What Is Lead Magnet: Ideas, Definition, Examples

If you have been struggling lately to get a higher conversion on your sign-up forms, an ineffective lead magnet should be the reason, or at least one of them.

Lead magnets are utilized in the exchange of email addresses from your potential subscribers. It is the reason why a visitor will enter their email address to your sign-up form in the first place.

So you need to give them a strong reason to do so.

Creating a convertible effective lead magnet needs some work right from the beginning to place it strategically on your website.

Here is a detailed guide on how to create and make the best of the convertible high-quality lead magnet.

Contents

What Is Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is basically a marketing tool, usually content-based, also popularly known as performance marketing software in the marketing industry.

It is created to collect the email addresses of target users or generate leads by providing and promising them something valuable in exchange.

A lead magnet is basically the value-driven element that is exchanged with a prospect with their contact information for business or marketing purposes.

It can be provided in multiple forms and varieties as templates, ebooks, Pdfs, cheat sheets, white papers, and much more.

Why Do You Need A Lead Magnet?

Lead magnet plays an integral role in email marketing or other forms of marketing, advertisements, and lead generation.

It helps brands to build a bridge from the brand exposure towards brand likeability and further down to trust and authority.

Without a lead magnet, brands or businesses have nothing in exchange for what they lure or attract their users.

Also, lead magnets establish some level of what the brand could promise. It also reflects how the business or brand can help the targeted user.

If the prospect finds the lead magnet helpful, it initially establishes some sense of trust and reputation for the brand to live up to.

What Is The Role Of Lead Magnet In Sales Funnel?

Lead magnets are an essential part of a sales funnel. You have to understand that every audience has its own buyer’s journey.

In fact, the lead magnet comes after when they start their buyers’ journey, as it starts when they click on the call-to-action button of an advertisement.

The landing page, where prospects are asked to provide their email address, name, or other contact information, is the stage where you put your lead magnet.

Your landing page needs to be neat, attractive, easy to understand, and simple; it also needs to be good enough to hold their attention.

Providing Value Through Your Lead Magnet

One of the effective ways is to offer them something valuable, the same as you promised them in the advertisement through which they reached the landing page.

This lead magnet helps to move the envelope and gives a prospect enough reason to provide their email address.

Even if they are hesitant or have made up their mind to not buy your product, you still would want their email address as them being a potential buyer.

They won’t buy now doesn’t mean that they won’t buy ever.

Lead magnets are in fact, used throughout the landing page or the sales funnel, or the buyer’s journey, and even when you get their email address.

Best Lead Magnet Ideas

Free Trials & Demos

This is actually the most effective form of lead magnet, ideal for sellers who are offering software or SaaS products and also for subscription-based products or services.

People love to get access to things that are free, sometimes, even if they are not initially invested in them.

Giving free access for a certain time limit or with limited restriction kills the hesitation and uncertainty a reluctant yet interested buyer often has.

For others, it proves to be something they want to try on, and you have a certain time to convert them into paying customers.

In fact, even if they do not continue with the paid plan, they are still a potential customer for your product which you can nurture to convert them into a customer eventually.

With this, you have way higher chances of conversion as people who are full of intent and inclined to buy the software or subscription want to try it or see its demo.

They want more reasons or a little push to buy the product. Even if a lot of users who are not intending to buy a subscription in their mind don’t turn their heads from a free trial, and eventually end up a customer.

Discount Codes

This is the next best thing as people just can’t get enough discounts.

It is so effective that people might just be inclined to buy the product for the sole reason of cashing up the heavy discount.

This is also because they have a fear of missing out (FOMO) and do not want to miss out on the chance of saving money.

There is a reason why sales days, holiday offers, and black Fridays work tremendously for businesses.

Others who want to buy your product and find it a bit expensive can be encouraged due to the discount you’re offering them.

If you’re spending a lot on the discount, make sure to have a smart approach towards it. Make it eligible for a certain product or above-average order value.

Exclusive Coupon Codes For Subscribers-Only

Using the fear-of-missing-out psychological tendencies of humans where they do not want to miss out on things, you can offer an exclusive promo code as a lead magnet.

