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17 Lead Magnet Examples + Tips on Topics & Traffic Sources

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When a visitor becomes a lead, they are a step closer to becoming a customer. That’s because a lead’s contact information allows you to start a direct conversation with them about something they are potentially interested in.

Here are 17 ideas that can help you convert visitors into leads. I’ll also cover tips on finding topics for your “magnets” and some ideas that’ll attract visitors to them. So feel free to get the full scoop or jump to the sections that interest you the most:

A lead magnet is a marketing tool that offers something valuable to a website visitor (free resources, product trials, discounts, etc.) in exchange for their contact information.

When a visitor expresses their interest by submitting contact information, they become a lead. 

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Lead magnet ideas + examples

Learn the most popular (and most effective) ways to capture leads.

1. Free tools

Give out free tools? Isn’t that too much for mere contact information? Not necessarily.

Everyone expects to get something for free on the internet these days. And a lot of companies have been leveraging that expectation to get prospects closer to their brand.

It makes perfect sense when you think about it. If you want people to experience your product and you spend hefty sums to get them to visit your website, why “spoil” everything with any kind of friction?

To reduce friction, you can distribute samples of your product’s functionality as free tools. An example of such a scenario is our very own Ahrefs, the all-in-one SEO toolkit. We offer visitors to sign up for the free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools if they’re not ready to get the full deal. 

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Sentence on Ahrefs' homepage summarizing what our toolset is all about

Why it works:

  • Attracts visitors by offering to solve a problem for free while increasing your brand awareness
  • Allows you to show a sneak peek of your product and offer an upgrade
  • Puts the lead on a nurturing program 
  • Decreases friction to your product

2. Product trials and samples

Free tools should be free. This means “forever free.” If that doesn’t fit the bill for you, consider creating a free trial of your product instead. You can limit your free trial by making it accessible for a set time and/or introducing certain features.

Still giving out too much? Try product samples.

Here, we’ve got examples from two competitors that provide book summary services. Blinkist lets you try its entire product for free for a limited time.

CTA to start free trial. On its right, two phones and a pair of earphonesCTA to start free trial. On its right, two phones and a pair of earphones

A cool takeaway from this example is how it surveys visitors before it lets them in. I mean, why wouldn’t someone “invest” one minute or even less to fill the survey and get something for free?

Picture of two columns of books and a lady smiling. Below, the "start the survey" buttonPicture of two columns of books and a lady smiling. Below, the "start the survey" button

And below, we have its competitor, Soundview. You can’t get a trial period here. Only a sample of a book summary. Makes sense because one book summary should be enough to get a feel of the quality of Soundview’s product.

Text field where visitors can enter their email address to download the book summaryText field where visitors can enter their email address to download the book summary

Why it works:

  • The user can try your product before they buy it.
  • While the user signs up for a free trial, you can offer them to sign up for a newsletter (or some kind of lead nurturing flow).
  • The friction to your product is decreased.
  • You can survey users during the onboarding to get market research data. 

3. Early access/waiting lists

If you’ve got a product idea that just needs to see the light of day ASAP. If you want to launch it to a limited number of people before going big. If you want to get feedback from that small group of people before the entire internet sees it. Then consider launching your product with an early access lead magnet.

In this example, we’ve got Chip, the savings app. It launched its product with this kind of lead magnet. From the look of the website now, it must have worked out nicely for the company.

Text field to enter email address to get early access to Chip's productText field to enter email address to get early access to Chip's product

Why it works:

  • You can build a list of potential customers even before launching your product.
  • You can use your list to discuss product functionality. Early birds are often the savvy people within your niche.
  • It allows you to ship fast to a small/controlled group.

4. Discounts and bonuses

Challenge #1: You want to give people an additional nudge to shop your brand. Challenge #2: You want to have a “direct line” for people interested in your product.

Offering a discount or a bonus in exchange for an email address solves both of those challenges simultaneously.

Quiksilver, the clothing brand, offers free shipping and free returns when people sign up for a free account. And it’s probably a win-win. I’m sure that free shipping and returns cost the company less than distributing its goods through other shops. Smart.

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Form to add personal details and sign up for a free accountForm to add personal details and sign up for a free account

WAWWA, another clothing brand, offers 15% off your first order just to get your email address. I guess that tells a lot about the power of having a prospect’s email address.

I love how it promises you a lot of spam. Everybody promises not to spam, but it does the opposite. WAWWA will probably send you product deals, which you expect and is what the brand “warned” you about. Nobody can complain about that.

Text field to enter email address to get discounts and product updatesText field to enter email address to get discounts and product updates

Why it works:

  • People love discounts. Exchanging their email for a discount is quite a fair deal.
  • Discounts can nudge your visitors toward making a purchase from you.

5. Sales materials and product demos

Self-service product trials can be ineffective when you’re dealing with a complex product. In those cases, a prospect is better off with some guidance rather than presented with a mosaic of buttons and dials. This is where guided product demos come in.

Depending on your target audience and market, you can also try other sales materials like comparisons, fact sheets, or third-party reports on your product.

Help Scout has figured out the best way for a newcomer to experience its product (and convert into a happy customer) is to simply learn what the product is all about in a 1:1 demo.

Form to fill in personal details to get a demoForm to fill in personal details to get a demo

An interesting solution when it comes to demos is to have a chatbot prequalify the lead and schedule an appointment with them and your sales team. This example is from Metadata.io.  

Chatbot showing a message that a demo has been booked for a visitorChatbot showing a message that a demo has been booked for a visitor

Why it works:

  • People who sign up for product demos are usually considering the offer quite seriously.
  • You can get in direct contact with the lead: answer questions, fight objections, or even show how your features shine.
  • This is a subtle but effective solution if you’re not comfortable with sharing details about your product on the open internet.
  • This is a common practice to attract enterprise customers, who usually have high requirements and specific needs.

