There are several factors you need to consider before launching a challenge to generate smoking-hot leads. From the dos and don’ts of understanding your audience via pre-qualifying questions right through to effective promotion and rolling out a solid follow-up strategy, lead generation challenges require a fair amount of thinking.
Feeling overwhelmed at the task ahead? Fear not!
The good news is, lead generation challenges are one of the most effective ways to drive new leads and convert high-quality clients.
The even better news is, it’s easier than ever before, thanks to ScoreApp’s time- and budget-saving features.
We’ve created the ultimate guide covering everything you need to know so you can feel empowered to develop a challenge that nurtures, inspires, and converts your highest-quality leads yet.
Why a lead generation challenge is a great marketing tool
You may well be wondering ‘Is the lead generation challenge hype really worth it?’ To help answer your question, here are just a few of the benefits challenges have to offer.
How challenges boost your business:
- They allow you to connect with your dream clients in a natural way.
- People enjoy challenges, as they keep them motivated to succeed.
- They relieve the stress of constant communications, thanks to automated email marketing.
- Your audience can discover your brand and expertise in depth from the get-go.
- They reveal valuable insights about your audience that will inform your strategy moving forward.
- They give you the option to create an online community dedicated to your brand, where participants can share their progress.
- Challenges guide audiences to become invested in your business, which helps drive long-lasting leads.
Lead magnet challenge ideas
The key to creating a strong challenge is to ensure it’s based around your audience’s wants, needs, and pain points. Taking a deep dive into your ideal clients will unlock a whole host of insights that can then build the structure of your challenge.
This can be done through demographic research, social media listening, or by using the ScoreApp pre-qualifying questions feature.
If you’re stuck for inspiration on topics and structures, look no further.
Whether you run an SaaS business or have started a new coaching and consultancy service, there are plenty of ways you can go about your challenge – and we’ve been sharing just a few of them in our latest challenge blog posts.
Here are a few more examples to spark your creativity…
Lead generation challenge for a health and fitness coach
Title: 5-Day Energy Boost Challenge: Feel Stronger and More Focused in a Week
Target audience: Busy professionals struggling to find time for fitness.
Day 1: Setting the Foundation – Help participants define their ‘why’ and encourage them to set realistic short- and long-term goals. The activities could include guided journaling, a 10-minute workout for beginners, and a simple nutrition tip.
Day 2: Morning Movement & Mindset – This day will focus on a morning routine for better energy. The participants will be guided through some morning stretches, positive affirmations, and how to eat more protein at breakfast.
Day 3: Fuel Your Body Right – Introducing participants to the fundamentals of healthy eating. The content will include a ‘clean’ food shopping guide, easy recipes to make in under 30 minutes, and a short workout challenge.
Day 4: Recovery and Stress Relief – The focus will shift to highlighting the importance of rest and recovery in our busy day-to-day lives. A guided foam rolling session, deep breathing and meditation exercise, and ways to reduce caffeine will help audiences achieve this.
Day 5: Celebrate & Next Step – Reinforce their commitment and encourage ongoing action with a clear call to action. You may want to prompt them to share progress in your online community, offer a longer workout to demonstrate their improved fitness, and offer a bonus resource (like a free eBook). You’ll then encourage audiences to book a 1:1 call to discuss how you can help them further.
Lead generation challenge for a financial adviser
Title: 7 Days to Financial Confidence: Take Control of Your Money
Target audience: Small business owners looking to optimise their personal and their business finances.
Day 1: Set Your Financial Goals – Start by prompting participants to define their financial objectives. The content could include a worksheet to list short- and long-term financial goals, an exercise to figure out how much they spend and save weekly, and a tip for budgeting.
Day 2: Know Your Numbers – Give participants the chance to unlock a clear picture of their current financial situation. This can be done through a budget breakdown worksheet, a task to categorise last month’s expenses, and advice on where they can maximise savings.
Day 3: Master Your Cash Flow – Teach participants how to manage income and expenses efficiently. A monthly cash flow tracker template and a guide for the importance of an emergency fund are just two examples of how to encourage learning in an interactive and engaging way.