The promotional code only can be accessed by their subscribers; this will help you get email addresses way faster than ever.

When you make it exclusive, they will sign-up for your newsletter, giving you the email address for your potential buyer’s list.

eBooks

eBooks have to be the top lead magnets for most businesses out there. To begin with, a large percentage of people read eBooks.

To be precise, 28 percent of Americans read eBooks. Also, it is a high-value-based product that packs up more credible information in a tangible way.

eBooks are highly-converting lead magnets whether you are in the beauty industry or real estate, or any hobby-based niche.

They work across industries, niches, and interests. So you can always focus on creating a highly valuable eBook as a lead magnet.

Make sure it is more focused on a particular pain point of your subscribers. Either you make it through on your topic or go into full detail on a particular aspect.

eBooks are in fact, so good as they make up a great online product to sell as well once you register yourself as an industry leader.

Blog Post Pdf

Blog post pdf is also more of a content upgrade you can offer to your readers or visitors. It is also a highly-convertible lead magnet to generate leads or collect contacts.

It is basically a PDF version of your blog posts, preferably the long ones, such as guides. Or it can be about a particular topic or category as well.

This is usually offered at the end or between the blog post, where it must be relevant to what is in the blog.

People will want to sign-up to get the PDF version of your blog post as they want to save the content for later reading.

You can give them a better reason by adding more detailed content in the PDFs so they click to get more of the same content.

Don’t forget to read the 15 Best Email Marketing Strategies To Drive Blog Traffic.

Access To Gated Content

You can first gate some of your high-quality blog posts on your blog or maybe a certain portion of the blog.

Then, you can offer access to the gated content as a lead magnet in exchange for asking for their email addresses.

It is not different from those blogs and newspaper websites where after reading two blogs, you have to share your email address or sign-up to read further.

For example, if the content is your paid product, you can give them a sneak peek, such as the first video of your course or one free article to read.

Your Secret To Success

You will see these kinds of lead magnets a lot in finance, earning money, and related products or websites.

They share their ‘secret’ promises as that’s what made them successful in exchange for your email address or contact information.

Basically, it is simply the roadmap or the things you have been doing to make something happen.

For example, if you are a weight loss expert, you can tell them your secret to losing weight on a given day, as a secret. It can be in any form. Usually, you find them as an eBook, but they can be a video or webinar as well.

The idea is to convince your visitors that you’re the expert on a particular field and you’re willing to share your secret to master it.

These lead magnets tend to get people’s attention a lot, and chances are you will get a higher number of sign-ups.

How-To Guides

One of the most popular and effective lead magnets is how-to guides. They are neither the full-fledged eBooks nor the pdf versions of your blog posts.

These are basically long-form content pieces focusing on how to do a particular thing, basically related to your targeted potential buyer or industry.

How-to guides can be on multiple topics within the niche, product type, or industry you have chosen.

You even do not need to own the product to sell guides on them. Just like the affiliate marketers or businesses do to earn through an affiliate.

For example, if you sell photography courses, training, or products, you can always create helpful guides such as how to master Canon 80d or how to learn the basics of photography, etc.

These guides are extensive in their coverage; it includes all the possible questions, queries, and challenges that the target user can face in one place.

Naturally, people are attracted to getting it in exchange for which they are happy to share their email addresses.

How To Create Lead Magnets In 7 Steps?

Creating a lead magnet is a critical part of your email marketing or funnel marketing.

Whether you’re doing email marketing, paid ads, or other forms of marketing, lead magnets play a detrimental role.

According to the known content marketing institute, 80% of business leaders and decision-makers get information about businesses from various articles instead of paid ads.

This means people heavily consume content across the web, and that’s where they come across the products, tools, and companies and become their customers.

Remember, how many times have you come to know about a particular product through a blog or multiple blogs as compared to an ad?

The Significance Of Blogs In Content Marketing

In fact, 80% of web searchers ignore the Google sponsored ads on the search engine result pages and directly go to blog content websites.

Blogs or content-based products, free or paid, become the centerpiece for information about anything a user wants to gain.