6. Expert advice/free assessments

Getting a free assessment or advice from an expert for the “cost” of filling out a contact form seems like a great solution for all kinds of agencies and service providers.

In this example, agency Single Grain offers a free, custom marketing plan. No better “foot in the door” for a marketing agency than this.

Form to fill in personal details to get a free consultation Form to fill in personal details to get a free consultation

Why it works:

  • Get in direct contact with your audience and personalize your message
  • Allows you to get your “foot in the door”
  • Potential to create the reciprocity effect

7. Courses

This example from Qlik covers all bases about courses as lead magnets:

Summary of courses on data fundamentals and data fluency. Below each summary is a button for visitor to click through to start the course/register for itSummary of courses on data fundamentals and data fluency. Below each summary is a button for visitor to click through to start the course/register for it
  1. Search queries related to data literacy lead to free courses on the platform
  2. Free courses lead to assessments and paid courses
  3. Assessments and paid courses lead to submitting contact information

Reading the list from points #1 to #3 gives you the user’s perspective. Reading it from points #3 to #1 shows you the company’s perspective. I think Qlik discovered that the more people know about the role of data in business, the more customers it can have.

Why it works:

  • Courses are considered premium assets.
  • You can educate your audience over a longer period.
  • Courses are a great source of organic traffic.

8. White papers

A white paper is somewhere between a B2B sales pitch and an academic paper. It aims to be a serious document showing the necessary data and facts to explain why the issuer’s solution is the best on the market—or at least one of the best.

In this example, Ultimaker (a 3D printer manufacturer) gathers contact information from an audience interested in the real cost of owning a 3D printer. Naturally, one of its products is used as an example here.

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I think it’s doing a good job because a) you read about its printer, but it doesn’t feel like product placement, and b) it’s true that other manufacturers don’t always communicate the full cost of owning a 3D printer.

Write-up about PDF. Below that, download button for PDFWrite-up about PDF. Below that, download button for PDF

Why it works:

  • You can save your most in-depth, expert content for your most qualified audience.
  • This is a good way to show your expertise.
  • You can use this opportunity to customize your content for specific market segments. 

9. Ebooks

Some problems are just too broad to tackle with one blog article. That’s where ebooks come in.

Ebooks are some of the most irresistible lead magnets because they offer free education on complex, professional topics that you’ll find hard to get anywhere else.

Write-up about DesignOps book. Below that, button to click through and get the bookWrite-up about DesignOps book. Below that, button to click through and get the book

Why it works:

  • Ebooks attract people who are interested in learning more about your niche. They are likely good candidates in lead nurturing campaigns.
  • Ebooks are considered premium content.
  • Ebooks can be a part of a larger content distribution program. They can even be made with repurposed content.
  • This is a rare opportunity to get someone’s attention for more than five minutes.

10. Webinars/virtual summits

When everyone else is blogging and publishing ebooks, you can stand out from the crowd with webinars and virtual summits.

A webinar is especially effective (i.e., better than your competitor’s educational materials) if the topic is better shown than told.

On left, summary about the webinar. On right, text field to enter email address and register for itOn left, summary about the webinar. On right, text field to enter email address and register for it

Why it works:

  • Attracts industry professionals
  • Doesn’t always require you to create content—the speakers can do that
  • Brings invited guests, especially those who are influencers in your industry, closer to your brand
  • Live sessions let you communicate with audience
  • Can be recorded and used as evergreen content

11. Reports

Serious people will take you more seriously when you show them how serious you are. And an industry report is one of the most “serious” types of content that you can produce.

Reports are usually collated after hundreds of professionals are surveyed. These professionals are often, if not always, the issuer’s customers. Only then can the report be something truly new and unique. So this is not something every company can put together. 

But when you do manage to put something like this together, it speaks volumes about the scale of your operation.

Write-up on HubSpot report; below that, download button for the report. Next to both is picture of someone typing on a computer Write-up on HubSpot report; below that, download button for the report. Next to both is picture of someone typing on a computer

An additional bonus of getting leads is that reports tend to naturally earn backlinks, which is one of the most important success factors in SEO.

Why it works:

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  • Reports are considered premium content.
  • Reports can be great linkbait
  • On top of acquiring leads, you can additionally gain brand awareness if your reports get cited online.
  • Reports usually attract industry professionals. And press too.

12. Newsletters

This form of lead magnets doesn’t need an introduction. You can find it all over the web.

Some of those newsletters are just that—a content digest regularly delivered to one’s inbox.

Text field to enter email address to subscribe for Ahrefs' newsletter. Next to text field is our bearded man on a computerText field to enter email address to subscribe for Ahrefs' newsletter. Next to text field is our bearded man on a computer

And some are a gateway to a lead nurturing program. It’s common to see companies pitching their products or special deals in between the regular news.

Why it works:

  • Great way to remain in regular contact with your audience
  • Allows you to distribute any kind of content, e.g., educational materials, discounts, special announcements, etc
  • Good entry point of marketing automation programs

13. Calculators

But not the regular type of calculator. I’m talking about calculators that are meant for purposes specific to a given problem: ROI calculators, financial calculators, statistical significance calculators, and so on.

They are a brilliant way to lure in B2B prospects because a lot of decisions in business need to add up. But they can also work for B2C, e.g., mortgage calculators.

A “lead magnet” calculator can be directly related to your product, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be about something that your audience cares about. A good example is this customer support hiring calculator from Help Scout:

Text field to enter email address to unlock calculator Text field to enter email address to unlock calculator

14. Cheat sheets and checklists

If your target audience members are involved in repetitive work, they will need to go over the same steps multiple times as they carry out their tasks.

Cheat sheets and checklists help make this work easier to complete and preserve sanity. You don’t have to look up the same small bits of information or remember all the details that can make or break a complex process.

