufacturing and there's someone reading this thinking, well, no, actually I know more than you and and this is great.

Jonny Ross: 00:13:52

You're telling me all about manufacturing, but you've not mentioned my pain point and what I'm actually trying to achieve here. So there is a balance. And I think if you look at the past and you look at how people have done it in the past, it's very much been focused on the sector only. Whereas if you want to make a landing page really, truly engaging, then I can see how this will will certainly take. This up a step in terms of that engagement and in terms of tapping into someone's pain point straight away. That's the key thing straight away.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:14:26

Yeah. And people watch the video at the very, very and Jason gives examples back to that of what you can do to really add elements. And I think it's about this idea of we talk about this a lot on the program and on this podcast and this side of being explicit as opposed to being implicit. So, you know, people could say, well, yeah, but it's obvious. No. Well, you've got to express it because ultimately it may well be that you're the fourth or the fifth website someone has visited, and this is the fourth and fifth time that they see a summary of their sector.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:14:57

And you're the only one, they say, even just mentioning the job title, the people that you deal with, the only one that's saying, and this is how we did what we did, and this is why we did it that way, because of that challenge and the need for that solution. And then you can add to case studies and accreditations and so on and so forth. So it was just a very simple video. But as always, behind it, very powerful message and reminder. And I think for me it's also whether I do a lot with my customers journey about this idea of the website was launched maybe six months ago, a year ago, a bit longer. And to go back to the content and challenge yourself saying, is it truly engaging or is it just my first pass? This is like still the draft version of that website just went to the launch day and then have to get on with my day job and forgot a bit about it.

Jonny Ross: 00:15:48

Well, unfortunately, anyone that thinks they can just build a website and they've ticked the box, then unfortunately that's where you're going to fall because it's it's ever evolving.

Jonny Ross: 00:15:58

Imagine it as a shop window on a high street, and most shop windows, you know, redress every sort of 4 to 6 weeks. Even so, you know, it's really important to try to keep your website fully up to date, but also on trend, on point and in terms of really understanding your audience. So yeah, landing pages are a especially if you're doing pay per click campaigns as well. You really need to tap into the issue straight away and really understand what that user is looking for, what that potential client, current client, or whoever it might be in your community. Who what are they wanting immediately, and how can you address that straightaway on a landing page? And then think of ways to give them that deeper content to build that trust to, to build the association deeper within the website and sort of showcasing some of that on the landing page. But that key message has to be painful, pain point focused. I would definitely, definitely agree.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:17:02

Yeah. And for those of you listening, watching in thinking that seems like a hard thing to do or time consuming, it's actually a lot easier than you might think.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:17:10

Just join, go on the road, or attend virtual calls with all your customer facing colleagues. Just listen and take notes. I mean, literally just, you know, half a day with your colleagues who are in conversation regularly with your customers will reveal so much more. And then you can add on to that keyword research and the rest. Well, on the subject of doing something, let's move on with our last two segment, and we're going to begin with the website Engine Room. So for each episode, Janina choose one app. One software solution might be a piece of kit that can help make life easier as a content creator and website manager. So Jonny, what is your selection for 16?

Jonny Ross: 00:17:59

I've gone with novio so snow Video it's a B2B sales automation platform offering a variety of tools for lead generation, cold outreach, email deliverability, sales, sales management and more. It's a bit of a CRM itself, but ultimately it's a way to automate cold outreach and and an email campaigns fully segmented with lots of different types of workflows.

Jonny Ross: 00:18:29

It integrates with pretty much every CRM or app that's out there. And, you know, yes, there's lots of competitors, but having tried and tested quite a few, I really do love snow. Snow video. There'll be a link in the show notes. And as I said, it's that ability to be able to send extremely personalized emails in an automated way. And yes, of course there has to be. Credible. What's the word I'm looking for? Authentic authenticity, you know, and all emails of course, should be handwritten and and and sent, uh, not en masse is what I'm trying to say. But the harsh reality is that organizations, if depending on the number of leads they need or the number of inquiries they need, do have to find ways to automate these things, and this tool really helps achieve that.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:19:27

Yeah. And did you like I'm guessing the interface did you like the way was really guiding you through the steps.

