How do you get people to stop scrolling long enough to listen? In the real world, human billboards, or ‘sign spinners’, are the in-your-face lead magnets. They raise immediate awareness and your customers get light curbside entertainment in exchange for their attention.
But online, you can’t wave a large sign at people walking past. On the digital curbside, you need to grab attention with lead magnets that:
- Are totally relevant to the different segments of your audience
- Give real value
- Are easily shareable everywhere
- Showcase your expertise
- Build a trusting relationship between you and your ideal customers
- Are the yummy amuse-bouche that tempts your clients into speedily ordering the main course of your full product or service
Enter: the video mini-course.
The mini-course is a versatile lead magnet that ticks all of these boxes. We’ve rounded up the top 10 reasons why – and there’s not a spinning giant arrow in sight!
What is a video mini-course?
A video mini-course is a hyper-focused learning experience that teaches one standalone thing: a practical skill, a piece of information, or a way to apply knowledge.
Typically, a video mini-course teaches your audience one piece of your expertise in a few hours (or less). It can be taken in one afternoon, over a few days, or a couple of weeks. This doesn’t mean one two-hour long video, but a series of easily digestible, bite-sized short videos.
Your audience has a clear learning objective at the beginning and, because you’ve structured the course so well, can ‘do the thing’ by the end of your course.
Some video mini-courses include supplementary materials alongside the transcript, like worksheets or quizzes to support and record your audience’s learning. This ups the interactive experience for your learners – and gives you more data insights.
Why video mini-courses are good for your audience:
- Viewers can learn at their own pace
- Breaking topics down into smaller chunks of learning builds success
- Satisfaction of speedy completion – everyone loves a quick win!
- Video is a more accessible format for auditory and visual learners
- There’s no risk involved – it’s free!
- It’s a ‘try before you buy’ situation, in terms of your style and content
- They get to know you more and see that you understand their perspective – because you’re helping with something important to them
Why video mini-courses are good for your business:
- They’re quicker to create than many other lead-generation magnets
- You can use primary data insights from the mini-course to test the water before creating a longer, paid-to-acess course (or related product or service)
- If you already have long-form content, you can turn that into a video mini-series. Then repurpose the mini-series into other types of content to distribute elsewhere!
- Being vulnerable enough to share your knowledge builds your reputation as an expert
- It’s another brick in the wall of trust you’re building with your ideal clients
They’re also often a lot of fun to create.
Research from 2022 found that the most popular learning method for UK adults is ‘watching videos online’ – 28.97%. ‘An online course’ is a close second with 28.48%.
So let’s create something that people actually enjoy doing!
Why do video mini-courses make great lead magnets?
Here are our top 10 reasons video mini-courses make great lead magnets.
1. High perceived value
Mini-courses offer substantial value because they provide in-depth knowledge or skills that are immediately actionable – for free!
They’re often perceived as being more valuable than other lead magnets, like eBooks or checklists. This is because they take your audience by the hand and lead them straight from Point A to Point B – from a gap in their skillset or knowledge, to being able to apply it straightaway. People get exactly what they expected from the course description: solving a real problem within a manageable timeframe.
2. Demonstrate your expertise
There’s no better way to showcase your expertise than to show someone else how to do it.
Not a vague talk on how you ‘ramped up your profits from £0 to £10,00000 a month – just by being me’. But taking a specific element within what you do and talking people through the precise steps in your process.
The sole aim is to explain it so clearly, and engagingly, that anyone taking your video mini-course can repeat it themselves within their own context – without any further research or training. By demonstrating this depth of understanding, you’re showing (not telling!) your level of expertise.
The decision to create educational content comes with a level of vulnerability. Only those with evidence-backed confidence in their own knowledge and skills are prepared to publicly share. This imbues your audience and prospects with the same level of confidence and helps them trust in your capabilities.
Delivering such high-quality content boosts your authority and positions you as the go-to resource for more information or services.
3. Better engagement and interaction
Using video as a medium for education includes people with stronger audio and visual learning preferences – they’re already more engaging than a text-based lead magnet for lots of people.
You can increase that interaction and emotional investment from your audience even more within your video mini-course. Adding tasks, checklists, assignments, discussion and quizzes all up their level of personal involvement. There are loads of learning-focused quiz platforms you can use to help you build yours.
It’s this interaction that strengthens the connection with your brand and the likelihood of this relationship leading to future sales.
4. Improved lead qualification
No one wants to waste time and effort on leads that aren’t likely to convert to sales. That’s why a high value lead magnet like a video mini-course is worth your investment.