No wonder developers love cheat sheets. Here’s an example collection of cheat sheets from Opensource.com. Each one is a lead magnet.

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List of cheat sheets with a summary next to each sheetList of cheat sheets with a summary next to each sheet

Creating a press release can be stressful. You need to work with different stakeholders, get everything absolutely right, and sound interesting to the press at the same time. A “press release checklist” lead magnet is hard to resist.

Text field to enter personal details to access the checklistText field to enter personal details to access the checklist

Why it works:

  • Great way to attract an audience at the top of the funnel
  • Often shared
  • Likely to be used multiple times, equating to multiple opportunities for people to remember your brand
  • Highly practical: saves people time and unnecessary mistakes, offering positive emotional potential that can be associated with your brand

15. Templates

Along with ebooks and newsletters, they are one of the most popular ways to get someone’s contact information.

There’s nothing wrong with using a template at work. A lot of people do that. If they’re not using somebody else’s template, they’re using their own. Templates allow professionals to keep the quality of their work consistent without needing to go over the same problem multiple times.

Types of templates in grid formatTypes of templates in grid format

Probably no other company publishes more templates than HubSpot. You can find over 85 marketing templates here.

Why it works:

  • Templates are a practical tool likely used multiple times. This means multiple opportunities for brand exposure.
  • Templates can be great linkbait.
  • Adding a template to a blog article can increase your chances of ranking on search engines (if that aligns with the search intent of the query).

16. Swipe files

Looking for inspiration is probably one of the most common reasons to go online. And there’s a special lead magnet for that as well.

Here, we’ve got Webprofits’ swipe file of handpicked landing page examples from 73 high-growth companies.

Form to enter personal details to download swipe fileForm to enter personal details to download swipe file

Why it works:

  • Great for helping people looking for inspiration
  • Allows the reader to save time on separating the wheat from the chaff, as swipe files are carefully curated ideas

17. Contests, quizzes, and giveaways

Getting a lead from a lead magnet that promises a prize is the easy part. The hard part is to convert that lead later on because you can attract leads not interested in your product (if the prize is something different from your product).

One way is to try and get their attention while they wait for the winner’s announcement. Another way is to try and point them to your product through a drip campaign after the whole event.

Here’s an interesting example. It combines a quiz and a contest. First, the visitor completes a personality quiz to reveal their perfect home decor style. Next, they can enter the contest to win furniture in that exact style. You can read the full case study here.

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Form to enter personal details to join the giveaway; on its left is a living room decorated in "urban chic" styleForm to enter personal details to join the giveaway; on its left is a living room decorated in "urban chic" style

Why it works:

  • You don’t have to create any special content. You just need to have the budget to sponsor the prize.
  • This is great for the top of the funnel, as the contest itself can drive awareness of your brand. You don’t have to do anything special other than sponsoring a truly attractive prize.

How to find topics for your lead magnets

What should your lead magnets be about? Let’s explore a few ideas on how you can answer that question.

Do keyword research

Keyword research is the process of understanding the language your target customers use when searching for your products, services, and content. It then involves analyzing, comparing, and prioritizing the best keyword opportunities for your website.

To start your keyword research, you need two things: a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and some seed keywords.

One way to find your seed keywords is to look at your existing, top-performing content. If you don’t have any content yet or want to skip your existing content for some reason, you can use words or phrases that you think should be interesting to your target audience.

For example, our best-performing articles are on the topic of SEO. And we know that we want to attract even more people interested in SEO to our website. So creating a lead magnet for something SEO-related is a sound idea for us.

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So here’s what you do once you’ve identified your seed keywords. Plug in the seed keyword, e.g., “seo,” and limit the results to some popular lead magnet types. You can then prioritize those ideas based on provided SEO metrics, such as search volume or traffic potential.

Matching terms report results for "seo"Matching terms report results for "seo"

Keywords Explorer found over 2K potential topics on lead magnets, including the seed keyword “seo” and one of three popular lead magnets.

Once you understand what content can bring organic traffic and/or is likely to generate engagement, you can create lead magnets based on those topics.

Analyze competitors

You can browse through your competitors’ websites to get clues on topics for lead magnets.

You can look for topic patterns on their blogs. Or look for content that a competitor promotes by visiting their homepage, for example.

Three separate guides with short write-ups for each belowThree separate guides with short write-ups for each below

An even more effective way to analyze your competitors is to find your competitors’ top-performing content. Here’s how Ahrefs can help with that.

First, you can check who creates content similar to yours. To do that, plug in your website in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and go to the Competing Domains report:

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Competing Domains report results for the Ahrefs blogCompeting Domains report results for the Ahrefs blog

Next, there are two reports that can help you reveal the best content published on those domains.

The Top pages report allows you to discover pages based on the amount of organic traffic they bring. You can even filter those results for types of linkbait.

Top pages report showing results that include words "template" or "cheat sheet"Top pages report showing results that include words "template" or "cheat sheet"

Another report, Top Content, reveals the best-performing content in terms of engagement: referring domains (from links to that content), Twitter shares, and Pinterest shares.

Top Content report resultsTop Content report results

If you want to get an even bigger picture of the content that has been created for a given topic, you can use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer.

For example, if we wanted to look for the topic of SEO but see only lead magnets, we could plug in our seed keyword with some search operators…

seo (template OR "cheat sheet" OR checklist OR webinar) 

… to get hundreds of results that we could analyze based on their performance (traffic, Twitter shares, etc.).

Content Explorer results after plugging in seed keywords with search operators Content Explorer results after plugging in seed keywords with search operators

Study your niche

Another proven way of finding topics for your lead magnets is paying attention to what other people say in places where your industry and/or your target audience hangs out. Think groups on social media, magazines, personal blogs, and communities.

