You may already have a great website that targets your ideal customers. But for many accounting firms, it can be a struggle to decide on the best marketing tactic to grow your firm.

Lead magnets can be an excellent way to grow your contact list of prospects. They’re a bit more work up front than a regular blog post, but they can pay off in the long run as high-quality resources that highlight your expertise and create value for potential clients.

Here’s all about what lead magnets are and how to leverage them effectively.

What are lead magnets?

Lead magnets are free resources that you offer in exchange for an email address and basic contact information. They often take the form of downloadable ebooks, pdfs, and on-demand webinars that offer useful insights tailored to your client profiles and service offerings.

For example, a firm focused on payroll for small business owners might create an ebook with tips on tax pitfalls to watch out for, or downloadable timesheet templates. The firm might create a form that requires customers to input their name, email address, and the number of employees they have in order to access the content.

It’s a strategy you’ve probably seen on many websites before, and it’s so ubiquitous because it works – if it’s done right.

The benefits of using lead magnets

For accounting firms, lead magnets are a great strategy because you can work on them in the downtime between busy seasons. Rather than trying to maintain a constant stream of content, you can create them them once and update them as necessary – usually every six to twelve months.

They’re also a chance to take a deeper dive into the types of services you offer while getting something in exchange for what you’ve created. In addition to collecting email addresses, you can use them to link back to other parts of your website and advise clients to reach out for more assistance or specific insights.

Finally, they’re great for SEO because they tend to be longer than blog posts, meaning they can be a good source of keywords related to your service offering to help your website increase its organic traffic.

Tips for creating effective lead magnets

That said, there are some important things you should keep in mind to get the most out of lead magnets:

Create highly targeted content

The more your content resonates with a specific niche you’re targeting, the more it will appeal to that niche. For example, rather than a general guide to business taxes, you might decide to offer content geared specifically towards medical practitioners or startups.

For the best results, research keywords that your ideal customers might search for and incorporate them into the content. This can also help you come up with ideas based on what questions people are looking for. Tools like Answer The Public can help you get started.

Schedule updates

Since the regulatory landscape in most industries changes so quickly over time, it’s a good idea to create a schedule for updating lead magnet content. 

Your schedule will depend on the content; for example, higher-level strategic advice might need an update once a year, while more granular information about industry regulations may need an update every six months.

Keep the customer journey in mind

You might be tempted to create a long lead generation form so you have more granular information, but that also creates more work for your customers – which will tend to deter some of them from downloading the form. Only include fields for the information you really need.

It’s also a good idea to think about how you want to incorporate your lead magnet into your marketing strategy. They can be a good addition to an industry-specific landing page, but you can also include the link to your lead magnet in outbound messages, or create a social post with a link to the content.

Wherever you decide to put them, make sure you inform leads that they’re opting in to marketing emails when they sign up to comply with anti-spam laws.

Finally, it’s also worth considering what types of email addresses you’ll allow in your contact form. It’s possible to design forms that allow only emails from business accounts, which can be a useful tactic if you’re targeting businesses rather than individuals as customers.

Adding prospects in ProCharted

Once you have their information, you can add prospects to your client list in ProCharted and label them as “prospect” to differentiate them from paying clients.

From there, you can use the Notes feature to record whether they’ve expressed interest and when. This helps you weed out cold leads while staying on top of communications with interested prospects.

When they become a client, you can easily change their status to “client” and add work items, manage due dates, track time, and more right from ProCharted. Ready to get started? Try ProCharted free for 30 days today.