Another proof of the popularity of blogs is how companies manage to generate 67% more leads using their blog as compared to any other medium.

Now, what does? This all proves that high-quality content is where audiences are to be found, that’s where the ‘value’ lies for them, and that’s what they will be attracted towards if offered.

Knowing that high-quality content is the lead generator, lead magnets now make much more sense as to how and why they are capable of making such an impact in marketing.

But you also have to understand that lead magnet only works or will be convertible if it holds high-quality, relevant, and valuable content.

So, the million-dollar question is how do you create not just a high-quality or value-driven lead magnet but also one which is high-convertible?

Here’s the step-by-step guide to help you out in this process of creating a lead magnet

Step 1: Research

Research is the backbone of every marketing strategy. If that’s done well, it means you are going to direct your marketing efforts more accurately.

Learning not just about your audience but also about the market, the industry, and the niche in which your product lies is crucial.

Market research will tell you about how the potential buyer perceives the product you’re selling. How much can they spend, and much more?

Knowing about the audience, what kind of audiences usually are interested in your niche, their age group, inspirations, challenges, desires, behaviors, and whatever you can get to.

Studying Your Competitors

Amongst these, you also need to study your competitors, the ones who are leading in your industry and the top ones, and understand what kind of lead magnets they’re offering.

You also have to see how their content strategy aligns with their email marketing and lead magnets as well.

Even do not hesitate to sign-up and investigate further to see whether they uphold the promise made while sign-up in their lead magnet content.

Examine the quality of content they are offering, and see what you can do more.

Interacting With Your Target Audience On Social Media

What you can do, is reach out to your target audience from anonymous profiles across social media platforms, forums, and other content-sharing platforms.

See what kind of questions they are asking and are eager to know on Quora and Reddit. Look through the comments. Try to find what they desire, what challenges they face, and much more.

Join Facebook groups and pages to interact with core people in that niche, learners, and potential buyers.

Find out what kind of products they are looking for and precisely what can make them buy the product.

Research through different dimensions of the idea to first understand the market, this industry, so you get familiar with everything that’s going around and where the potential is as well.

Step 2: Select Your Buyer’s Persona

Once you’ve researched across and through the market, industry, competitors, and audience, you will be well-versed in it.

The next step will be to pick up the most important part of the research and expand on it only by composing it to specific data points or references.

We are talking about the audience you’re targeting, your potential buyers. Through the research, you will be able to find their :

Demographic information
Financial status
Customer behavior
Pain-points
Desires
Problems

And so much more. You have to lay out everything you know about your audience and then narrow it down to craft a buyer persona.

Using this information, you will be able to make your ideal customer with specific characteristics.

This will help you narrow down your marketing efforts and content specialization. You will be able to customize the content to help your ideal consumer.

You can craft your lead magnet in order to hit on their pain point or hook them with the curiosity of them wanting to know more about the niche.

Whatever drives them the most, you can use it in the lead magnet on your landing page to ensure that they share their email address.

Profiling your buyers’ persona will help you craft your lead magnet more relevant, personalized, and effective.

Step 3: Defining Your Value Proposition

After deciding your buyer’s persona, it is clear that you now understand your audience very well. You know what they seek, their challenges, pain points, desires, information, and much more.

The next important step is to focus on what value you will be embodied in your content and lead magnet.

It is about giving your audience a good reason as to why they should go for your lead magnet, why you’re worth their time, and how it can actually help them.

Remember, deciding your value proposition comes from centering your focus on the buyer’s persona or a potential buyer.

You have to think from your prospective and come up with reasons as to what you would look for.

Focus on the value you will be provided through a lead magnet or the promise of this subscription, not the benefits of it.

Step 4: Decide A Name For Your Lead Magnet

You will be creating different lead magnets of all kinds using particular campaigns, so it is always better to name them.

Naming the lead magnet also makes it an attractive and tangible information product to approach with.

Also, when you market it through emails or sign-up forms, using the lead magnet name, you can create a compelling headline or sign-up copy.

Giving it a name that attracts an audience, connects with them, and promises value from it, increases your lead conversion rate.

