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How to use a lead magnet in a podcast

A couple of years ago, I’m not sure I’d even heard the phrase ‘lead magnet’. Since starting my own business, it’s an everyday part of my vocabulary, and I’m guessing the same applies for you.

It’s probably fair to say that when you consider lead magnets, you tend to think of blogging and emails. A nice button offering ‘get this thing free now’ or a neat little image pointing people to ‘download the such and such’,

But what about lead magnets and podcasting? How do they work together?

I got thinking about this recently as a result of the latest episode of my podcast Content 360. Have a watch here:

Here we spoke a lot about what kind of things work as lead magnets and some thoughts on best practice.

But it does all tend to revolve around written content and, well, it doesn’t really need to. One of the great things about lead magnets is that everyone’s a winner – the reader gets some top-notch resource which is genuinely useful for them, you get valuable data and – hopefully – a lead. If a lead magnet is a valuable resource for a reader, why would it not also be for a listener?

As podcasters, we include Calls To Action (CTAs) in our episodes all the time. Whether that’s the basic stuff like ‘follow’ our show in podcast app, connect with us on our social pages, visit our website, to more complex stuff like book a call with us or buy tickets to our live such-and-such.

CTAs and lead magnets are already perfect partners, and they can be on your podcast. If you have a brilliant downloadable guide on how to do this-really-scary-thing, tell your listeners. Make THAT your call to action.

One obvious hurdle here is – how? How do you get them to where they need to go to download it? You can’t click in a podcast like you can on a web page (not YET, anyway) so you need to approach it some other way.

1. An easy location to find – if your lead magnet is front and centre of your main website, just send people there. 

2. A landing page or other simple web address – your main website /freedownload or something is easy enough to remember

3. Use the show notes – maybe neither of the first two are an option, so you can simply stick the link into the show notes for the episode instead.

However you go about it, you’re probably going to do the third one regardless. At the moment, podcast show notes are still quite basic – a link is pretty much all you can do. In time, maybe including buttons or images might become an option, but not just yet.

The next question is how do you go about including your lead magnet CTA within your podcast?

Again there are probably a few obvious ways

1. Pre-produced trail – maybe right at the start of your podcast, effectively running as a pre-roll advert where you sell the lead magnet and tell people where to go

2. Presenter-read trail – this could be at the start, in the middle, or at the end, or a couple of these places. It’s not pre-produced, but it is scripted.

3. Organic presenter mention – similar to above, but worked more cleverly into the episode. This needs more planning, so that you reach a point in the episode where you are discussing a subject which leads organically onto your CTA.

You might want to use a couple of these methods within an episode – that’s fine, but don’t go over the top. I’d say a couple should be the maximum.

If you want more hints and tips on creating a lead magnet – check out Content 360 or to book a chat with us at Sound Media just find a time which suits you