This way, you can find topics with a lot of engagement and/or topics that are currently trending. This will allow you to react to opportunities faster than your competitors. On top of that, you can potentially get valuable insights from conversations on those topics.

For example, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) became a hot topic once again when news of sunsetting the old GA came out.

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Post about GA4 trending on RedditPost about GA4 trending on Reddit

You can then use a keyword research tool and see the search demand and how difficult it will be to rank a course lead magnet on the topic of GA4.

Matching terms report results for "ga 4" and other related termsMatching terms report results for "ga 4" and other related terms

Keyword Difficulty (KD) below 20. Looks like this kind of lead magnet is still something relatively easy to rank for. For now.

You can also try an audience research tool like SparkToro. Just plug in topics your target audience frequently talks about to discover related topics and hashtags (among many other things).

SparkToro overview on topics "seo" and "marketing" SparkToro overview on topics "seo" and "marketing"

How to drive traffic to your lead magnets

Lead magnets are useless when they get no traffic. Let’s see how we can get that piece of the lead-capturing mechanism to work.

Drive traffic with relevant blog posts

Look at the example below. Here, we’ve got HubSpot actually writing blog posts about its lead magnets.

This way, it can maximize its chances of driving organic traffic from search queries related to those lead magnets. And the results are impressive, given this is consistent traffic that’s basically free:

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But it doesn’t have to be just one blog post per lead magnet. You can link to your templates from multiple blog posts. This is what UXPin does with its impressive library of free ebooks.

Ebooks in grid format with CTA button below each bookEbooks in grid format with CTA button below each book

Whenever it blogs about a subject related to one of the books, it can link to the book. On top of that, it can simply promote the latest ebooks in the site navigation of the blog. By doing this, its books received over 6K links pointing visitors from the blog to those lead magnets:

Internal Backlinks report resultsInternal Backlinks report results

Create an SEO-friendly landing page

Creating an SEO-friendly page means a number of things (more about that later). But first and foremost, it’s about the search intent, aka the reason behind the query.

Basically, it boils down to following the same format, type, and angle of the content (or as we call it, the three Cs of search intent) that you can find within the top 10 ranking pages for a given search query.

So for HubSpot’s templates shown in the section above, the best way to drive organic traffic is through a blog post because that’s what people seem to expect based on the SERPs.

But for calculator lead magnets, oftentimes the best way to go is with a landing page that links directly to the tool or features the tool on the page. Below are two examples of that with some impressive organic traffic results.

The first one is from Confused.com.

Confused.com's homepage; notably, CTA button to click through and get a quoteConfused.com's homepage; notably, CTA button to click through and get a quote

You won’t get a quote until you submit the contact data. At this point, it doesn’t allow you to opt out of “newsletters and relevant content.”

Text fields to submit contact details; next to those, a write-up that states the company will send promotional content to the leadText fields to submit contact details; next to those, a write-up that states the company will send promotional content to the lead

This landing page that links to the calculator gets over 113K monthly organic visits without any ad spend.

And here’s the second example. The calculator is featured directly on the landing page. What’s more is it allows visitors to get the result without submitting any information. Thoughtful. But who wouldn’t want free guidance on how to get a better house?

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NerdWallet's calculator. On right, CTA button to click through and get free guidance on getting a better houseNerdWallet's calculator. On right, CTA button to click through and get free guidance on getting a better house

This calculator ranks #1 in the U.S. for the query “how much house can i afford” and gets an estimated 341K monthly visits from search engines. That’s a lot of free traffic.

Keywords Explorer overview for "how much house can i afford"Keywords Explorer overview for "how much house can i afford"

A competing lead magnet from Zillow does the same thing: The calculation is open to all. But that crucial next step—learning how much you can borrow to get your house—will require some personal information.

Zillow's affordability calculator; next to it is a text field to fill in ZIP code to get more informationZillow's affordability calculator; next to it is a text field to fill in ZIP code to get more information

The landing pages from NerdWallet and Zillow have one more interesting SEO tactic. Right below the calculators, they answer frequently asked questions about financing a house.

This way, they send a strong signal to Google about the context of the page. Also, they can rank for related long-tail keywords, such as “how much should i spend on a house.”

List of frequently asked questions List of frequently asked questions

You can learn more about SEO-friendly landing pages here:

Promote on your high-traffic pages

Your lead magnets can piggyback on other pages’ traffic. All you need to do is identify your high-traffic pages and find a spot where it makes sense to promote your lead magnet.

For example, Zendesk promotes its lead-capturing assets on the homepage—right below the main header:

Lead-capturing assets in grid format below main header. Visitors can click through to provide personal info before accessing each asset (report, study, etc)Lead-capturing assets in grid format below main header. Visitors can click through to provide personal info before accessing each asset (report, study, etc)

Adobe Marketo goes as far as making its product tour lead magnet the focal point of the homepage:

CTA button to click through and access product tour lead magnetCTA button to click through and access product tour lead magnet

Promote via email

Why send a lead magnet to a person whose email address you already have? Here are some good reasons. You can:

  • Get information from that lead (for lead scoring). For instance, you may have captured a lead with a simple newsletter lead capture form. But your new lead magnet, which offers something premium, can require the lead to submit more information.
  • Keep your leads engaged with your brand.
  • Use the lead magnet to re-engage old leads.
Write-up about Design Value Conference. Below that, a CTA button to click through and registerWrite-up about Design Value Conference. Below that, a CTA button to click through and register

By sending a lead magnet on the topic of design ops, UXPin can better segment its newsletter subscribers.

Share on social media and in communities

Here are two things you may want to consider when sharing lead magnets on social media.

First, don’t rely too much on traffic from social media when it comes to this kind of content. Sure, your content stands the chance of becoming viral, but organic reach on social media has been declining for quite some time now.