If someone’s committing their time to learning knowledge or skills that are part of your field, then that’s a pretty strong indication that they’re genuinely interested in your niche.
Even a mini-course requires the investment of time, effort and brain power, so they’re more likely to be serious about the subject matter. So these people are higher quality leads, compared to people who accept a simpler lead magnet, like downloading a PDF or checklist on the same subject.
And if you include a quiz within your mini-course, you can pre-qualify your leads with even more precision.
5. Nurture relationships better
Sometimes a simple, mutually beneficial lead magnet is sufficient to get customers to start their path to purchase.
For example, you get their basic contact details, and they get a 10% discount voucher for your new product. A straightforward done deal. And they’ve given you permission to email them as the launch date gets nearer, guiding them towards the checkout.
But a video mini-course provides them with valuable content and continuous interaction over several hours. This builds stronger relationships because it’s two-way – your course involves them all the way through. It’s also fully personalised to their needs and pain points. Perhaps even giving them useful information they didn’t even realise they needed!
By providing this valuable content you’re making it easier to convert them into paying customers when the time is right for them.
6. Scalability opportunities
Video mini-courses are easy to scale up. After you’ve created your course, there’s no limit to how many people can participate – without requiring any extra time or effort from you!
They can just live forever in your suite of content and generate toasty warm leads for years to come.
There’s also no limit to the number of video mini-courses you can publish. So you can make them really personal to different segments of your audience.
7. Potential for upselling and cross-selling
The specificity of mini-courses provides an excellent opportunity to upsell and cross-sell your products or services. Your audience is sending strong signals of interest by investing the time and effort necessary to complete your course.
It’s a no-brainer to leverage their engagement to drive sales by offering discounts, offers, or additional courses.
For example:
You’re a chef launching a new long video course, a series of plant-based recipes that’ll feed a family for a whole month.
Video mini-course lead magnet idea: Free course that teaches you how to make 4 plant-based snacks that’ll fill your biscuit tin for a month!
Upsell: The longer cooking course that teaches you a month’s worth of plant-based meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. With a special offer for people who complete the mini-course.
Cross-sell: 10% off baking tools with your affiliate kitchen equipment partner.
8. Collect useful and original data
Your video mini-course metrics are an absolute goldmine of data about your participants. You’ll get metrics like:
- Tracking progress of individual learners through the course
- Insights from any quizzes you include in your mini-course
- Engagement levels across the different places your course is discovered and its effectiveness as a lead generation magnet
This provides you with original research that you can redistribute to further bolster your reputation as an expert in the field. It shows you where current courses need tweaking.
For example, if there’s a particular point where participants commonly drop-off. It also gives you the opportunity to refine any future mini-courses before they’re published, to maximise their usefulness to your audience.
9. Repurpose content easily
The content of your mini-course may be repurposed itself. Perhaps you’ve already written a book on the subject and you’re turning the first two chapters into a short course. But you can also turn your mini-course to create other shareable content.
One big dollop of effort = many satisfying smaller spoonfuls of content!
One mini-course can be repurposed as:
- Blog posts
- Multiple social media posts – images, video snippets, and text
- A whitepaper
- Part of an eBook
- Webinar
- Basis of a panel discussion or podcast
- Whatever else you can think of!
10. Build an engaged community
Courses are great ways to start and grow communities within your business niche. Participants build relationships with each other, as well as your brand, increasing bonds through emotional investment.
Encourage your lovely participants to chat to each other by setting up and promoting social media groups, forums, hashtags and group discussions.
Through their shared learning experience, they’ll grow a positive community around your brand. This is full of positive vibes that they share in user generated content, demonstrating their loyalty, which encourages others’ trust.
Some will even become strong brand advocates that actively persuade people to use your product or service – all because they’re so happy with the quality of the content, customer experience, and product or service you provide.
Create your video mini-course with ScoreApp
So, that’s 10 good reasons to start creating your first video mini-course right there! What more do you need?
Perhaps something that makes the course design delightfully easy? We’ve got you.
Use ScoreApp as your video mini-course creator. It structures the whole customer journey for you:
- Landing page
- Pre-qualifying questions
- A lovely warm hug of a thank you page with 3 short videos of highly valuable learning and a clear CTA
You can personalise everything to suit your lead generation campaign. We’ve got the templates, suggested questions, and all the technical ‘must-haves’ ready to go.
No messing around between multiple applications – do the whole thing from your ScoreApp account. Try ScoreApp for free today.
