The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

How To Get Clients From Social Media: Turn Followers Into Paying Clients

• Season 1 • Episode 59

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In this episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I’m breaking down one of the most powerful lead generation systems in your marketing toolbox.

Social media isn’t about the most followers, it’s about an engaged, ready-to-buy audience. The best way to build that? An email list powered by smart, strategic lead magnets.

Here’s what you’ll learn:
✅ The two things every successful lead magnet must do
✅ How to tailor your lead magnet for cold vs warm audiences
✅ The 5 lead magnet types that consistently deliver results
✅ Why a discovery call might be the last thing you offer
✅ How to make sure your freebie leads directly to your paid offer

SHOW CHAPTERS
00:00 – Introduction: Why lead magnets matter more than followers
00:42 – What makes a great lead magnet (and what most people get wrong)
01:18 – Cold vs Warm Audiences: What it means and why it matters
02:55 – 3 Questions to ask before choosing a lead magnet
04:12 – Lead Magnet Idea #1: The Cheat Sheet
05:00 – Lead Magnet Idea #2: The Quiz
05:46 – Lead Magnet Idea #3: The Guide
06:35 – Lead Magnet Idea #4: The Webinar or Masterclass
07:40 – Lead Magnet Idea #5: The Discovery Call
08:40 – Final Thoughts: Is your lead magnet working for you or against you?

If you’d like deeper support with this topic, come and join my free LIVE masterclass this May 14th:  Turn Your Social Media Time Into Sales… 10x Faster with ChatGPT 

🗓️ Live Masterclass | May 14th | 3PM ET / 8PM BST
🎁 Live attendees get a BONUS: ChatGPT Buyer Persona Builder

You'll walk away with:
✔ A clear, repeatable sales system
✔ Proven ChatGPT prompts to save hours
✔ Total clarity on what works (no more guessing)

 👉 Save your spot here!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to my podcast because more like this is on the way!

If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

My 2025 Social Media Content Planner & Guide is now available! Packed with 400 content prompts, expert tips, and $377 worth of free resources to help you save time and get results in 2025.

Grab your copy now on Amazon!
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Louise McDonnell:

The people who make the most money from social media are not the people with the most followers. They are the people with the largest email lists. Here are. Five ideas for lead magnets. Now, before we even get talking about the lead magnets, it's really important to understand to get these two things right initially. First of all, the lead magnets must attract the right audience. So if your targeting startups, your lead magnet must be aligned with information that startups want. If your lead magnet is targeting senior executives, then the information in your lead magnet must appeal. To senior executives. So that's the first thing. We want to make sure that the lead magnet itself attracts the right audience. And the second thing that we need to do is to make sure that the lead magnet leads that audience towards our offer. So if we have a lead magnet, which is often the case. Whereas it's put together really quickly because somebody wants something that they can give away. But if it doesn't attract the person who is most likely to go on and buy your product or service, then the lead magnet won't be effective. So what we need to make sure is that the lead magnet is a precursor to what it is we are selling. So if we're selling a coaching program with. A framework, which is seven steps, or 10 steps or five steps, well then the lead magnet must be a precursor to that. So, so that's two very important things to get right before we start talking about the five ideas for the lead magnet that I have for you right here today. I. Now something else you must consider as well before you even start creating your lead magnets, is you must consider how warm or cold your audience is to you. So if you're putting this lead magnet out to a warm audience, that's people who know who you are, are aware of your brand, already know, like, and potentially trust you, that's a warm audience. So you're going to use different lead magnets for warm audiences. Rather than colder audiences. Colder audiences are people who don't really know who we are, who don't really know our brand, and who don't really know us. They, because they don't know us, they don't know if they like us or not, and they surely know that they don't trust us yet. So we have to consider if the audience is cold or warm. So, let me give you some examples. Warmer audiences tend to be people already on our email list. Warmer audiences are people who have connected with us already on social media, who are following us, who are actively consuming our content over a period of time. Colder audiences are people who don't know us. So if you're running a paid promotion on social media, if you're running a paid promotion on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, and you are reaching people who don't know you at all, they are colder audiences and they will respond differently simply because. They don't know you, they don't like you, and they don't trust you yet. So for each example that I'm gonna talk you through in this video, I want you to think of these three things. First of all, are the audience that you're going to be targeting, warm or cold, or maybe a combination of both. Secondly. Are they likely to respond to the lead magnet IE? Do they want the information contained within the lead magnet, and do they want it enough that they're going to give up their email address in order to get this information from you? That's number two. And third thing, is it going to lead? The prospective customer towards your offer. So these are the three things we're gonna consider for each one of the examples I'm gonna talk you through. Are they warm? Are they cold? Or a mixture of both? Are they likely to want the information enough so that they give you the email address? And the third thing, is it going to lead them? Towards your offer. So let's talk about five different ideas for lead magnets now that we have all that background information in place. So the first example I want to talk you through is a cheat sheet, and this is generally some kind of a list. Now it's gonna work for warm audiences, but equally this works quite well for cold audiences. Why? Because they don't have to give up too much of their time in order to consume it. Now remember, the information must be valuable enough in the cheat sheet that they will give up their email address in order to receive the cheat sheet. And remember, the cheat sheet should lead them towards your offer. Generally, a cheat sheet will work for somebody that's maybe starting off a solo entrepreneur and they're doing all the work themselves. It's also going to appeal to possibly somebody who's more junior, who's actually doing the work. Probably less likely to appeal to senior managers, but then again, it really depends on the information within the cheat sheet itself. So that's the first example, a cheat sheet. The second example is a quiz. These are really popular right now. Quizzes are suitable for warm. And cold audiences. If the quiz is designed properly, it will intrigue and educate your prospect, and it will lead them directly towards your offer. So quizzes are suitable for warm and cold audiences, and they work really, really well on social media right now. Both organic and up for paid traffic as well. So the third example that I have here is a guide. So it could be a guide, like Five Ways to Turn Your Social Media time into sales. Again, this is short form content. It could be a few pages long or it could run an up to 20 or 30 pages, but it's generally short form content. And because it's short form, it's going to appeal to cold audiences. As well as warm audiences. Now, what we got to consider is the content contained within the guide. If the content is strategic in nature, it's going to appeal to more senior executives and owners of larger businesses. It's, it's quite foundational in its nature. Then it's going to appeal to people that are maybe solopreneurs or people that are more in more junior positions who are doing more of the doing rather than the strategy. So that's the third example. That's a guide. Fourth example I want to talk to you about is an online webinar or a masterclass now because you are asking somebody to give up their time now, even if you're going to be giving them amazing advice over this masterclass, potentially maybe over an hour or so. Even though you're gonna be giving up amazing advice, if the person doesn't know who you are, they may be less likely to register or less likely to turn up. So I'm not saying don't use a webinar for cold audiences because I do myself, but it also always works better if you're running a webinar or a masterclass. If you already have a warm audience who know you like you and trust you because they're more likely to turn up at your webinar, and then of course you can promote the webinar to colder audience as well and bring them into your funnel and start warming them up. Of course, the content must appeal to your ideal customer and. Course, as I said earlier, it must be a precursor to your offer, so it must bring them in and it must really showcase to them how much they really need your offer. And when done correctly, webinars or live master classes work exceptionally well. And so the fifth example of the lead magnet, I want to talk to you today would be a discovery call. Now, sometimes this is the first thing that people think about doing, offering somebody a free call, and what you gotta think about is if somebody doesn't know you, doesn't like you, and therefore doesn't trust you, they're not going to give a. Their time. Even if you are willing to give up your time to give some advice, you need to be careful about when you offer a discovery call because you may find that you could offer a discovery call to lots and lots and lots of people who don't know you and they won't take you up on it. So what you've got to do is consider how you can get in front of your ideal customer and warm them up maybe with one of the other lead magnets I spoke about earlier in this video. And then once you've warmed somebody up to your brand and maybe brought them through a few email sequences and nurtures them through a specific customer journey, then they are more likely to book a discovery call with you. So a discovery call is something which we tend to use with. Warmer audiences because colder audiences tend not to respond. And as, as well as that, you should use the discovery call to position your business to have a conversation with the prospect, and again, to lead them. Towards your offer. Final things to consider. Do you have a lead magnet? Because if you don't, you absolutely need to get one. The people who make the most money from social media are not the people with the most followers. They are the people with the largest email lists. So if you don't have an email list, or if you're not actively working on growing the leads to your email list, this is something I really recommend that you start working on right now. So the question is, is your lead magnet. Attracting the right audience. Do you already have a warm audience or are all the people you're attracting cold and you need to warm them up towards your brand? Are you reaching the right audience? And if you're not, how will you reach the right audience? And the last message. Is your lead magnet a precursor to your offer? So is it attracting the right audience and leading them towards your offer? So thanks very much for tuning in. If you enjoy this video, please subscribe for more videos just like this. And I have a free guide right in the comments if you click below where you can get a summary of all this advice and some more as well. Thanks for tuning in.