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Facebook post about Design Value Conference only got two "likes"Facebook post about Design Value Conference only got two "likes"

UXPin only got two likes when it first announced its online conference. And it has over 145K fans. Quo vadis, Facebook?

Second, not all social media platforms will be suitable for your content. For example, Deloitte’s webinar on “Cloud Core Banking Academy” seems like a better fit for professional network platform LinkedIn (rather than Facebook). 

Another example, Asana’s Anatomy of Work report, earned 10 likes on Facebook (276K followers) and over 10 times more on LinkedIn (168K followers). But either way, this result seems quite low for all the effort put into this content.

Asana's engagements for its lead magnet posts on social media are quite lowAsana's engagements for its lead magnet posts on social media are quite low

Promote with online ads

Although it will cost you, promoting lead magnets with online ads makes perfect sense.

You and your prospects may be perfect strangers. For now. But well-targeted ads with a lead magnet can change this.

While the ad narrows down your “hunt” from millions to thousands or even hundreds of people, the lead magnet zeros in on the manageable group that is most likely “worth” the time to pitch your product to.

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For instance, Microsoft does that all of the time on LinkedIn with its high-ticket products:

Microsoft's ebook lead magnet shown in the form of a paid ad on LinkedIn Microsoft's ebook lead magnet shown in the form of a paid ad on LinkedIn

Partner up with other companies

This is the last idea on our list. Look for other businesses that target a similar audience but do not compete with you directly.

Then see if they are up for a content collaboration with you. This way, you can pitch to their audience, and they get to pitch to yours.

For example, in 2018, we worked with Buffer, a social media scheduling tool, to create a webinar titled “How to Get Website Traffic With Evergreen Content and Social Media Marketing.”

This makes perfect sense. While the audience was comprised of digital marketers, our products are different enough and do not compete with each other.

Page on Buffer about its webinar with Ahrefs. Below that is a text field for a lead to enter their email address to register for the webinarPage on Buffer about its webinar with Ahrefs. Below that is a text field for a lead to enter their email address to register for the webinar

If you want to see how this looks in practice, check out this video:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn2XCFqREbU

Final thoughts

Lead magnets are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can help you get visitors’ contact information. On the other, they can create friction for people who want to access something that could help you sell your products or services.

Are leads more important than getting high volumes of organic traffic and, potentially, more brand awareness? This is a decision you need to make on your own. One solution may be to try and get the best of both worlds by getting your lead magnets search engine optimized (as I’ve explained in this article).

Also, let me add this: From my observations, gated content (at least written content) has become less popular in the last few years. It seems that most companies just prefer not to create this type of friction. This was not the case some five years ago.

Previously, the idea was that if you sold something really unique to a super savvy audience, you’d go with gated content. But now seeing that IBM doesn’t gate its quantum computing case studies, that idea seems to have gone with the wind.

Want to learn more about lead generation? Check these out:

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Got questions or comments? Ping me on Twitter.

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SEO

Time To Replace the Content Marketing Funnel (3 Alternatives)

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Time To Replace the Content Marketing Funnel (3 Alternatives)

You won’t read anything good about the content marketing funnel in this article. Only bad things. Like, it’s too linear and simplistic to address the complexities of customer journeys.

If you need a framework to build your content strategy on, it should probably be a no-funnel framework instead. And there are very good reasons for it.

A funnel in marketing is a multi-stage process that guides potential customers from first learning about a product to making a purchase.

Depending on the version, it has 3 – 6 stages, and it looks something like this:

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Traditionally, all content types have their designated place in each stage:

  • Top: product landing pages, ebooks, guides, most social media posts, etc.
  • Middle: webinars, case studies, lead nurturing programs, etc.
  • Bottom: success stories, white papers, sales enablement materials, etc.

Makes sense, right? Not entirely.

It oversimplifies literally everything important for a content marketer. And because of that, the model gets some things completely wrong and ignores others.

This isn’t just theoretical. I’ve applied the funnel approach at various companies. Initially, it was reassuring, providing a sense of structure and control. However, the deeper I got, the more confusing it became. It started to seem like the sense of order was purely imaginary, as there was no reliable method to verify if people were truly following the funnel.

1. Misunderstands consumer behavior

The funnel model assumes a perfectly linear path from awareness to purchase and tries to rush people through it. Or, actually, it makes you think you should rush people through it with your content.

However, consumer behavior is more complex and non-linear. People often jump between stages, revisit them, or take unique paths to purchase.

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So, the journey is not a funnel; it’s more like a maze.

Illustrative B2B Buying JourneyIllustrative B2B Buying Journey
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B2C customer journeys are even more peculiar. Remember that time when you saw an ad and bought that product immediately? Or conversely, how the journey from see to buy lasted for years. I know I can:

Short and long buyer journey examples.Short and long buyer journey examples.

But content marketers shouldn’t try to solve that maze, or cut a straight line through it just for their convenience. They should rather adapt to it.

2. Tries to fit round pegs in square holes

Not all content types can be, nor should be, fit into rigid stages of the funnel, as the model wants it.

Here’s an example based on one of our articles. Which stage(s) of the marketing funnel does our blog post about “How to find low competition keywords” serve?

Example of content fitting multiple stages of the funnel with explanation.Example of content fitting multiple stages of the funnel with explanation.

As you can see, the model can’t handle one of the basic forms of content marketing – a blog post. But take any type of educational content, and you’ll find the same problem. Many content types can serve multiple stages of the funnel or work across them. They can both attract and reengage a visitor or even bring them all the way from discovery to purchase.

Because of that, the content marketing funnel simply isn’t helpful for creating content that’s enjoyable for the user and effective for the business.

3. Neglects customer retention

Customer retention is how good you are at keeping your customers. It’s important because you don’t want customers to buy just once from you; you want to keep coming back so that you don’t need to attract a total stranger each time to make a sale — that’s both hard and expensive.

