Get more leads through your credit union website by using lead magnets
As a credit union marketer, your job is to increase deposits and loans. But did you know that only three percent of your audience wants to sign up for one of your products right now?
According to Chet Holmes in his book The Ultimate Sales Machine, only about three percent of any organization’s audience is “buying now.” The other 97% are in various stages of the Buying Decision Process. Therefore, the supermajority of people don’t want to sign up today.
The fact that 97% of your audience is not “buying now” means they need to be nurtured. In digital marketing, nurturing is a process of patiently educating and building relationships with prospects until they are ready to sign up.
Nurturing begins by giving someone a reason to share their contact info with you. All you need is a first name and email address to start building a relationship. And in the beginning, it’s usually best to not ask for much because many studies show that the more info you ask for, the fewer leads you will generate.
What is a lead magnet?
How can you convince people to share their names and email addresses with you? One effective method is to use lead magnets, which are things you can offer in exchange for contact information. Ideally, you want a magnet to be valuable for the prospect, but inexpensive for you. That’s why information (such as research insights or educational content) is often used for lead magnets: info can be very valuable, yet cost little to share.
Examples of lead magnets
At BloomCU, we’ve had a lot of success using lead magnets to give credit union marketers reasons to share their names and email addresses with us. Then, once we begin a relationship, we continue to share valuable insights until they are ready for a new credit union website design.
Granted, BloomCU’s audience is not the same as credit unions’. We are a Business-to-Business company (B2B) and credit unions serve consumers. Still, the principles that work for B2Bs also work for Business-to-Consumer organizations all over the world.
Here’s an example of a lead magnet on the homepage of BloomCU.com:
Almost every credit union marketer is a potential client for BloomCU because every credit union needs a website design at some point. Accordingly, we don’t try to sell you a website the moment you visit bloomcu.com. Instead, we play the long game. Initially, we just want to make a connection and gain your trust until you’re ready for a new digital branch.
On our homepage, we essentially say, “We’re really good at credit union website design. In fact, we won more CUNA Diamond Awards for website designs this year than anyone else.” Then, we have a call to action that says, “Get Winning Insights.” When you click the button, you see this:
We list several juicy resources we have to offer, many of which are very appealing to credit union marketers. Then, when you scroll down, you encounter the lead form:
By this point, we’ve tried to build up the value of our insights so giving your first name and email address is a no-brainer. After you submit your contact information, we email you a link to all the resources we promised. And, going forward, we continue to share valuable insights and resources, which often come in the form of publications and articles about credit union website design.
Here are few other examples of landing pages we’ve built for lead magnets:
Personalization Increases Engagement by 31%
Case Study with HFSFCU.org
A Guide to Stock Photo Sites for Credit Unions
A breakdown of the best stock photo sites, both free and premium
5 Laws of Credit Union Website Design
Follow proven laws of user experience to design a world-class website
Complete This Simple Worksheet & Start Usability Testing
A Guide to ADA Services for Credit Union Websites
A side-by-side comparison of six popular ADA compliance solutions
What lead magnets could you create?
What lead magnets could you create to start nurturing visitors to your credit union’s website? Here are a few ideas:
- 3 negotiating tips to get the best price on a car (for people who visit your auto loan page)
- The ultimate guide to debt consolidation (for visitors who show interest in a secured loan)
- The 5 factors of a credit score (for people on your “Credit Builder Loan” page)
Of course, you’ll need more than just good headlines for your lead magnets. Once a subscriber gets access to the content, it has to be truly valuable if it’s going to build the prospect’s trust in your credit union. So, put in some work to create a truly valuable piece of content to share. Your hard work will pay off because a good lead magnet will continue to work for you passively once it’s all set up, generating lead for you even while you sleep.