Jonny Ross: 00:19:32

Yeah. Really easy to set up. Very easy to use.

Jonny Ross: 00:19:36

The support desk is brilliant. As said, the integration is very good. The email deliverability is very good. Tons of functionality. Yeah, I really like it.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:19:47

Excellent. Definitely have a look at this now. My selection is actually inspired and informed by the subject of episode 15, which was around accessibility here, and I spent a lot of time and in fact, I believe it was my website Call to action, to go through images and adding the alt text or the alternative description. And then I was kind of thinking, you know, maybe on occasion it's not as easy as it sounds. I mean, I've been there before, you know, you're just about to finish, you know, you're uploading all the content, this long form article, and then you've got to add the alt text and it just doesn't come to you. You just look at the image and you're not sure what to say. And on occasion just copy and paste a final name. But we want more than that. And I just came across this AI powered digital assistant that can help you put together a very descriptive alt text for images.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:20:37

It's my friends at at Ahrefs kind of SEO supporting tools and put the link on the show notes. It's a beta testing, so it's free of charge. And literally you would upload an image, the one that you're about to put on your website. If you're using WordPress and you ask for suggestions and the descriptions are exceptional. So for the test, I'll put a picture of myself just what I had attend in my tool, a folder called pictures. And literally it was even naming the color of the waistcoat I was wearing, because of course there were where in that picture it was telling people that was set in a room, that there was a lie, that there was wallpaper. They were describing everything. And then sort of telling the world that was French. I suppose if my name in the in maybe the file name, they would have kind of done the link with I. It was just actually very, very good and thought, well, so there's two things then you can use it as is or you can be inspired, as you and I've mentioned time and time again with solutions to come up with a descriptive alt text, because sometime, well, you know, we all run out of steam and we are all up against it.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:21:45

So to have a digital assistant that can help you do that from a breath, that's wonderful.

Jonny Ross: 00:21:51

Well, you know what? You've just made me realize whilst you've been talking here, not only does it solve the issue of trying to come up with descriptive alt tags, but what about giving you the ability to reverse engineer images, to be able to take that prompt, to then start producing your own AI images? So if you've got an image that you really like the look of and you want to come up with something similar, putting it into into, that then gives you somewhat a formula to what the prompt would be if you're starting from scratch. So on my journey, I absolutely love that.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:22:28

Absolutely. However, if the tech team from Ahrefs are listening, we come up with the idea. Jonny, did you know. So we expecting something for it. Excellent. Thanks.

Jonny Ross: 00:22:38

Reverse reverse prompting I like it.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:22:41

Excellent. Let's move on. If you don't mind, with that final segment for this show.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:22:45

The website Call to Action. We have to wrap up the show with the one change, the one adjustment that can make a big difference to your website right now. Johnny, what is your call to action?

Jonny Ross: 00:23:02

I've gone for a really easy one this week, but really important as well, especially if you've got it wrong. Your favicon fav icon favicon is the image that is shown in the top of the browser when your website is loaded. So if you've got 20 tabs open, each one has a little icon next to the the name of the tab. And that's your first opportunity for branding and professionalism. And it it frightens me that when I because I audit websites all day every day, you know, hundreds and thousands of websites, I've ordered it and and it frightens me how there's still lots that don't that don't have a favicon set. And so, you know, sometimes it's just the WordPress icon or it's the Shopify icon, or sometimes there's just no icon whatsoever. And as I said, it's just your first opportunity to to check that branding is there.