Here’s another way to look at it. According to the study by Bain and Company, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. And it makes total sense if you think about it — if someone asked you to generate an extra $1000 in sales in 24 hours, would you go to existing customers or try to find new ones?

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But if you’re practicing the old ways of the funnel, catering to your existing customers is very limited because the funnel ends at the purchase stage. There’s nothing a content marketer can do nor should do after a prospect becomes a customer.

It’s having a party where you’re so focused on inviting new guests that you forget to entertain the ones already inside.

4. Ignores customer expansion

If you only chase new customers and forget about the ones you already have, you miss the chance to make more sales to them or get them to recommend your business to others. Happy customers can really boost your business by buying more and telling their friends about you.

How can content help with that? One good way is to create product-led content. This type of content is designed to show how your product can solve the customer’s problem.

The mechanism is simple: showing product features in action turns a regular user into a power user. They start to use more features and get better value from them, which builds loyalty and gives you a good ground for upselling.

And if that content is really good, people will share it with others, amplifying your brand’s reach.

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The best thing: good content will be recommended not only by your customers. People don’t really need to be your customers or know a lot about your brand to give your content a shout-out on social media.

The best solution to the shortcomings of the funnel is to have no funnel at all. Here’s why:

  • Adapting to consumer behavior, not forcing it. Focus on how consumers naturally interact with content rather than trying to dictate their journey. Make your content easily accessible without imposing how it should be consumed.
  • A more efficient use of content marketing. Content can work both pre-sales and post-sales. It doesn’t have to be useful in one moment in time. It can be designed to stay useful and relevant over time.
  • A more helpful way to create content. No time wasted on deciding whether that guide you’re about to write belongs to the top or middle of the funnel. You can simply focus on delivering value and delighting your audience.

Here are three different no-funnel models that share those advantages.

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This approach is about using your content to directly boost demand for your product, whether before or after a sale.

Instead of sorting content by stages of a sales funnel, you rate it based on how closely it relates to your product.

The Business Potential Framework.The Business Potential Framework.

So for example, for a content marketing tool, topics with high business potential would include content marketing metrics, “B2B content marketing”, “content ideation”, “content optimization”, and “content distribution” (and not an interview with content marketers or “history of content marketing”, etc.).

This scoring system makes planning your content strategy really easy. You can quickly decide how much of each type of content to make. Also, you can use it with other important metrics (we use it with organic traffic potential) to further prioritize content.

Ahrefs has been using this model for years, especially for SEO content, which is most of what we publish. It’s great for understanding which search terms are most valuable.

Take these two keywords below as an example. The first one has a lot more traffic potential but is too broad to easily include our product — it would get a “1.” Conversely, the keyword with less traffic but more focused on SEO would get a “3” because it’s more relevant to our customers and our product.

Traffic potential data via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.Traffic potential data via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.

The Business Potential Framework might be a good fit for you if you’re working in an established industry, where there’s already considerable demand for content directly linked to products like yours. This will make it easier to find topics with a score of 2 and 3. You can gauge that demand by looking at search volume in our free keywords generator.

Free keyword research with Ahrefs' Free Keyword Generator.Free keyword research with Ahrefs' Free Keyword Generator.

The Content Playground, devised by Ashley Faus, reimagines the buyer’s journey as an open, interactive space, akin to a playground, moving away from the traditional funnel’s linear path.

Content playground visualization. Content playground visualization.

It aims to cater to varied audience interests and learning styles by offering a mix of deep dives, strategic frameworks, and practical tips. To achieve this, it covers topics in three levels:

  • Conceptual: covering big ideas and their significance.
  • Strategic: outlining frameworks and processes.
  • Tactical: providing specific, actionable steps.

Staying with the content marketing tool example, topics you would create content about could look like this: “what is content marketing” (conceptual), “developing a content marketing strategy” (strategic), “how to promote content” (tactical).

To illustrate, this content hub on Agile from Atlassian is designed to be a content playground. There is a mix of all three types of content, and the user can start at any point, go as deep as they like, and jump to another topic at any time.

Example of content playground in practice.Example of content playground in practice.

Naturally, the content needs to be interlinked and ungated so consumers may access it however they want and navigate through it freely. The bonus of that is getting organic traffic from related keywords. According to Ahrefs, this one hub attracts over 591k organic visits every month, and it looks like it’s about to get more.

Organic performance graph via Ahrefs.Organic performance graph via Ahrefs.

But a playground doesn’t need to be confined to one site. As long as you tackle a topic with these three types and allow people to access them freely, you can have it scattered across a limitless number of sites and platforms: microsites, blog posts, social media, email, ebooks, etc.

I had a brief chat with Ashley, the mind behind this framework, to understand where this framework fits best. I learned that the framework was developed and tested with B2B marketers in mind, and that’s where it’s most relevant. B2C marketers simply don’t have as big of a problem with customers “coming and going” and re-engaging them on different channels.

There is a way to cover all customer intents, topics, journey stages, and key marketing channels naturally by simply focusing on what matters to your audience and where they are willing to consume content. I call it the Cluster-Channel Network (CCN).

Two core elements of the framework are:

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  • Clusters: thematic groupings of content around a central topic, supported by a network of related subtopics. They represent things people care about.
  • Channels: platforms and mediums through which your message reaches your audience. They represent meeting places that bring you and your audience together to talk about things they care about. Think advertising, email, social media, Google, etc.

CCN ensures a multi-channel presence with content that both attracts your audience and makes your brand an authority in a carefully picked selection of topics.

What’s more, this is an efficient framework because it allows you to “squeeze out” the most of any topic. That’s an important benefit because there are only so many topics a brand can comfortably cover, without creating turning into a content farm spinning irrelevant content just for the sake of traffic.

