The micro-products wave is coming

Rishabh Jain
Aug 17

When it comes to lead magnets marketeers mostly gravitate towards e-books, white papers, or free consultations. These are essentially give-aways that add value to your prospective buyers without asking them for anything in return.

It is a way to make your prospects get used to taking action on your website, email, or social media posts.

Think of lead magnets as samples at an ice-cream store.

The shift is coming

Marketers have been using traditional lead magnets such as e-books, white papers for decades now, and while this has worked out quite well in the B2B marketing space, a shift is about to happen.

Content creators and content marketing has exploded. There is no dearth of content out there, from Gartner to single-person consulting firms everybody is creating mountains of content for prospective buyers. And while a lot of this content is amazing and probably gets saved or bookmarked it never sees the day of light after the first read.

Going back to the ice-cream example:

You don't want to give a customer an e-Book about your ice-cream, you want them to taste it.


A lead magnet that comes in the form of an e-Book, whitepaper, or free consultation is advice/insight about some subject matter that you think your prospective buyers will find valuable.

To turn this into a (metaphorical) ice cream you'd need to figure out ways of how your advice or insight can be turned into something more actionable.

A fancy way to put this would be: you need to help your prospect actualize your advice.

There are a couple of ways in which you can actualize your advice, it could come in the form of browser extensions, small features such as ROI calculators on your website, whatsapp or facebook bots, and google sheets plugins.

Anything which helps your users put your advice to use without having to remember it and automate their day-to-day life is a great way to engage them with your brand.

But why are these better than traditional lead magnets?

  1. Regular use: With an ingenious idea supported further by well thought out execution you can make sure that the prospect gets into the habit of using your micro-product on a regular basis. Your micro-product will obviously carry your branding or any other additional links to your products.

    Your brand will be embedded in their memory for good.
  1. Show rather than tell: Remember the ice-cream example above? Ditto. Micro-products give you a chance to give your prospective buyers a preview of your capabilities without them making any investment.

    The more reliable your micro-product is, the more they trust you as a brand.
  1. Can be modified: An e-Book is static and cannot be changed. The 10 best SEO principles of 2020 don't apply in 2021 but if the same were being checked for through some online tool you built, you can seasonally update it to reflect the same. The relevance of your lead magnet is never lost.


Conclusion

We at Bowstring Studio strongly feel that the avalanche for micro-products is on the horizon. More and more marketing teams will try and add value to their customers in meaningful and actionable ways in the next 2-3 years.

Marketeers who like to stay ahead of the curve are already taking action to ride the wave.

Lead Magnets
Micro-Products