Lead Magnets 101: Everything You Need to Know and How To Build One

You don’t need to learn any complicated software or memorize hex codes for colors. The best way to determine your target audience is to look at their demographics, psychographics, and cognitive thinking. But 1 of these ideas could be a winner for the right business (maybe yours?).

People with problems want those problems solved as quickly as possible—ideally with as little work as possible. Introverted Alpha, run by Sarah Jones, is a website devoted to helping introverted men date more without feeling disingenuous. In some of the examples we’ve given, an entire business is focused on a specific niche. Along with targeting a very specific pain point, lead magnets are more effective when they can target a specific niche audience. But who wouldn't take action if you gave them a single message to focus on, 1 that solves an acute, burning pain?

Phyzzle uses several different lead magnets, but 1 of them is a checklist for engineering students. The most effective lead magnet ideas offer things that can be used immediately. Below you’ll find 13 types of opt-in offers (with a few miscellaneous ones thrown in) to help spur lead magnet ideas. So lead magnets you need to meet your audience where they are to really help them. You can help move them throughout the customer lifecycle to the point where they better understand their own needs. They promise to solve problems and are easy to consume immediately—a quick win.

Why Are Lead Magnets Important?

If you have the capability to offer some kind of valuable report for free, it can be a powerful lead magnet. But if you’re in that type of industry, they can be a powerful lead magnet. Reports tend to be more appealing to a technical or B2B audience.

It doesn’t take any complicated design work. That’s why many ecommerce sites use a different type of lead magnet—one specifically tailored to their business model. You can check out our trial if you’re interested in the platform (or just want to see what a free trial signup page might look like). If you have a product you can offer for a limited time, there’s no better way to show potential customers what they could be getting. Free trials are an incredibly common lead magnet, especially for SaaS companies. MuleSoft, a company that helps software interact with other software, offers a whole host of reports that they use for lead generation.

What Are Lead Magnets?

Instead, users can simply jump right in and start the email course. Reading a guide or ebook is a time investment. In an extremely different industry, Peter Nguyen, a men’s style coach, uses cheat sheets as part of his “style starter pack.” If you aren’t big on the financial side of SaaS, having a cheat sheet that goes through terms like MRR, ARPU, LTV, and churn could be really valuable. This cheat sheet runs through a lot of the key terms that show up when you work at a SaaS company. Finally, to return to the marketing world, SEO and lead generation expert Brian Dean offers an SEO checklist at the end of his post on… SEO checklists.

You could film it on a potato, and most people would still watch because of Cressey’s expertise—a phone will get the job done. Note also that this video doesn’t need to be anything spectacular from a production standpoint. He’s widely renowned as an expert in the field—both because of his prodigious technical skills and the great content he publishes. Watching a 9-minute video takes less effort than reading a 20-page ebook for most people.

Why do lead magnets work?

For ActiveCampaign, our 200+ email templates- make for a great place for customers to dive into, and can also double as lead magnets What’s great about Athletico is that this online form probably doesn’t drive that many consultations. Ideally, prospects towards the bottom of the funnel take the consultation—while everyone else uses the free guide. Sometimes all people want is the chance to speak to an expert about their problems. If you need to create a beautiful ebook but don’t have any design skills to speak of, having a template to work from would be really valuable. One of its major lead magnets is a collection of ebook templates.

• Quizzes, challenges, and interactive funnels work because they make the lead magnet feel personal.
• That next step might be reading a related guide, booking a consultation, starting a trial, watching a demo, joining a waitlist, or receiving a follow-up sequence.
• For quizzes, five to seven questions is usually enough.
• If the resource sounds like general education, the visitor may not feel enough reason to exchange their email address.

Marketing expert Ryan Holiday calls an email list your most important career asset, and writer Jeff Goins claims that everyone needs an email list. Whether you’re pulling in 100 visitors a week, a thousand, or more, any amount of traffic to your website is a good start for your business. Ask questions, compare notes, and get feedback from people who build pages for a living. Bob is a conversion expert, specifically when it comes to landing pages. Once your lead magnet is ready, consider building a landing page with Leadpages to promote it.

That way, you can collect contact information without interrupting the viewing experience on your website. If the idea of adding a pop-up form to your website makes you uncomfortable, consider using an “exit-intent” pop-up. But here are a few quick wins that can increase conversions before you go all-in on conversion rate optimization. Eventually, split testing is the best way to increase conversion rates. This proves that data is your number 1 best friend when creating lead magnets that your audience will love. Make sure that your lead magnets are updated regularly to keep up with trends and your audience’s needs.

Video is an engaging form of content, but some people are nervous about using video lead magnets because of how hard it is to create them. For that reason, email courses are often a really nice segue into lead nurture campaigns. It has a few different lead magnets, 1 of which is a free 5-day course on studying for exams. For example, Elna Cain is an online course creator with a 6-day email course that teaches users the steps to become full-time freelance copywriters.

Doesn’t it make sense to give leads everything they possibly want? But it shows how moving just that 1 number (your conversion rate) can hugely affect your business. It doesn’t take into account email list churn (or the extra word of mouth and traffic that comes from having a larger list). Over the course of a year, that’s almost $30,000 extra that you generate without any additional work. If you could increase your conversion rate to 4%—which is generally a pretty good conversion rate—what would that do to your business? There’s simply no better way to send private, personal messages to your fans.

Free consultation

Platinum Skin Care used a quiz to segment its website visitors and offer them the best products for its specific needs. The chance to get customized advice on earning more money is pretty compelling. Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich and GrowthLab offers a quiz as the opt-in incentive on his home page.

If you have the resources and creativity for it, you can turn just about anything into a lead magnet. One of its major lead magnets is a spreadsheet that helps people organize their expenses. When you visit his website, the first thing you see is an invitation to access “world-class running drills.” The truth is, not all lead magnet ideas fit neatly into 1 of the above categories. Webinars are closely related to videos but can be a bit different. This quiz was so effective that it had a 17% paid conversion rate—17% of people who took it turned into customers right after being offered a product.

If you don’t have much marketing automation experience, this video from the free course Getting Started with ActiveCampaign is a good place to start. By building a custom form for your site (which you can embed anywhere you like), you can offer different magnets on different pages. Once you’ve designed a presentation—or even an ebook—you can export it as a PDF to use as a lead magnet. It won’t be quite the same as a video with super high production value—but for most lead magnets, the content is more important than the video itself. If you’re putting together a simple lead magnet, video can be really valuable. After that, all you need to do is download the Google Doc as a PDF.