Introduction
Solo entrepreneurs, or solopreneurs for short, often struggle with attracting new and returning customers. It can be really hard to convince someone to trust you and try you out if they do not recognize your brand name. Therefore, you have to be deliberate in acquiring customers as a small business. That’s where lead magnets come in. They can be extremely helpful in getting eyes on your content and thus making you more money. Here are some top lead magnets for solo entrepreneurs.

#1. Upgrade your content

If your articles on your website are stale, with previous years in the title, or are otherwise out of date, you need to add new content. Even if all of your information is current, you should still be pushing content regularly. When you build up content on your website, you are more likely to receive visitors from search engines, social media, and other websites. The more content that you have, the more traffic you can typically expect (assuming that your content is quality and you are competitive in your niche). Not only that, Google and other search engines prefer fresher content. They will prioritize not only articles that were published more recently but also entire websites that have seen some change or additions recently. Often people will also sort their searches or include the URL in their search, such as “how to get new customers in 2021.”
Upgrading your content is not just pushing out new articles. You also need to update any out of date articles. If you have any posts that were not SEO focused when you wrote them, it would also be good to target keywords, add meta descriptions, use the proper tags, etc. You may see that your old posts could get a huge boost in rankings, which could potentially bring you tons of leads.
There’s one last step that you can do with your website to upgrade content other than adding new articles and fixing old ones, and that is adding authority to your posts. You can do this with internal and external links if done properly. You can also add authority by including social media interactions in the post, adding a comment section (if applicable) to your blog, etc. Finally, make sure that all of your content has some sort of call to action or click funnel because your goal should include keeping users on your site for as long as possible.

#2. Use strategic pop-ups

Pop-ups, if used excessively, can annoy your users, but if done properly, pop-ups can convert potential customers on the fence into repeat business. There are all sorts of ways to implement pop-ups as a way of generating leads, so we will cover what the best ones are and include some information about what you definitely should not do.
The number one thing to keep in mind with pop-ups is that you want to keep it topical. The second important thing to remember is that your users do not want to be navigated away from the page. Keeping those two in mind, it is no wonder that you hate when a new tab or window pops up as an advertisement for something you do not want. Therefore, you should take precautions and do the exact opposite as those annoying ads. Do this by using a modal pop-up and keep it on topic.
There are several different types of pop-ups you can use. To name a few, email sign-ups, discount offers, freebies, calls to action, or informationals are all great ways to engage your customers. You can even combine some of these, for example, using a form that tells a user to give their email in exchange for a 15% off discount. Which one or ones that you use will depend on the type of business you are trying to do.
Every pop-up needs some type of trigger. The best type, in my opinion, is an exit intent pop-up. They are triggered when a user is about to navigate away from your website and tries to entice them to stay. These are often the best because they will not harm users that stay in any way but can often capture a large percentage of users that would otherwise have left. Other good triggers for pop-ups are time-based and scroll-based. Time-based triggers work when a user has spent some period of time on your site, and you want to offer them something to keep them there. Scroll triggers also work well when trying to capture emails in long articles. Once somehow has scrolled to a determined length (for example, the third major point), then you can comfortably request an email because the consumer will likely have taken value from your article and want to continue reading your content.

#3. Host competitions and giveaways

There is little to nothing more enticing in this world than free stuff. But as a business, you often cannot go around giving free stuff to any person that asks. Therefore, you can save money but also still capture many leads by giving away the chance of winning something for free. This is essentially what a contest is and can be a cheap way to gather lots of leads.
There are two main ways for e-commerce websites to hold giveaways. The first is to collect users’ emails and sending 1, 5, or x many emails with a free item. This can bring you a lot of potential customers that you can continue to advertise through targeted emails. The other typical way is holding a banner saying that whoever orders in the next week or some other time period will be entered into a contest and then send one of them a free item.
An important to do is to capitalize on the contest. Not only should you keep a solid email list that you have collected through it, but you should also make announcements of when the contest will end and who won it. This is a good way to solidify your brand in people’s minds and is a very inexpensive form of advertising. You might even be surprised by how much your sales surge when people find out that they did not win the contest and realize that they want your product or service enough to pay for it.

#4. Build a new interface

Having a website is a great way to reach your target audience because nowadays, almost every single person alive is on the internet. However, a website alone is not necessarily the best way to capture leads. If you are blogging with a large following, you could explore having users sign up (and thus collecting their email and detailed demographic information) if they want to comment or interact in other ways. In similar ways, e-commerce websites can do it for reviews or just having accounts in general. Building your website into an application rather than just a few static pages can increase your leads.
You could also expand into an Android or IOS app. Customers that have the app installed on their phone will be reminded every time they see it on their home screen, which is great free advertising. Customers are also more likely to shop somewhere that they can use a mobile app for. Improving your reach and customer experience will certainly help you gain new customers and turn one-off orders into repeat buyers.

Conclusion

Engaging readers can help your business grow tenfold in a short span of time. By following the steps in this article, you can easily and effectively convert more readers than ever before. Generating these leads often takes a little bit of upfront work, but the increased engagement is almost always worth it. If you want your online business to succeed, you should implement these tips on your website as soon as you can!