Day 4: Reduce Debts, Smarter – Introduce simple and accessible strategies for managing debt wisely. Activities could include a calculator tool, an actionable task where audiences need to pick one high-interest debt to tackle first, and a handy tip for negotiating lower interest rates with lenders.
Day 5: Build Wealth with Small Changes – Demonstrate how small, consistent actions lead to long-term financial benefits. Introduce the concept of compounding, with a few examples for further clarity. Then, you can ask them to define one area they can look to increase their savings in, before providing a simple tip around retirement contributions and matching employee benefits.
Day 6: Protect Your Future – Highlight the importance of financial safeguards for optimal future protection. Create a guide on the basic insurance types, prompt participants to check their beneficiaries, and provide insights into why they should write a will.
Day 7: Celebrate & Take the Next Step – Round out the challenge by recapping progress and encouraging participants to continue their journey in taking control of their finances. Include a progress checklist, a simple action plan for the next three months, and a clear CTA for the next steps in working with you. A free consultation or discount would also work well here.
Lead generation challenge for a life coach
Title: Discover Your Path: A 5-Day Life Alignment Challenge
Target audience: Busy parents looking to rediscover personal goals and purpose.
Day 1: Define Your Vision – Help participants identify what they want out of life. Include a guided journaling exercise, a visualisation activity (such as ‘How do you want your life to look in five years’ time?’) and finish up with a tip on the power of specificity when setting goals.
Day 2: Identify Your Core Values – Encourage your audience to discover the values driving their decisions. The content could include a ‘values list’ worksheet, where participants rank their top five values, a reflection prompt, and insights into how to reduce stress and increase fulfilment.
Day 3: Overcome Limiting Beliefs – The goal here is to address internal obstacles that might be holding participants back. The exercise asks them to identify their limiting beliefs and reframe them into something positive. This will follow with a daily mantra and a personal story about how affirmations have changed your life.
Day 4: Set SMART Goals – Teach participants how to set effective, actionable goals. This may include a SMART goal worksheet, a task breakdown, and a short guide on how to celebrate small wins to build momentum.
Day 5: Build Empowering Habits – By this point, you can introduce habits that support long-term success and happiness. Activities could include a habit tracker template, a micro-habit challenge (e.g. how to implement a two-minute action every day), and a video of yourself explaining the concept of habit stacking for productivity.
Day 6: Master Your Time – Show your participants how to manage their time effectively to get the most out of their days. Give them a time audit worksheet and an exercise asking them to identify their biggest ‘time wasters’, plus how they can change things for tomorrow. You could also include a short guide emphasising the beauty of saying no to things you don’t want to do.
Day 7: Celebrate Progress and Plan the Future – This is the chance for your participants to reflect on their achievements and for you to help them make a roadmap for continued growth. Include reflection prompts, a 90-day goal setting plan template, and a CTA directing them to book a free discovery call with you.
How to maximise your lead generation challenge
Since setting up a challenge requires considerable planning, it goes without saying that you want to get the full benefits once it’s live. You can maximise your lead generation challenge to its fullest potential by ticking off our simple (yet highly effective) checklist.
- Define your goals – Keep them clear and specific. This way, you can create a challenge that meets your business goals as well as your audience’s biggest pain points.
- Aim for a targeted audience – Specifying is a running theme here, and for good reason. Set your goals to a niche audience so you can be sure you’re attracting your ideal client: someone who is ready to commit and make the most of the challenge.
- Offer valuable incentives – Whether it’s a discount on your packages, a free eBook or a complimentary discovery call, giving your participants plenty to get excited about is key for optimal engagement.
- Create engaging challenge content – Speaking of engagement, content is King! Include different types of fresh content (think worksheets, templates, and videos) to keep the challenge interesting.
- Include time frames – As humans, we work best with a clear deadline in mind. Creating a sense of urgency helps keep momentum going throughout the challenge – and ensures the best outcomes.
- Start an online community – Forums, social media pages, and Slack are just a few of the ways you can encourage your participants to connect with one another and share their progress. This helps them gain trust in your brand, all while boosting awareness.
