If you want to improve your conversion rates, lead magnets will help you do this. Whether you offer a book, discount, or other perks, generating leads from valuable content is a fast track to more sales.
Lead magnet types will vary according to the industry and end goal offering (product or service) of your business. A B2B company will likely have different considerations for its lead magnet ideas than a B2C business.
At the basic level, however, successful lead magnets follow the same principles.
This article will share what a lead magnet is, the best lead magnet ideas, common mistakes businesses make, and how to create awesome lead magnet ideas for your business effectively. By the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll have some creative lead magnet ideas to help you increase conversions.
Lead Generation Through Lead Magnets: Overview
If you don’t have a lead magnet, you’re missing out.
It’s one of the best ways to capture people into your sales journey, with the end goal of converting them into loyal customers.
The most crucial part of any lead magnet is that it should be valuable to the prospect. People should receive enough insight from the magnet that it convinces them to take the next step and purchase your product or service.
This is a lot easier said than done.
Firstly, you need to focus on what your prospects want in the bigger picture – how does your business give them that once they pay/purchase/sign-up?
The next step is to work backward and figure out what value you can offer in the form of free content or offerings that will help to convince them that your business has what they need for their end goal.
The best lead magnet ideas are those that focus on solving problems for prospects and having a strategic funnel that the lead enters once they receive the lead magnet. That process of customer nurturing (or, in other words, the sales journey) will also contribute to whether your prospects will convert.
What are Lead Magnets?
A lead magnet is a free offer or product you give to prospects. Generally, people input their email/deatils to receive the lead magnet, and therefore, you have their information to enter into the sales funnel.
Some broad examples include a PDF, e-book, whitepaper, video, or mini-course. More specific lead magnet examples tailored to niche industries could be a downloadable meditation from self-development coaches or free meal plans from fitness experts.
If you’re solely relying on customers to come to you and buy simply based on your website or social media, you’re taking a big risk here. The reason why you can effectively generate leads from lead magnets also lies in the trust-building that happens when someone receives your content. They have a much higher chance of seeing your business as an authority.
The important thing to note is that a lead magnet gives prospects an understanding of the value of your offering. Generating qualified leads requires a focus on how you are conveying the overall benefits and value of your end-goal service/product.
35.4% of B2B marketers struggled with this – reporting that buyers didn’t understand the value of their offerings. Taking full ownership of how you convey this value before they purchase is where lead magnets come in.
The Most Common Types of Lead Magnets
There are many types of lead magnets – some more creative than others. Consider your target audience and your end offer to decide on which type of lead magnet would fit your business model most.
Product Guides & E-books
Whether you sell a product or a service, guides and e-books can be great lead magnet ideas. Written content that provides insight and practical information for prospects are common lead magnets that businesses use.
Case Studies & Testimonials
These are excellent ways to demonstrate the value of what you do and how it helps people. You could share in-depth interviews, videos, or case studies as a lead magnet (with an opt-in), rather than just display them freely on your website.
Free Reports & Whitepapers
If you can access exclusive industry research or resources that would benefit your audience, you can create whitepapers and reports to demonstrate your expertise and authority in this industry. This one is great for B2B prospects.
Additional Lead Magnet Types
We’ll share more specific lead magnet ideas below, but to expand on the different type of lead magnets you can use in business, there are also:
- Giveaways
- Premium content (podcast/videos usually reserved for subscribed members)
- Templates
- Checklists
- Webinars
- Event tickets
- + Much more
Below is an example of Go HighLevel (CRM platform) using a 14-day free trial as a lead magnet for prospects. This puts them directly in the sales funnel as they are then able to use the product and be nurtured to eventually upgrade to a paid plan.
Lead Magnet Ideas for Generating High-paying Leads
Some of the best magnet ideas that can generate high-paying clients for your business are listed below. These lead gen ideas aren’t just for high-ticket B2B businesses; you can implement these ideas in your small and growing business, too.
Free and Premium Videos
This is a proven method to drive traffic and build brand awareness. You can create relevant videos with insights or training for your niche, then share snippets on social media or in emails to capture leads through another funnel. An example would be, “see the whole video here,” – at which point you capture their email to send them the full video content.
E-books
A free e-book is a great way to share useful information with your audience. The more people who download it, the better! You could also provide access to a private forum within the E-book, where users can interact and learn from each other.