The framework consists of five steps.

  1. Identify relevant clusters: choose clusters aligned with your brand’s expertise and audience interests.
  2. Define subtopics: within each cluster, pinpoint subtopics for comprehensive coverage.
  3. Produce core content: select a primary channel and format for in-depth content, making this your centerpiece to attract traffic from other platforms.
  4. Distribute across channels: repurpose the core content into smaller, channel-specific formats.
  5. Interlink clusters and subtopics: connect related clusters and subtopics. Chances are, people interested in more than one cluster (e.g. SEO and content marketing).

If we were to visualize this framework consisting of four clusters, it would look something like this:

Visualization of the Cluster-Channel framework. Visualization of the Cluster-Channel framework.
Content playground could be visualized as a fully connected network with 3 node sizes.

So if we used content marketing as a cluster, one of the subtopics could be AI content. For that subtopic, you could create a blog post about ethics in content marketing in the AI era and distribute it as a thread on X, offer that topic to podcast hosts, etc.

This framework will work best if you have the resources to be present on multiple channels and you’re committed to long-term goals (building trust and authority takes time).

Tip

You can find clusters and subtopics very fast using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer. Just plug a broad term related to your product (your cluster), and let AI do the brainstorming.

Using AI to aid keyword research process in Ahrefs.Using AI to aid keyword research process in Ahrefs.

From a bit over 10 keywords the AI found for me for the word “SEO”, Keywords Explorer found over 32k keywords which then organized into 3466 ready-to-target topics in a matter of seconds. All with traffic potential and keyword difficulty metrics to help with prioritization.

Clusters by Parent Topic report in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer. Clusters by Parent Topic report in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.

Final thoughts

On a final note, the topics you choose to cover are as important as these frameworks. Check out our guide to content ideation to never run out of ideas.

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Got questions or comments? Find me on X or LinkedIn.



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How to Avoid Ruining SEO During a Website Redesign

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How to Avoid Ruining SEO During a Website Redesign

It’s too easy to break your SEO during a website redesign. Here’s a foretaste of what can go wrong:

  • Loss of rankings and traffic.
  • Loses of link equity.
  • Broken pages.
  • Sluggish page loading.
  • Bad mobile experience.
  • Broken internal links.
  • Duplicate content.

For example, this site deleted about 15% of organic pages (yellow line) during the redesign, which resulted in an almost 50% organic traffic loss (orange line). Interestingly, even the growth of referring domains (blue line) afterward didn’t help it recover the traffic.

Fortunately, it’s not that hard to avoid these and other common issues – just six simple rules to follow.

Easily overlooked but could save the day. A backup ensures you can restore the original site if anything goes wrong.

Ask the site’s developer to be prepared for this fallback strategy. All they will need to do then is redirect the domain to the folder with the old site, and the changes will take effect almost instantly. Make sure they don’t overwrite any current databases, too.

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It won’t hurt to make a backup yourself, too. See if your hosting provider has a backup tool or use a plugin like Updraft if you’re using WordPress or a similar CMS.

Testing your site for Core Web Vitals (CWV) and mobile friendliness before it goes live is the best way to ensure that your new site will comply with Google’s page experience guidelines.

The thing is, a website redesign can seriously affect site speed, stability, responsiveness, and mobile experience. Some design flaws will be quite easy to spot, such as excessive use of animations or layout not scaling properly on mobile devices, but not others, like unoptimized code.

Ask your site developer to run mobile friendliness and CWV tests on template pages as soon as they are ready (no need to test every single page) and ask for the report. For example, they should be able to run Google Lighthouse on a password-protected website.

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An SEO audit uncovers SEO issues on your site. And if you do it pre-and post-launch, you will easily spot any potential new problems caused by the redesign, especially those that really matter, such as:

  • Unwanted noindex pages.
  • Sites accessible both as http and https.
  • Broken pages.

So before the new site goes, click on New crawl in Site Audit and then again right after it goes live.

Starting a new crawl in Site Audit.Starting a new crawl in Site Audit.

Then after the crawl, go to the All issues report and look at the Change column – new errors found between crawls will be colored red (fixed errors will be green) .

Change column in All issues report. Change column in All issues report.

You might want to give some issues higher priority than others. See our take on the most impactful technical SEO issues.

Tip

You can access the history of site audits by clicking on the project’s name in Site Audit.

How to access crawl history in Site Audit (1).How to access crawl history in Site Audit (1).
How to access crawl history in Site Audit (2).How to access crawl history in Site Audit (2).

By URL structure, I mean the way web addresses are organized and formatted. For example, these would be considered URL structure changes:

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  • ahrefs.com/blog to ahrefs.com/blog/
  • ahrefs.com/blog to ahrefs.com/resources/blog
  • ahrefs.com/blog to blog.ahrefs.com
  • ahrefs.com/site-audit to ahrefs.com/site-audit-tool

Altering that structure in an uncontrolled process can lead to:

  • Broken redirects: redirects leading to non-existing or inaccessible pages.
  • Broken backlinks: external links pointing to deleted or moved pages on your site.
  • Broken internal links: internal site links that don’t work, hindering site navigation and content discoverability.
  • Orphan pages: pages not linked from your site, making them hard for users and search engines to find.

Naturally, you should keep the old URL structure unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. In this case, you will need to put some redirects in place. On top of that, make sure to submit a sitemap via Google Search Console to help Google reflect changes on your site faster.

Tip

Google also advises submitting a new sitemap if you’re adding many pages in one go. You may want to do that if that’s the case in your redesign project.

Redesigns often include some kind of content pruning or simply arbitrary deleting of older content. But whatever you do, it’s crucial that you keep the pages that are already ranking high.

Traffic is one reason, but since these pages are already ranking, chances are they’ve got some backlinks you risk losing.