Things to avoid when running a lead generation challenge
Now we’ve covered what to include, let’s move on to everything you’ll want to avoid before going live with your challenge. These are some of the most common mistakes business owners make, so take this chance to learn from them!
- Disappointing engagement or participants dropping out – Make sure your challenge is concise and focused to reduce early drop-offs and to keep engagement soaring. You can do this by setting deadlines and including actionable, bite-sized tasks for your participants to complete each day.
- Attracting the wrong audience – When coming up with a new idea, always ask yourself ‘Does this align with my target audience’s wants and needs?’ to ensure you’re appealing to them. You can also ask a series of pre-qualifying questions with ScoreApp to make sure they’re the type of client you’d want to work with.
- Going overboard on the content – ‘Quick wins’ is the aim of the game with challenge content. While it’s easy to load up each day with an abundance of content, this can easily overwhelm participants. Not ideal. Instead, focus on small but achievable activities to keep momentum high.
- Not defining clear, measurable outcomes – Your audience needs to know what’s in it for them if they’re going to take on your challenge. This is where your landing page comes in! Use this opportunity to highlight all the benefits they can expect from participating, which will in turn make them more likely to commit.
- Not following up after the challenge – With the ScoreApp automated email tool, you can keep the communication going with your audience after they’ve completed the challenge. This is key for ensuring you’re staying at the forefront of their minds (especially if you drop in some extra incentives)!
- Lack of accountability or community – For many, there needs to be a level of accountability when it comes to challenges. To avoid lack of inspiration, set up a Slack channel, a Facebook page, or an online forum where your participants can share their progress.
- Insufficient promotion – Investing your time in promotion will get the word out about your challenge to your target audience. Social media, influencer marketing, and paid ads are just a few of the ways you can boost your online presence and increase those sign-ups.
Checklist: Is your challenge ready to run?
Ticking off each of these steps in our tried and tested checklist will mean you’re ready to hit the ground running with your lead generation challenge! Once you’ve got a plan in place and factored in the points below, you can be confident your hard work will pay off.
- What’s your objective? First and foremost, you need to identify what you want to achieve from the challenge. This might be to grow your email list, encourage higher-quality leads, or to gain authority within your brand.
- Who is your target audience? Think about your audience and their biggest barriers, then create your challenge accordingly. For example, if they’re a small business owner struggling to be productive, a business coach could develop a challenge around staying focused and building momentum.
- Is your content compelling and actionable? When creating your content, ask yourself ‘Does my content provide clear and actionable steps that solve a specific problem?’ If the answer is yes, you’re moving in the right direction.
- What’s the optimal duration and structure? Consider how long your challenge should be for engagement to stay at a high. The structure of your content will need to feed into this, too.
- How will you draw people in? Whether it’s landing pages, pre-qualifying questions, or results pages, ScoreApp allows you to unlock features designed to drive interest from the off.
- How can you add even more value? Don’t hold back from going that extra mile – give your audience more value than they came for. This could be a personal assessment or a scorecard after the challenge to show how you can support them.
- What’s your follow-up strategy? Building a robust follow-up strategy is essential for converting leads into clients. So, keep those conversations going through automated emails and continue adding value … you won’t regret it!
- How will you measure success? Do some research into metrics for measuring the effectiveness of the challenge and collecting feedback. Insights and client surveys tend to be the most popular.
- What’s the call to action? Last but definitely not least, include a clear call to action to direct your participants to the next step (whether that’s to book a call, join your community, or buy a discounted package). Just make sure it aligns with your objective in step one!
Setting up your lead generation challenge with ScoreApp
Feeling overwhelmed by this point? No stress! Setting up a lead generation challenge is simple when you follow these three steps…
Step 1: Create an engaging landing page
This is what will catch your audience’s attention from the very start. Include a punchy headline, simple bullet points to get your message across, a strong hero image, and a clear call to action to start the challenge.
Step 2: Ask a series of pre-qualifying questions
Having people sign up is one thing, but having people who you would actually want to work with is another. But understanding whether they’re the right fit for your brand doesn’t have to be hard. With our questionnaire feature, you can secure high-quality leads and your dream clients, one question at a time.