Webinars
Webinars are another great way to attract leads because they’re interactive and informative. People like being able to ask questions during webinars, which makes them more likely to buy something too. You could also offer bonus content for people who register early or attend in person at your events (like an e-book or discount).
Which Lead Magnet Is Best?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, the top three performing lead magnets for B2B marketers were in-person events, with webinars coming second and e-books following at number three.
An in-person event lead magnet can be done in a few ways, with one of the most popular for the B2B market being a giveaway for free tickets to a training, seminar, conference, or another industry event.
People would input their details through a landing page, opt-in popup, or on social media in order to be eligible to win the free ticket. Everyone who entered would then be put into a sales funnel with additional offers for products/services or other events.
How To Create A Lead Magnet?
Below is a 5-step process to use as a template to create your next lead magnet.
1. Generate lead magnet ideas
Of course, you will start by coming up with a list of lead magnet ideas. They are the foundation on which you’ll build your entire strategy.
As we’ve shared already, it’s important to consider the nature of your audience and tailor the type of lead magnet to your target prospect. Consider whether your B2B audience who is, for example, interested in marketing, would rather have an E-Book of Current Marketing Stats, or whether a Webinar is more suited to them.
Note: there is no one correct way – you may have to experiment with different types of lead magnets before you find the winning formula.
2. Create the lead magnet
No matter what kind of business you run—whether it’s a one-person operation or a large company with multiple locations—there are always ways to make things easier for yourself.
To create a lead magnet, choose one of your ideas from your list and write an outline of what you want the lead magnet to look like. Once your outline is finished, it’s time to create the content. This might mean going straight to researching, delegating to a content writer, or getting your filming team together to create visual material.
3. Design the lead magnet
Your lead magnet is the first thing that will catch a potential customer’s attention. You want to get the right message across in a way that is super easy to digest and understand.
The design is one of the essential factors in determining your lead magnet’s effectiveness, so it’s worth spending some time on it. You should also focus on the design of the landing page or the space that will direct people to that lead magnet.
What is the first touch-point the person has with your business before they find out about the lead magnet? Is the design consistent with the lead magnet? And, of course, are all of the designs consistent with your branding?
5. Position it to capture leads
This is generally where the landing page is built. Although you don’t always have to use a landing page to capture the leads and deliver the content to them, it’s the most common option businesses choose. Pop-up opt-in pages are also great ways to deliver your lead magnet and capture the prospect’s details.
6. Have the funnel set up
Now that you have created the lead magnet and positioned it to be snatched up by prospects, you need a strategy to funnel these leads through the sales process. This is where CRM software and marketing automation are helpful. We use Go Highlevel for customer relationship management. Learn more about the software by reading this article next.
Helpful Tools to Create Lead Magnets
Whether you have a huge design and marketing team or you’re a one-person entrepreneur, you can leverage the use of free and premium tools to create your lead magnets. The following tools are great resources for creating lead magnets – we use many of these in our business.
Canva
Canva is an online graphic design app that makes creating beautiful images and designs easy. You can easily make your lead magnets, postcards, banners, brochures, and more with Canva. Canva’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create custom designs. You can use the tools in the toolbar to create your designs or go for a more freeform approach by using their filter options. You can also use Canva’s text editor to add text to your design. You can choose from various fonts, sizes, and colors to create a unique design.
Piktochart
Piktochart is a great tool for creating lead magnets. It has a ton of templates to choose from, and it’s easy to add your data or images to the design. Piktochart offers over 400 free templates that help you turn your statistics into a work of art. Link your spreadsheet data to the template designs, then customize with fonts, colors, and images.
Smallpdf
Smallpdf is an open-source tool that allows you to create PDFs with a custom font without needing Adobe Acrobat. Smallpdf is free to use, but it does have a paid version that allows you to export in different formats, such as Word and Excel. You can use Smallpdf to convert any image into a PDF. The application also supports editing existing PDFs, including adding text from other applications like Word or Excel.
Wistia
Wistia is a simple and elegant video-hosting service for businesses. We make it easy for you to create, host, and share your videos on the web. Wistia is ideal for professional video creators, small businesses with high-quality content needs, marketing agencies that want to create video campaigns from scratch.