Jonny Ross: 00:23:58

And more important, it might be that you've had a rebrand, but no one's thought about updating the favicon. So the color is wrong. So it it's simple in a lot of cases. I'd hope it's correct, but in those few cases where it's not correct, it's probably sending a really bad message to your audience. So it's a really quick thing to just double check. And if it's not right, just ask one of your developers to fix it.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:24:24

Yeah. And it goes back to some of the things we discussed in the program. You know, your role or the team's role is to remove all obstacles to trust, building trust and to add the elements that are can add trust, which is where Michael traction is an interesting one. It's almost inform, you could argue by the first two segment. You know, the question about lead generation lead magnet and this idea of engaging landing pages are people would like people to look back at their mission statement, go back to their brand value. You know, when you first launched the business or when you relaunch the business to your point and you capture your why and the how you're going to do what you do in a particular way.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:25:04

And very often this internal communication to begin with. But then the question for me is then once you've reconnected and reread or listen, if it's a video format, your mission statement and your values, ask yourself, are those elements featured sufficiently on our website to support the engagement with our audience? Or and if it's not the case, or maybe it needs to be refined. The simplest thing you can do back to your point about simplicity is to create what I called a manifesto page. And there's examples galore with the high street brands, whereby it's a simple one pager where you state why you do what you do and how you do what you do. And literally that's kind of clumsy grammar, but it works really, really well. And it's almost like a rallying call for your staff, for your suppliers, for your contractors and the community. But it's also reassuring for your customers to understand that you're driven by a number of parameters, not just the bit about selling and and sending boxes to people or indeed turning up at their premises.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:26:09

So look back and think about this manifesto page.

Jonny Ross: 00:26:15

Your your why is just so important. It helps tell the story. It helps you stand out, it helps you be different, and it brings the authenticity. And I must admit that when I first started out in business, I didn't really see the point. I didn't see the point of visions and values and missions and whys. And it's only with the sort of the, the, the experience that I've had over the years that it's really obvious, the difference that that can make. And yeah, Pascal's totally tapped into the right thing here in terms of, you know, if you're going to create one, make sure you at least feature it significantly across the website. Make it really known, make it stand out. Why your why, your values, your vision, your mission, what it is you're trying to achieve. And and that's what's going to make the the real difference. What another episode we've covered. We've covered lead magnets. So should you call them lead magnets? We want to know what you would call them.

Jonny Ross: 00:27:18

We were thinking, you know, is it the value offer? Is it exclusive content? Is it premium content inside a resource? What do you think lead magnets should be called these days? And how could you create one? How could you give your best value? By listening to what your customers are asking, by thinking about what you're talking about in in meetings that you have, and turning that into a valuable piece of content. That's what we see as a lead magnet. We talked about landing pages, focusing on the pain points, not just the sectors, focusing more on the pain points way more than the sectors. We've given you a couple of apps to look at. We've talked about the alt text for images, and we've talked about some of the B2B sales automation. A quick couple of call to actions, the favicon. And are you featuring your Y sufficiently across your website, an all round, full packed episode yet again?

Pascal Fintoni: 00:28:16

Yeah, and have no idea how we do this in less than half an hour.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:28:20

It's just not really our strong suit, and we tend to want to expand on things, of course. But just aside for me, you know, the reflections around how important it is to accept that your audience literally are in charge of your website strategy because every single important decision, every single simple adjustment to your website, is informed by your audience and by extension, you know the degree in which you understand your audience.

Jonny Ross: 00:28:48

Guys. Girls. That is it for today. This was episode 16 of our new podcast series, the audio companion to the 90 day Website Mastery Program. For more information, please visit 90 Day Marketing mastery.com and you'll be able to book your discovery call with myself and Pascal. We will be back with another episode. In the meantime, feel free to send your questions, share your preferred app, and links to your website. Once you've made the changes we spoke about, we would love to give you a shout out. It's bye for now everyone, and we'll leave you with a fun video and audio montage whilst you go through your notes and actions.

Jonny Ross: 00:29:23

Take care. See you soon!