Step 3: Integrate with your existing email to send challenge information
With ScoreApp, you can seamlessly connect to your chosen email platform for a truly faff-free process. This means letting the scheduled automated emails do the heavy lifting while you crack on with the running of your business.
Check out our in-depth blog post for more on how to set up your challenge with ScoreApp.
Promote your lead magnet challenge
Getting your challenge out into the world doesn’t need to stretch your budget. There are a whole host of methods you can use to promote your launch and get it seen by your ideal clients.
Social media promotion
Use organic social media to create engaging content that hits all the pain points (and interests) of your target audience. Once you have the challenge content in place, you can repurpose it as:
- Blog posts
- Short-form video content
- Educational (text-based) social media posts
- Carousels highlighting key points
On Instagram, you can create a teaser of your challenge and ask people to comment a specific word for a DM from your account – maybe an incentive such as a free eBook download or a link to a discovery call. Not only does this increase post performance, but it also gives you valuable insight into the accounts engaging with your content.
Be sure to tailor the content to suit each platform’s algorithms, image sizing, and audience demographics for optimal results. (This is important, because certain types of content perform better with certain people.)
Email marketing
As we’ve mentioned, you can integrate ScoreApp with your email platform to enable automated emails. This is key for keeping the relationship between you and your audience ticking along and for giving them opportunities to reach out to you or to explore your services.
Write a nurturing sequence of emails that demonstrates your expertise and services, plus how you can add value to their personal or their business life. Keep them short but intentional – and always finish with a clear call to action so your audience know exactly what to do once they’ve read the email.
Collaborating with other businesses
Ever thought of collaborating with another business to grow your email list? While this might sound counterintuitive (‘But why would I want to distract audiences from my own services?), lead magnet exchanges are a highly effective way to promote your challenge.
A lead magnet exchange is where two businesses with the same trusting audience agree to push out each other’s challenge. This boosts brand credibility and authority, while automatically guiding audiences further up the sales funnel. It’s a win-win!
Paid ads
Affordable and highly measurable, paid ads are a very effective way of getting your posts seen by the right people. Simply choose your target demographic, age, location, business industry, and job title, then add a set amount of money you’d like to put into the campaign.
The beauty of this is that with each ad, you can see clear metrics of how well they’re performing – which will allow you to adjust accordingly for future posts.
Wondering whether it’s worth it? According to GrowthScribe, the conversion rate of PPC (pay per click) is 50% higher than organic: not a stat to sleep on.
Run your challenge and gather data
There’s a first time for everything – and you can use this to your advantage when it comes to launching your challenge. Once it’s gone live, keeping track of how it’s going is crucial for getting the very most out of it. Use metrics to measure its success, gather sign-up/completion data, and ask your participants for feedback on how they found the overall process (they’ll no doubt appreciate you valuing their opinion)!
For example, if you work well with analytics, you can use an insights platform to take a deep dive into which content is performing best. Or, you may prefer to create a survey for people to complete once they’ve finished the challenge.
This will allow you to make minor, or major, improvements to give your audience the best possible challenge – and get you the best possible outcome.
Nurture your participants after your challenge
Perhaps one of the most essential parts of a lead magnet challenge is to have a nurturing email sequence and blog plan in place. The fact your participants have taken time out of their busy lives to complete the challenge shows their interest in your products or services. But sometimes people need a little extra reassurance that you’re worth investing in.
Follow up with a series of check-in emails including nuggets of information and inspiration. This will keep your communications fresh. Use every opportunity to convert while they’re still hot leads.
Repeat the lead generation challenge cycle
And finally? Keep on testing. Keep on measuring. And keep on repeating the process until you’ve established a challenge that empowers both you and your audience to succeed!
By considering each step in our guide, you can launch your first lead generation challenge with the confidence it will drive the best-quality leads for your business.
Make your challenges a lead generation machine with ScoreApp
We’re here to make your challenge journey as smooth as possible. Get started today to reap the transformative benefits of our lead generation platform!
