Make It Useful.
Make It Worth Reading.

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.

Brad Hauck 00:14

So you've got knowledge worth sharing. Now let's turn it into something people can't wait to download. Welcome to The Experts Journey. In this episode, we're going to dive into lead magnets. And then these are powerful tools for authors and speakers who want to grow their audience, build trust, and open doors to new opportunities. Whether you've written a book, spoken on stage, or you're just getting started rowing your business online, this episode will help you create irresistible freebies that bring people and the right people to your world. Good morning, Dixie.

Dixie Carlton 00:45

Good morning, Brad. How are you today?

Brad Hauck 00:47

I'm good, thanks. Yes. Lead magnet, your favorite topic because you keep coming. So today we've got a lead magnet that I've created and it's called 10 Extremely Profitable Courses You Can Create in the Weekend. And it is a lead magnet that leads to my Micro Course Profits course, which is a small course. And this is the entry point. So I've obviously sent you a copy to have a look at, and we're going to have a bit of a playthrough. We're going to have a critique of it and see what I can do to improve it.

Because while I like it and I like the layout and all that, I think it could be better.

Dixie Carlton 01:24

So thanks, Brad. And thanks for sending me this. And lead magnets have become one of my favorite things to be looking at and working in the last few months. We've done some really good lead magnet work and we've been exploring what works and what doesn't. And also looking at what people expect from a lead magnet and also what they expect to happen if they share their lead magnet. Should they be selling it? Should they be making it free? Should they be just giving it away? How long should it be? Should it be like a report or a brochure or a What should a lead magnet really be?

So I'm going to just go through yours and just do some comparisons with uh what you've created here, which looks magnificent, I have to say. It's full color, it's beautiful, it's got big bold pieces on it. It's very clear what you want people to do if they go through and read it.

Brad Hauck 02:13

Yeah. So if anybody wants to look at this, by the way, just go to mrwebmarketing.com and download the free report. There's links all over the front page there for you.

Dixie Carlton 02:22

Absolutely. So this is a really good-looking lead magnet. However, what I want to suggest is that there are some new thinking ways of how to do a great lead magnet. Because, like with all things, we go through life and everyone starts doing the same kind of thing, and then the world gets bored with that and they're looking for something new. So you've possibly fallen into a little bit of the trap with that. And I'm just going to suggest, as a generalized thing for anyone thinking about creating a lead magnet, that they move out of this looking like a brochure.

This is a beautiful high-end looking brochure in terms of the style of lead magnet. And I think that's where possibly your first hurdle is moving away from a brochure style or something that's big and bold. And if someone's going to download it, and this is a common problem with a lot of brochures anyway, is that if someone wants to download it, there's a lot of black ink going to be taken if they want to print it. All right. So something that is not quite so heavily dense in background is going to feel like it's more, I'm not sure what the right word is, actually.

It's just not going to feel quite so intense when you're looking at it on screen or if you go to print it. And sometimes people still want to print something to read it out. And if it's a long document, then people are still wanting to print it or just look at it in a format that's not necessarily on their laptop. So you started out with a letter from Brad, which is great. It's very personal. It's brilliant. It's got some really good statistics on here. For example, average income from a course creator, how much money is earned in the e-learning market in 2025, which is an astonishing $320 billion.

So there's some really great content in there. But what I do notice is that my eyes are drawn to those pieces of content. And that detracts me from reading the rest of the content. And in some cases, you just want people to read what you've written. So then you've got on the next page the quick start guide. And again, big content, big text, big images. And if I'm going to download this, I'm going to be scrolling through it reasonably quickly because the size of the images means that I'm scrolling fairly quickly. I'm not stopping to pause to actually read the content.

Or I'm not feeling that my eyes are drawn to reading the content so much as wanting to scroll through. And again, you've got these beautiful statistics, interesting things in a bit bold yellow along the bottom of the screen or the bottom of the page. And these are the real pieces that I'm taking away is everything that's in yellow, all of these bold boxes of facts. Four and ten people are looking for online learning. Great. Growth online learning since 2000 is 900%. Brilliant. I want to know all that information. But what I am not doing is pausing on the page to want to read the main content.

And then you've got more pages of the same. You've got beautiful layout. Everything looks fantastic. And again, I am feeling compelled to scroll rather than stop and read. So that's where things are changing with relation to lead magnets. Instead of being, and this is, I think, what eight, no, 14 pages. I would challenge you that a like we did a lead magnet for Lindsay Adams a few months ago. We've done a few more on various other topics recently. And in one instance or two instances, we've actually made those lead magnets as 40 to 60 page long, mostly content rich with very little in the way of images.

And we've made them well laid out in terms of making sure that we want people to read the pages. We want people to read through the content. And yes, there's a few little pull-outs that say, hey, this is the information. We're telling the stories. We're making this read a conversation rather than making it look like a brochure. And so what we're finding is that people will go through and they'll read it because we're carefully curating how they're reading the content and then finding that there are pieces within the pages that says, hey, here's an SOS moment.