Step 5: Selecting What Type of Lead Magnet To Offer

Now, you have your buyer’s persona as well as the lead magnet name, its value proposition as well. The next step is to decide what type of lead magnet to offer.

There are all kinds of lead magnets you can offer to your audience. It depends upon your niche, the value-proposition of your lead magnet what you want to offer, and much more.

It is important you see through the fact that what particular type of lead magnet will be more helpful and attractive to your specific target audience.

Here are some different factors and strategies through which you can decide your lead magnet type :

Deciding Through Your Strength

This is in fact, the easiest and most secure way to go in. Whatever medium you’re most comfortable with, you can choose to provide a lead magnet in the same.

For example, if you are a good writer, then you can always write well-researched eBooks or Guides on the topic.

Or you might be better at video making or explaining it, so you can go for a short video course.

And it is not just about your strength but also what you are most comfortable with and then whether or how much it can align with the potential target’s preferences.

For example, if your website or blog is about designing or drawing, maybe eBooks aren’t the best form of lead magnet to offer.

However, you can always use some of your design work, unfinished or work at different stages, all that to share in your lead magnet.

The idea here is to play to your strength which can give you a competitive edge over others.

Deciding Through Preference

One of the other ways to decide how you will be offering the information through your lead magnet is to consider what they would prefer.

Most people would be highly inclined to get things that can help them at a particular stage they are.

They are not looking for some advanced-level content but something that can help at the moment to take one step.

In other words, sometimes they are just looking for a quick fix or even a shortcut to make their learning easy.

Cheat Sheets are great examples that get great downloads. For example, if you’re selling photography products or courses, cheat sheets on photography basics will be a great idea for lead magnets.

You can better be more specific as a cheat sheet for sports photography.

Step 6: Creating A Landing Page When You’re Using Ads

This step predominantly applies to lead generation campaigns, or sales campaigns run through paid ads.

Lead magnets are usually placed on the website in different spots as they can appear right away or in the midst of reading a blog.

The aim is to get email addresses from the website visitors to make them potential leads to nurture them further; even if not, they can return traffic to your website.

But when you run an ad campaign where a lead magnet can be

The free product itself offered through the ad
Used as a paid lead magnet to your primary product

In the first case, the most known example can be promoting your free webinars through ads on Facebook or other platforms.

When a user clicks on the ad, they will be taken to a landing page. This landing page has the purpose of collecting email addresses from the users by enrolling them in your webinar.

Landing Pages & Free Webinar

This landing page must convince people that this webinar can help them, what value it provides to them, and how it can help them to take their next step.

Most of the time, webinar marketing uses a video explaining the value of the webinar by the expert himself or herself.

You can even further offer that sign-up for the webinar will get some special offer or gift at the end of it, another form of the lead magnet towards the sales funnel.

Use sales funnel tools and landing page creator software to create your landing page with an attractive copy.

Webinars are, in fact, focused on selling your product that is featured in the webinar by the end of it. However, it must have value.

Have a look at the 20+ Webinar Email Marketing Tips to make it Successful.

Using Lead Magnet As Paid Product

The other way is to promote a lead magnet that is paid but a part of a larger product. Taking the same example of the webinar, sometimes, the webinar is paid at a very affordable cost.

In this way, they are able to make up the advertisement cost or some part of it, making their webinar even more valuable and serious for attendees.

However, it is not necessary to scale to a bigger product or primary product from here. The webinar can itself be the paid product, but then it won’t be a lead magnet.

Step 5: Planning & Deciding The Structure Of Your Lead Magnet

To finally be able to start creating your lead magnet, you also need to plan out how you want to create it.

Deciding the structure of your lead magnet improves the chances of maximum conversion on the leads.

Plan your lead magnet with a primary focus :

What exactly or specific problem or topic will it resolve?
Create the outline of your content for the lead magnet
Focus on integrating some pro tips, strategies, and tricks as well.
Create tests, assignments, practices, or actionable steps in your content
Look for what graphics and other content formats you require
Make sure to share your personal experiences, tips & examples to make your content more personalized and helpful.