To make sure you’re not cutting out the good stuff, use two reports in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer: Top pages and Best by links.

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Top pages report is a list of all the pages on your site ranking in the top 100, appended with SEO data and sorted by traffic by default. So, just one click on your left-hand side, and you’ll see a list of your best “traffic generators”.

Top pages report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.Top pages report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.

The Best by links report follows the same logic, but the focus is on links (both external and internal) and it shows all crawled pages on your site (not only the ones ranking in top 100).

Best by links report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.Best by links report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer.

You can also plug in any page in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and see whether it can be cut without any damage to the site’s organic performance.

Looking up single page organic performance in Site Explorer. Looking up single page organic performance in Site Explorer.

Recommendation

If part of the redesign is an inventory cleanup, you can still get traffic to products you don’t offer anymore if you create an “archive” page and link to a place where visitors can find more similar products. E-commerce sites and hardware brands do that regularly.

Example of an archive page. Example of an archive page.

This way, you can still rank for related terms, and the user experience is better than simply redirecting old products to new products.

Lastly, if you find yourself in a situation where the new design imposes significant changes to your top-ranking pages, take extra caution when altering these elements:

Final thoughts

While an overall site redesign might sound like a good moment to introduce some SEO, you need to think about the traffic and backlink equity the site has already earned. If you change too much in one go, you won’t know what worked and why, and maybe more importantly, what didn’t work and how to fix it.

Truth is, SEO is always about experimentation. You can have a well-educated guess, but you can never really know what will happen.

Want to share your SEO story here? Let me know on X or LinkedIn.

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There’s No Such Thing as “Accurate” Search Volume

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There’s No Such Thing as “Accurate” Search Volume

I often post my favorite new Ahrefs features on X. And last time I announced our newest addition to Keywords Explorer, someone replied with this:

Which was not the first time I saw us being criticized for the accuracy of our search volume metric.

But here’s the kicker…

There’s NO SUCH THING as an accurate search volume:

  • The volumes in Google Keyword Planner aren’t accurate.
  • The “Impressions” in GSC aren’t accurate either.
  • And the metric itself is just an average of the past data.

I already published a pretty detailed article about the search volume metric back in 2021. But I don’t think too many people have read it.

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

André Gide

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So let me address this topic from a whole new angle.

First of all, what do SEOs even mean when they ask for search volumes to be “accurate?”

Well, the less experienced folks just want the metrics in third-party tools to match what they see in Google Keyword Planner (GKP).

But the more experienced ones already know all Google Keyword Planner’s Dirty Secrets:

  • The numbers are rounded annual averages.
  • Those averages are then assigned to “volume buckets.”
  • Keywords with similar meaning are often grouped together and their search volume summed up.

In other words, the search volume numbers that you see in GKP are very imprecise. And once SEOs learn that, they no longer use GKP as their baseline of accuracy.

They use GSC.

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Ok. So the numbers in GKP are rounded and bucketed and clustered together and all that. But Google Search Console (GSC) shows you the actual impressions for a given keyword, right?

Well, did you know that a simple rank-tracking tool can easily pollute your GSC impressions?

Think of how many different “robots” might be scraping the search results for a given keyword, and therefore giving you a fairly inaccurate impression of its real (human-driven) search volume.

And besides, in order to see the actual monthly search volume your page has to be ranking at the top 10 for thirty days straight. And it should rank nationwide, just in case the search results might differ based on the location.

On top of that, I’m sure GSC is no different from any other analytics tool in the sense that it might have certain discrepancies in “counting” those impressions. I mean, go compare the “Clicks” you see reported by GSC with your server log files. I bet the numbers won’t match.

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How much time do you think would pass between you selecting a certain keyword to rank for and actually having your page rank at the top of Google for it?

According to our old research, it could be anywhere from two months to a year for a newly published page to get to the top. Don’t you think the monthly search volume of a given keyword will change by then?

That’s actually the exact reason why we’ve added search volume forecasting to our Keywords Explorer tool. It uses past data to project what would likely happen to search volume in the next 12 months:

Is it accurate? No.

But does it help to streamline your keyword research and make better decisions? Absolutely.

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Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that there was an SEO tool which would give you a highly precise search volume for any keyword. What would you use it for? Would you be able to accurately predict your search traffic from that keyword?

No!

You can’t know for sure at which position your page will end up ranking. Today it’s #3, tomorrow it’s #5, the day after is #1. Rankings are volatile and you rarely retain a given position for a long enough period of time.

And even if you did: you can’t get precise data on the click-through rate (CTR) of each position in Google. Each SERP is unique, and Google keeps rolling out more and more SERP features that steal clicks away. So even if you knew precisely the search volume of a keyword and the exact position where your page would sit… you still would not be able to calculate the accurate amount of search traffic that you’ll get.

And finally…

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Pages don’t rank for a single keyword! Seven years ago we published a study showing that a typical page that ranks at the top of Google for some keyword would actually rank for about a thousand more related keywords.

So what’s the point of trying to gauge your clicks from a single keyword, when you’ll end up ranking for a thousand of them all at the same time?

And the takeaway from all this is…

Here at Ahrefs we spend a tremendous amount of time, effort and resources to make sure our keyword database is in good shape, both in terms of its coverage of existing search queries, and the SEO metrics we give you for each of these keywords.

None of our SEO metrics are “accurate” though. Not search volume, nor keyword difficulty, nor traffic potential, you name it.

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But none of them can be.

They’re designed to be “directionally accurate.” They give you an overall idea of the search demand of a given keyword and if it’s a lot higher (or lower) compared to some other keywords which you are considering.

You can’t use those metrics for doing any precise calculations.

But hundreds of thousands of SEO professionals around the world are using these exact metrics to guide their SEO strategies and they get precisely the results that they expect to get.



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