If you need help with this, just reach out or go to the last page and you'll find a QR code there to go to this page to Book Times talk about it. All right. So we breed crumbing in the same way that we would a normal book, and we're just making it a shorter version of a book with a lot more high quality and some more colour in terms of the design work. But again, we are taking the reader through a journey of reading the information, telling the stories, giving the examples. And so those can also be loaded into Amazon as short books.

And in a couple of instances, we've done that and we've pushed the right buttons to make sure that those short books, long-leg magnets that people might want to pay a couple of dollars for are also ranked as high-performing books. So that helps the author as well. And then at the same time, they are also available for free download based on giving the information into the chat box. Please put your email here and we'll send this to you on these people's websites.

Brad Hauck 07:56

Yeah, I suppose when I sit down and do this, obviously for those playing along at home, it's an A4 layer and is brochure, no doubt about it. I've gone for high impact colours, so bright orange and black. Each page has a there's 10 different course types. So number two here, the problem fixer, uh gives it a short description about what a problem fixer course is, and then it gives an example courses that you might want to build. And there's 10 pages like that, pretty well, isn't it? And I've gone that way because the goal was to get people thinking about the fact that actually I can make a course.

One of these types of courses is the sort of course that I could make because everyone's not sure where they want to start. And this would be an easy way to do it. But on the other hand, I can see where you're coming from with turning it into, say, a micro book. And it wouldn't be hard to expand on this and to put some stories in and to build it out more into a book content rather than say such a high impact brochure, which is what I've gone for here.

Dixie Carlton 09:01

Um I think you have to think about the concept of the reader or the person that's getting the information. If someone is looking for information about whether it's microcourses or how to do their own website or whatever, they will have looked at a lot of web pages and a lot of brochures, both online and physically. I think you find that there's a different mindset to how you sit and absorb that information than when you sit down alternatively with something that's a book. You put it on your, even if it's an e-book, you put it on your iPad or whatever you do, or if you print it out, you've got the pages and you sit there with your coffee and you read it.

You set yourself into a different mindset when you're sitting down to read something versus looking through some brochures. Think about when you're going shopping for a new house or new appliances, you'll look at things in a different way than if you sit back and think, I'm just gonna relax and read this for a bit. So you set yourself up to absorb information differently. And so the way that the brochure concept works is that your eyes are literally drawn mostly to the big, prominent, highly lit information.

Brad Hauck 10:15

Yeah. Yeah. The way I was thinking about it was these people are looking to create a course that don't know where to start. Let's give them some ideas of how to start. And then if they like those ideas and they want to actually do their first course, then they can sign up for my micro course and discover how easy it is to actually shoot your first course.

Dixie Carlton 10:37

Here's what I would be doing differently. I would be taking this that you've got now as this incredible looking document, and it is beautiful. I would be taking the letter from Brad part that you've got at the beginning, making that a essentially like a 10-page or 15-20 page letter from Brad, rather than just one quick letter. Having a conversation style and putting some stories and some examples into your letter, and make that the letter from Brad to the person who is confused about what they're looking for, give them some examples of what sort of things they will stumble across or find challenging, etc.

Make that a short e-book, and hopefully that will get to around 20 to 30, 40 pages, and then make sure that's pre-crumbed with the concept of if this is interesting for you and you'd like to know more about this, or just grab a document that you can table at your next meeting with your team, then download this part, and then that way you've got them obviously able to take this, and this is the free thing as well. The e-book or the longer report or the longer letter from Brad would be uh of a decent size to be able to call it a mini book and then promote that on Amazon as well.

But also give it away, send it to people freely, and make sure that they understand that three to five thousand words document is you reaching out to them and engaging with them. And from there, making sure that they know that they can also grab this as the quick review piece and that then they can sign up for the the courses.

Brad Hauck 12:20

Yeah, I have seen so there in my area producing training courses. I have seen a few other people who are doing lead magnets. And there's an interesting range of topics people have taken as the intro. One of them is to verify the course that you want to build. Is the topic good enough or is it the right topic? There is a range of different lead magnets people are using out there from different angles. So it certainly opens me up to probably be able to talk a little bit about that, bring these things in as well.

Yeah.

Dixie Carlton 12:52

Yeah. We've just done this new book called Conference in a Book. And some of the authors in that, 3,000 words per chapter, they're all speakers. They've got carefully curated, beautifully written content that reflects their keynote speaking. Then those authors that have chosen to do can have that chapter downloadable as an e-book. And they can send that to anybody that they wish to, and that is their lead magnet. And it's well curated, it's beautifully written and really positions them strongly and has a good course to action at the end. Now that being a 3,000-word chapter converts into around about 20 to 25 pages with a little bit of extra formatting.

And that again feels like something someone's going to sit down and read.