Once you make a plan about what your content is going to be, you need to assimilate the sources and require research to craft the content. But more on that in the next step.

Before you get to actually create your lead magnet, you also need to decide the structure of it makes your lead magnet more convertible and effective to implement.

Creating Hook Highlighting The Benefits of Subscribing You

In the first stage, you would want to create a hook for the readers where you highlight why they need to subscribe to your lead and newsletters.

Create a benefit-oriented headline to grab them first. If you fail to do this, then it doesn’t matter how valuable your lead magnet is; they won’t be there to find out.

Putting the Promise As What You Have To Offer To Them

Then, you provide a promise, specifying what you will provide them once they subscribe to you and what you will be helping them with.

Make your promise specific. Use the buyer’s persona to relate with them emotionally and develop trust in their desire, fear, or pain points.

Focus on driving only quality leads

You have to remember that you only need to attract the preferred potential customers and not everyone around.

It is not about getting as many contacts as possible; it is about getting quality leads that have a higher rate of conversion through lead nurturing via email marketing.

So, the very structure of your lead magnet, as well as the copy of sign-ups and landing pages, must focus on bringing the target audience.

Make your promise more specified. Tell them clearly what you are going to give them, so only people who expect exactly that will sign-up.

Building The Connect

One part of your structure of the lead magnet will be dedicated to the connection you need to build with your audience.

This is about communicating the reason why you are creating this and who you are exactly targeting.

You need to find the points with which your target users can identify. This comes from the research and buyer’s persona you did earlier.

Find some common grounds to connect with them. Give them something about you, your mission, or your company through which they can relate with you.

Identify their issues, and their primary problems with the solution that you can offer.

Add Call-to-Action

The final stage of your lead magnet creation requires CTA integration, so they would know what they are supposed to do after reading this.

Make sure you end the argument more like a statement than sharing what would happen if they do not take this step. Tell them what exactly they will miss out on.

Use their pain points and problems to remember what state they’re in compared to your promise as to where they can be.

Step 6: Crafting Your Lead Magnet

Now, finally, you have reached the part where you will be actually creating your lead magnet, as the previous five steps were to prepare for this critical stage.

You will create your lead magnet on the basis of your buyer’s persona and the lead magnet type you’ve decided on in the earlier steps.

As per another step in this process, you need to play to your strength. Whatever you are good at, use it to create your lead magnet, be it writing, designing, or video making.

However, if you’re trying other mediums which you are not feeling comfortable with, it is better to hire professionals for it.

Or at least you take some time to get hold of it or get help from the experts to make it valuable enough.

While creating your lead magnet, focus on these points

Creating lead magnet content must be customized to provide promised value to your buyer’s persona-based audience
Make sure the content of your lead magnet is actionable and practical for all levels of learners.
The copy or content you should have in sign-up forms or landing pages must be compelling and attractive to bring leads in.
Make your lead magnet focused on providing the value of the proposition you decided on earlier in the process.
Remember that the sole purpose of creating the lead magnet is to generate leads, so it is not a product.
Understand the fact that if your lead magnet fails to generate leads, it will be safe to say that you get no value of returns from it. Any investment you make whatsoever will be a waste.

Tips & Strategies To Create Effective And Convertible Lead Magnets

Understanding Your Buyers

The lead magnets need to be highly targeted because that’s how it is able to click with a prospect or the visitors

If your lead magnet isn’t targeted to a specific user base, it won’t work.

In fact, even if it is not addressing the pain points, challenges, reliability, or desire of your targeted audience, it has the least chance to be effective.

And to create lead magnets that are aimed to target the pain points, desires, challenges, or problems of the users, you need to first know what these are.

For that, you need to understand your audience, your buyers, or your potential leads.

The more you know about them, the better you will be able to create an effective or precisely converting lead magnet.

If you’re creating a generic lead magnet, something that doesn’t really cater to the specifics of the industry or niche, it won’t hit hard and won’t hit home, either.

Not everyone lands on your website; certain people aim to find the content that you will be sharing on your website or blog.

