What makes a good lead magnet for your business?
If you’re a business in 2024, chances are you have a lead magnet. Or at least you know you SHOULD have a lead magnet. Or maybe even a few lead magnets.
But what kind of lead magnets are actually going to convert subscribers and help you grow your email list?
What is a lead magnet?
If you don’t have a lead magnet and do no know what it is, let me give you a quick overview.
A lead magnet, or a “freebie” is essentially information you give to a site visitor in exchange for their email. They are strategically designed to attract and capture the attention of subscribers or potential customers.
Common lead magnets
When it comes to what makes a good lead magnet for your business, you have a lot of options as to what they can look like. And each one suits certain businesses and personalities better than others.
Ebooks
One of the most common types of lead magnets is an ebook. Ebooks can be educational or entertaining, but they’re typically easy reads that cover a topic a potential subscriber is interested in.
Checklists
We all love a good checklist, which is why checklists are very popular lead magnets. Done right, they can be highly useful to a potential subscriber and even used for a long time.
I have my own checklist on everything you need in your blogs, including SEO, voice, content, and promotion.
Email courses
Another common lead magnet is an email course. They typically cover an important topic that a potential subscriber wants to learn about, with the course broken up into multiple days.
What’s awesome about this lead magnet is that it gets your subscriber to get used to seeing your emails in their inbox. And if they signed up for an email course, then they at least intend to open all these emails.
Quizzes
A good lead magnet quiz provides a personalized answer to the user’s question depending on their answers. They are incredibly effective lead magnets that can possibly lower your cost per lead by 90%.
Want a great example of an effective quiz lead magnet?
Tori Dunlap of Her First 100K has a money plan quiz that has attracted hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Now, if you’ve read my blog post on how big your email list needs to be to make money, you know that you don’t need a list that is nearly that big (although if that’s your goal, I believe in you!), but her example just shows the power of a good quiz.
Webinar
Webinars are another way to exchange information for an email. A webinar can be a bit more of a personal lead magnet because it’ll typically be a live video event, where attendees can ask questions or a recorded version of the live event. Either way, you're the star, as you’ll be on video!
Discount
Who hasn’t signed up to a store’s email list in exchange for a discount? These lead magnets are incredibly popular ways to build your email list.
The good part?
You don’t spend any time creating an ebook/video/checklist/quiz like the other options. They also make it more likely that a visitor will make a purchase on your website to try out a new product for the person.
What makes a good lead magnet?
Not all lead magnets are created equal. And the reality is that some convert, and some don’t. Or they convert but are not the type of subscribers you want. So what makes a lead magnet good and effective in both encouraging subscribers and preventing immediate unsubscribes (we’ve all done it!).
A good lead magnet is valuable
A good lead magnet needs to be something that your ideal subscriber actually wants. And for them to want it, it needs to be valuable.
Don’t just give any old information that they can find with a quick Google search. Give something that can actually help frequently in their lives or business. I still have lead magnets that I’ve downloaded years ago because they were THAT valuable.
A good lead magnet is relevant
A lead magnet that is effective for your business also needs to be relevant to your business and your offers.
For example, I’m a big finance buff and love to create budgets for my business and personal expenses. However, I’m not a finance expert, and I’m not trying to sell finance services, so a finance-related lead magnet is not the most relevant lead magnet for my copywriting business. Lead magnets related to messaging/blogging/email/website copy would be the most relevant to MY business.
A good lead magnet is exclusive
Your lead magnet also needs to be exclusive. That information should live in your lead magnet and nowhere else. Don’t put it in your blog, on your YouTube channel, or in your email marketing.
That just takes the allure away and takes away the incentive to get the lead magnet.
A good lead magnet makes you want more
A great lead magnet makes the reader want more and want more from you!
So, while a valuable lead magnet with insanely good information solves the immediate question your subscriber had, you also want to be careful not to give away all your information so that the desire for more also goes away.
A good lead magnet is promoted well
A lead magnet is not going to “sell” itself. If you’ve already been focusing on your website's SEO for a while and have significant visitors coming to your website organically, you’re in luck! Just adding a sign popup and plugging your lead magnets in relevant blogs can go a long way in converting your visitors into subscribers. But if you haven’t been focusing on your website's SEO and blogging, there are other ways to promote your lead magnet and immediately. For example:
Promote on social media
Promote on YouTube
Promote on Pinterest
Offer it at the end of podcast interviews
Use paid ads (Twitter, Facebook, & Instagram)
A good lead magnet has an equally great landing page
A big chunk of the people that see your lead magnet offer is going to read your landing page (lead magnet opt-in page) first. This is typically what you’ll link when promoting your lead magnet outside of your website as the final way to “convince” the reader to pull the plug. Bad landing pages can also scare away subscribers.
Landing pages matter. A LOT. So make sure you make a great one!
A good lead magnet is followed by a welcome sequence
A great lead magnet is also followed by a welcome sequence. A welcome sequence is a series of emails a subscriber gets from you after signing up for your list, where you have a chance to tell your story, segment your audience, and even make an offer.
They’re also the most opened sequence of all, so they give you an opportunity to make your emails way more memorable.
I mean, come on, we get A LOT of emails a day, and it’s reaalllly easy to forget about the lists you signed up for if you aren’t properly welcomed into the fold. Without a welcome sequence, you risk your emails drowning in the whirlpool that is your reader's inbox. No bueno.
If you want to learn how to write a welcome sequence, check out my blog post on this very subject!
How many lead magnets do you need?
Even if you have the best lead magnet and make it valuable, relevant, and promote it everywhere, it might not convert. Think about it: you have different types of ideal customers/clients, each at a different place in their journey or with different interests. Not all of them will want the same thing.
For example, let’s say you’re a financial planner with a budget spreadsheet lead magnet that converts a lot of beginners wanting to create their first budget, which is an ideal customer for you. But maybe another ideal customer is someone a little further along on their journey who already has a budget and now wants to learn more about investing the money they’ve saved.
Chances are, this ideal client is not going to want your budget spreadsheet.
So, it’s important to have multiple lead magnets that are targeted to each kind of ideal client you have.
Hey, do you want one of my lead magnets?
If you’ve spent some time on my website, you’ll see that I have quite a few lead magnets, and I plug them as often as possible. Usually, I’d make a more subtle offer for you to download one of my lead magnets, but since this is a blog post all about lead magnets, I figure I’ll make you a hard pitch. Take a look at what I offer and download whichever you’d like!