Brad Hauck 13:42

So as you're laying it out, you're laying it out like a proper book as hands. And it's just a point. 8.5 by 11 or whatever. Yeah. Okay.

Dixie Carlton 13:50

And then throughout it, it's got, hey, and if you want more information or if you want to read the other chapters of this same book, then you know, this is where you're going. These are the places to head to. But at the back of each of those, it's got a sales page that says, this is what I speak about, this is my content, these are my other books that I've written. If you'd like a free resource that I've referred to in this chapter or in this ebook, please click here, go to the landing page and download.

And then they can market to them further. But again, it's all about the mindset of the reader. If the person receiving the content has the mindset to sit down and grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the read, versus I'm going to scan through some brochures and the way the content is received is different.

Brad Hauck 14:41

Yeah, look, I think the hardest thing when it comes to making a lead magnet is knowing the mindset of the person who's going to download it and trying to decide where they're at in their buying journey. So are they early doing research or are they late during research or what? And I think that's where I often find it difficult, and other people do too. It's going, okay, where do we draw the line out this information?

Dixie Carlton 15:04

Which is why using this as a secondary part of what you start with as a longer letter, or longer, just generally written content, as if you were going to write a solid chapter about this is my view of what people need to know about making microcourses. These are all of the things that you need to be thinking about, which gives you a lot more scope to engage with the reader and then still invite them to grab this as the quick view.

Brad Hauck 15:33

Yeah, of course I mean, I've got the book Microcourse Profits. And the other side to that, of course, is you don't want to draw all the content out of your book either. So that was the other thing. It's like, hang on, I don't want to detract from this exceptionally good book that I really like that I did. And but I don't want to give all of that away free either.

Dixie Carlton 15:50

How long is that book?

Brad Hauck 15:52

That's about 110 pages.

Dixie Carlton 15:54

So 20 pages is not going to be giving away a lot of the content.

Brad Hauck 15:58

It feels like it is because I've condensed the content. The way I wrote the book was to take the really good stuff and leave all the fluff out and to do that to give people a really good book on producing a training course. And I s yeah, so it's this that old thing, how much do you give away? Do I want to give away my whole book?

Dixie Carlton 16:18

It's it's it's a conundrum for sure. But again, you scratch the top of the surface really by giving away even the first couple of chapters and saying, My first couple of chapters are my lead magnet. Here you go. Here's 20 or 30 pages. You want to read the rest of it, this is where the rest of the book is. If you want to grab the other document that we've just been talking about, this is where that is. And please now go to the landing page. And you've always got to have a landing page set up.

Go to the landing page, grab this, sign up for this, and away you go.

Brad Hauck 16:52

Yeah, okay. Yeah, it makes some good points. Yeah, as I said, it's always a difficult thing. And you've got to try a few things and throw mud at the wall, as they say, and find out how it works. You're not going to hit the mark every time. And everybody has a different opinion about what should be a lead magnet. And you've got to try and reach your audience in the right way. So understanding your audience, as we always say, is really important because who is this for is going to affect what you give them.

Dixie Carlton 17:22

And planning, I keep coming back to this planning thing. You've got to have it as part of a funnel. You've got the broad part of the funnel at the top, then you've got the tighter bits down of the further down. But you've got to plan what's going to happen all the way through. And look, honestly, if listeners are struggling to identify what would be a good lead magnet or how to present it and how to pull it together, I'm very happy to have a conversation with anyone about it. This has become a very serious specialty area for indie experts in terms of how to get that funnel working, how to get that knowledge and that content really well identified so that people can use it and use it well to attract people.

And there's more than just the one part of the process.

Brad Hauck 18:09

Yeah. Look, it's one of those things, it's constantly evolving. You'll see a thousand different people selling a thousand different styles of lead magnets, but at least in your case, you've got some research backing yours, which is pretty cool. And I will go back and review what I've done and see if I can turn it into something a little bit more tasty.

Dixie Carlton 18:30

I think what you've done here is absolutely brilliant. It's lacking the personal engagement factor, and that's where you've got so much strength in being able to make this uh significantly more powerful for you.

Brad Hauck 18:42

Yeah, I might have to do myself a podcast episode that I turn into a book. I find that's often the best way is to do something like that and edit it up.

Dixie Carlton 18:53

All right. So excellent.

Brad Hauck 18:55

I think that brings us to the end. So thank you for tuning into the experts' journey. If you picked up some useful tips today, please take a moment to subscribe and share this episode with a fellow speaker or expert in your network. It really helps us reach more people. Don't forget to check out our books on Amazon, Dixie's Start with the Draft, How to Easily Plan and Write a Nonfiction Book and Authority Island. And my book, Micro Course Profits, Build a Seven Figure Income with Bite Size Courses, both packed with practical tools to help you grow your business faster.

Catch you next time.

Dixie Carlton 19:26

Thanks, Brad. And if anyone's listening and they want their own lead magnet reevaluated and some ideas, I'm happy to help with that as well. Have a great week, everyone.