The same goes for ad-based campaigns; there, too, you will be targeting a specific audience.

Hence, the lead magnet needs to be not just specialized in what your potential buyer seeks but also something valuable enough for which they can exchange their email address.

Knowing more about your audience will help you craft better content for your lead magnet and also the right design for it.

Putting Out Your Value Proposition

You have to understand the value of what you are offering here in exchange for their contact information.

So if you fail to communicate what ‘value’ you’re proposing through your lead magnet, there is no chance visitors will sign-up for your newsletter.

For the lead magnet campaign, the ‘value’ is the product that you need to sell, and ‘the information is the currency with what the prospects will pay.

A value proposition, however, is defined as something the value of a brand, business, or company promised to their customers when they chose to buy their product.

In this case, you need to focus on the selling ‘value’ of your lead magnet rather than the lead magnet itself.

Don’t say that the lead magnet you’re offering is too good, highly valuable, or informative.

Instead, tell them what value this particular guide, pdf, eBook, or whatever lead magnet you’re presenting can offer them.

Communicating the value of your lead magnet, as well as the products you’re offering too, can bring people in instantaneously.

Keep Your Lead Magnet Simple

You would not want to complicate your lead magnet because it is never meant to. Lead magnets need something that they can simply consume to help with a particular problem or topic.

Also, it is not worth putting in too much effort. Certainly, your lead magnet must have high value, but overall, it is a method to pull people in.

Don’t go all-in with your lead magnet. Not just will it be a bad strategy for sales, but also it will overwhelm the audience.

If it is about too much or goes into too much detail, it will fail to give some actionable steps that the prospect is looking to make through your lead magnet.

Lead magnets are supposed to be like ‘trailers’ of the value you will be providing, sneak peeks, or a promise of what you can offer to them if they sign-up and continue with you.

So, focus on making things concise. Make it practical and give your target users some compelling reason to download your lead magnet.

Using Different Lead Magnets Depending Upon The Buyer’s Journey Of Your Audience

Not all the prospects or audiences that approach your product and website, or you approach them, are at the same stage.

Some of them might have known of your brand for a long while but haven’t bought or some of them are just first-timers who landed up on your website.

The same lead magnet cannot be compelling for both of these people. It is because both of them are at different stages of their buyer’s journey.

And there are many stages in this buyer’s journey where you need a specific kind of lead magnet to lure them in.

You can use cookies and other various tools that help you understand the past records of your customer.

For example, offering product manual guides is better for the users who have already bought your products, whereas buying guides is better for first-timers.

Create Your Lead Magnet For Rapid Consumption

One of the major mistakes made by newbie content marketers or business owners that rather than packing their lead magnet more to aim :

Attracting the audience with a catchy and attention-grabbing name/ headline
Providing a quick, actionable content
Easy to read or consume information
Practical to do it right away

They rather go for something more of an information-heavy and detailed encyclopedia. The problem with that isn’t just the overwhelming information but also how random it is.

For new learners or first-timers exposed to the content, they won’t be able to make it out as it will only confuse and overwhelm them.

Chances are, they might even drop the whole idea altogether.

So lead magnets to need to be something basic and helpful. You can certainly put advanced-level information in the form of easy, quick steps or tips that they can implement.

Also, since you don’t know a lot about your audience, as only there is a certain level of personalization or segmentation is possible, you need to be a bit basic.

Even if a subscriber finds 30 or 40 percent of your lead magnet helpful, they will be inclined to listen to you as to what you have to offer.

Choosing the Right Lead Magnet According To Your Industry

Lead magnets have different impacts on different markets and industries. One that works with a particular industry doesn’t mean it will work in others as well.

Before you replicate someone’s lead magnet to your own industry or niche, figure out whether it even works or not.

Then, there are some particular lead magnets that are highly effective in some industries but not much with others.

For example, you can offer how-to guides if you’re selling products or digital goods, but it won’t work if you’re selling consultancy or coaching on a particular topic.

Make sure you do market-based research on what kind of lead magnets work in your industry. See what the winning brands or your competitors are using as a lead magnet in your market or industry.