MarketingSherpa Blog

I recently answered a couple of questions that came up in a LiveClass with the MECLABS SuperFunnel Research Cohort (MECLABS is parent organization of MarketingSherpa). We are sharing them today on the blog as well in case they help you with your own efforts using content to help attract leads into your funnel.

How do you balance talking about the book (as a lead magnet) and highlighting the company that’s behind it and the CTA?

I think it’s important to remember the role of each. The book is the product you’re “selling,” (whether they are buying with money or just their time, trust, and information), so the focus should be on the book. That gets the majority of the micro-yeses.

The micro-yes(es) for the company behind it (and as I mentioned frequently, the author), are part of “Yes, I believe” and “Yes, I want this from you.” It’s the credibility for the book.

And then the CTA of course is the final micro-yeses. The main focus here is being clear what they have to trade to get the book – and emphasizing how the perceived value is greater than the perceived cost (which is why “get” can be better on a button than “enroll”).

As for the “balance,” I don’t have an exact formula. It’s probably something like 80 percent on the book, 15 percent on the author and company, and 5 percent on the CTA. That is just a rough ballpark.

But I want to encourage and remind you how books are sold – authors tend to offer information, value, to people who will never buy or crack open the book. They aren’t necessarily selling by selling (sure it happens some on the book jacket or in ads), they are mostly selling by serving.

So that is the fundamental question you have to ask yourself if you are trying to get people to download a book – how can I “sell” by serving?

And that means your landing page doesn’t even have to be a landing page. What if it was an article? Or an interview? To spark your thinking, here is an interview article I did with some Wharton professors about their book – Customer-Centric Mobile Marketing: Interview with Wharton’s Peter Fader and Sarah Toms. What if you tested that against a traditional “selling” landing page? Or at least had some element of the value they pull from their book in this article on your own landing page?

By the way, this book is a perfect example for why it is so hard to say the exact balance on the page. If you just put “by The Wharton School professor Peter Fader and Wharton Interactive co-founder Sarah Toms” on a landing page, that would provide credibility right there. That doesn’t take up much space at all. But Wharton is such a powerful brand in the business world, it provides instant credibility.

In general, are the principles about VP (value proposition) on the book same for a more simple lead gen offer? Infographic, etc.?

The basis of the MECLABS methodology and well-known conversion heuristic is fairly simple and straightforward – to get someone to say “yes,” they must perceive more value than cost. All the rest is commentary.

So yes, while the principles are the same, the extent of work on each side of the fulcrum can vary. And it also brings up a fundamental question that you will have to answer for your unique audience. Is a 109-page book on the cost side of the spectrum, on the value side, or both?

Testing is the best way to answer that. My best guess is this though – if your offer is to save people 10 hours per week with simple automation tips, my guess is that a 109-page book is seen as more of a cost than a value. You’re selling quick. You’re selling time savings. A full book goes against that message. Here, some quick checklists might be a better lead gen magnet.

However, if you’re selling the best way to find the right person to hire, that 109-page book might be more on the value side. Hiring is complex, it’s hard to find the right people, there are legal issues and corporate dictates to follow, and on and on. In that case, the ideal customer might not want a simple checklist, they want to understand the topic in depth.

You mention “principles,” so I thought it might be helpful to bring up some principles Flint McGlaughlin, CEO, MECLABS and MarketingSherpa, has taught in the past about lead management:

• Leads are people, not targets – which is why we want to create Customer-First Objectives
• People are not falling into the funnel, they are falling out – which is why we need that powerful value prop to power them through the funnel.
• We are not optimizing webpages or call scripts, we are optimizing thought sequences – which is why there may be differences between a book offer and a simple lead gen offer, and as I mention above, even different thought sequences between book offers in different industries to different ideal customers.
• To optimize thought sequences, we must enter into a conversation and guide it toward a value exchange – which is what our funnels are for.

You can read a nice, quick synopsis of these principles in this old blog post – Lead Management: 4 principles to follow.

About Daniel Burstein

Daniel Burstein, Senior Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS. Daniel oversees all content and marketing coming from the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa brands while helping to shape the editorial direction for MECLABS – digging for actionable information while serving as an advocate for the audience. Daniel is also a speaker and moderator at live events and on webinars. Previously, he was the main writer powering MarketingExperiments publishing engine – from Web clinics to Research Journals to the blog. Prior to joining the team, Daniel was Vice President of MindPulse Communications – a boutique communications consultancy specializing in IT clients such as IBM, VMware, and BEA Systems. Daniel has 18 years of experience in copywriting, editing, internal communications, sales enablement and field marketing communications.

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Categories: Lead Generation Tags: call-to-action, Value Proposition