Join.me
Join.me is an easy-to-use online meeting tool that makes it easy to host video calls, group discussions, live trainings, and more. The free version lets you create events and share videos up to 1MB in size with up to 10 participants at a time. The paid subscription includes more features like recording and sharing larger files, a hosted dashboard for managing events, and team collaboration tools.
TheStocks.im (H3)
TheStocks.im is a curated collection of the best stock photos, icons, videos, mockups, and tools for designers. It is where you can discover the best royalty-free stock photos and icons for your designs. It contains more than 2100+ tools that will help you improve your designs.
Gleam
Gleam is a lead magnet platform that allows you to set up, collect, and review entries for your campaign. You can enter contests by taking action like following social media accounts or watching videos—and Gleam will automatically collect entries. Paid versions of this software allow you to capture entrants’ email addresses, which can be synced with mail providers like MailChimp.
Two High-Converting Lead Generation Ideas We Use At Scaling With Systems
#1: Online Video Guide
A short video training is a highly effective lead magnet idea that we recommend almost every business owner use to generate leads passively and convert them into customers.
It doesn’t have to be super fancy.
We know many people don’t like to be on video, but this is an excellent method to build rapport with your audience. You don’t need professional lighting. All you need is your iPhone, a smile, and a little information.
The video training you’re going to create should be something that you’re an expert on or, at least you know, a little bit more than somebody else in your target market.
You can build authority by showing pictures of you speaking on stage or teaching others. On top of that, you can trickle in testimonials, case studies, and results that you’ve gotten for other people just like them inside that free training. This establishes authority and builds trust with prospects.
Create an opt-in form for people to access the free training, and you will have them in your sales funnel and ready to nurture and qualify them as valuable leads as they complete the training.
#2: Free Online Course
The second lead magnet for your business that we recommend is an entirely free online course.
You might be thinking, “a whole online course?!”
Yes, you heard it right. And the very reason you’re questioning this is why you will stand out from your competitors if you do it.
Because they will ask why they should give so much value away for free and likely choose not to. Which already puts you a step ahead if you decide to go down this path.
This is a good idea because:
Once the prospect becomes a client in your free program, they will feel far more comfortable engaging with your business and, later on, making a purchase. They have practiced receiving from your business. And – if your content is really valuable – it would be a no-brainer for them to go with your paid offerings.
It’s quite simple. One way is to turn your larger course (if you have one) into a freebie by taking one or two modules from that course and repurposing it as a lead magnet. Once they have a taste of the value of the course, they will see your business as an authority and will be far more likely to purchase from your business – even if it is later on in the future.
There are many other creative lead magnet ideas, but we definitely recommend this strategy as it has worked for us. We have a free online course to help people understand the fundamentals of scaling their companies in just three simple steps.
Lead Magnet FAQs
How do you make a lead magnet funnel?
When creating a lead magnet, you should choose your target audience and determine how to provide value. You should also assess the resources and tools needed to create an irresistible lead magnet. Create an outline of your lead magnet, complete the entire content, and then publish it and test it on your intended audience to measure results.
What makes an effective lead magnet?
One of the most important things to consider when choosing a lead magnet is how it will benefit your audience. If you choose a lead magnet that doesn’t solve a real problem for your audience, people won’t use it, share it, and definitely won’t buy from your business.
The best lead magnets offer expert insight, insider knowledge, practical tools, and resources, or some other creative and unique solution that solves a real problem for people.
What is the best type of lead magnet?
Although there is no one right lead magnet that will work for every business, webinars are one of the most effective online lead magnets businesses use to capture and convert leads to loyal customers and clients.
Wrapping Up: Generate High Quality Leads Through Lead Magnets
Creating a lead magnet is easier than you think—you don’t need to be a graphic designer or have any special skills; delegation is always an option. It simply starts with a lead magnet idea, and the systems in place to implement it and see how it works.
The key is to ensure that your lead magnet is appealing, relevant, and informative. Once your prospect receives value from your content, they will have more trust that your business can deliver the goods.
Scaling With Systems is here to help you experience rapid growth and skyrocket your profits through intelligent client acquisition.
Whether you’re searching to generate high-quality leads for your business or on your company’s behalf, we build a profitable client acquisition system that guarantees new clients consistently. To learn more, book a free consultation call with one of our advisors today.
