How to Create a Lead Magnet That Works – 2 Main Steps [2024]

As a business owner, you know the struggle of getting new leads for your business. A well-planned lead magnet will attract the attention of your target audiences and help you generate leads regularly.

According to email vendor selection, 55% of landing page submissions come from lead magnets

But the main challenge is to decide what you should offer as a lead magnet. The success rate of your lead generation campaign depends largely on what you offer as value in exchange for information.

Today, you will learn how you can plan and create a lead magnet that is aligned with your business and will help you target the right prospects to generate leads actively.

So let’s begin.

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is a free offer that you provide to potential customers in exchange for their contact information. It’s designed to attract and engage prospects, turning them into leads.

To create a lead magnet, start by identifying your best prospects and what they need. This could be anything from a free trial, whitepapers, or a PDF format guide.

You can create a dedicated landing page or include it on your home page to capture personal information like an email address or phone number.

By offering free lead magnets, you can convert cold traffic into new customers and drive your lead generation efforts. Consider using a lead magnet generator to simplify the lead magnet creation process.

Do Lead Magnets Work?

Yes, lead magnets are effective tools for capturing high-value leads and boosting your lead-generation efforts. Let’s see how it helps:

• Attract High-Value Leads: Lead magnets capture contact information by offering something valuable, such as a free trial or detailed guide.
• Build Trust: By providing valuable content, lead magnets help establish trust with potential customers.
• Boost Lead Generation: They effectively enhance your lead generation efforts and grow your list of prospects.
• Nurture Leads: Lead magnets guide prospects through your sales funnel, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
• Increase Sales: They set the stage for future marketing and sales strategies, ultimately driving higher sales.

Why is It Crucial to Use Lead Magnets in Your Funnel?

The idea behind using a lead magnet is simple – you offer value to get some value in return.

So, the concept is,

• You can create a lead magnet by providing a free piece of content or resource that your target audience can use to get some desirable outcome or a solution to a certain pain point.
• Interested prospects have to provide their email address and consent to get future promotional emails from you to collect this free resource.

But you have to make sure it is something that people will want to get their hands on. Don’t expect people to sign up for anything just because it’s free.

The main reason here is people want real value that is not easy to access. It’s even better if what you are offering is unique. And if you can show stats on its past success rate, that will make it even more attractive.

Eventually, if you can offer the right lead magnet, your leads will be highly qualified, and your conversion rates in your future promotional campaigns will be much higher. It’s a proven fact.

50% of marketers claim, lead magnet increased their conversion rates.

The fact is, if your lead magnet can deliver results, people will start trusting your expertise.

Then, you can nurture them with more useful tips and case studies and eventually make an offer. This approach will deliver high conversion rates more often than not.

Let us look at a quick example of a good lead magnet and how it helps to create a smooth sales funnel journey.

Let us look at how you can plan and craft a good lead magnet for your next marketing campaign.

How to Create a Lead Magnet That Converts for Maximum Lead Generation

Creating a lead magnet involves two steps:

• Step 1 – Planning & creating the right lead magnet
• Step 2 – Having a clear plan of how to use it to collect leads

In the next few sections, you will learn how you can carry these out.

Step 1 – Planning & Creating The Right Lead Magnet

Depending on your niche, you have to find out what may work as a lead magnet. Let us look at how you can identify possible resources that you can offer as lead magnets.

Follow the instructions below.

1. Indentify Your Business Niche And Note Down “What Problems You traditionally Solve?”

Write down how you identify your business in terms of niche.

Overall, you should know what niche your business is part of. Then list down the services you provide, and the pain points each of them solves.

2. Define who you serve and what pain points you solve for them

List down the possible types of customers that you serve to offer your solution.

Then list down all the pain points these customers usually face while trying to achieve desirable results. (These results would be what you normally help to achieve via your solutions or services).

Now, for each of these pain points, note down which service of yours will solve them.

It’s best to craft complete customer personas that will help you in all your marketing activities.

3. Identify what resources you can offer as lead magnets

This part is a bit tricky.

You have aligned what pain points you solve with your services and which customer personas need what service to get the desired outcome.

From this, first, decide which persona you want to target for lead generation next.

The main goal here is to plan out what this lead magnet should be:

• Topic(s) you will cover.
• Pain points it will solve.
• End result people may expect.
• The solution and value it will hold.

Once you have identified your lead magnet, it’s time to decide what type of lead magnet it should be. There are several types of lead magnets to create.

In the last section, I’ll show you a few proven types of lead magnets that you can consider replicating for your business. So, don’t miss out!

Now, let us look at how you can plan to use the lead magnet actively to collect leads.

Step 2 – Having a Clear Plan for Using Your Lead Magnets to Collect Leads

The hard part is over. You have identified what you want to offer as a lead magnet, and you know who you are targeting. But that’s only 60% of the work.

The next part is planning how you want your audience to know about it. Following are a couple of ways you can do this.

1. Use Facebook Lead Ads + Lead Magnet to Collect Leads

You can use the lead ads feature to attract potential leads during this process.

1. Create Your Lead Magnet: Design a valuable resource, such as an ultimate guide or a 1-page marketing plan canvas, that addresses a specific pain point for your target audience. Ensure it’s a high-value lead magnet that offers a quick win to your readers.

2. Promote Your Lead Magnet:
   • Ad Sets: Develop your ad sets with images or videos that highlight the benefits of your lead magnet. Avoid mentioning services or payments.
   • CTA: Use a strong call to action (CTA), like “Get The Free eBook,” to trigger action.

3. Create a Lead Ad: On Facebook, use the lead ads feature to create a Lead Ad that collects leads via Facebook’s opt-in form. This allows users to submit their email addresses directly from the ad.

4. Automate Data Handling:
   • Zapier Integration: Use Zapier to transfer data from Facebook leads to your preferred CRM or email automation tool.
   • Automated Emails: Set up an automated email to send the lead magnet link immediately after someone submits their information.

5. Target Audience and Campaigns: Set the right target audience for your ads to display them effectively. Monitor the results and plan your next promotional campaign based on the qualified leads you receive.

By following these steps, you’ll leverage your lead magnet funnel efficiently and enhance your lead generation efforts. From there, you may plan your next promotional campaign.

2. Collect Leads Using A Lead Generation Funnel

To effectively create a lead magnet, set up a dedicated lead magnet funnel to capture high-value leads. Here’s how:

1. Create a Lead Generation Funnel: Use WPFunnels to build a two-step funnel—a landing page and a thank you page.

2. Optimize the Landing Page: Craft compelling copy and design the landing page to promote your free lead magnets. Focus solely on the benefits and use cases of your lead magnet service, avoiding any mention of paid services.

3. Include an Opt-In Form: Add an opt-in form to the landing page, requesting minimal data like names and email addresses. Optionally, you can include questions about the prospects’ business needs.

4. Design a Thank You Page: After form submission, redirect users to a thank you page with instructions on accessing the lead magnet. You can either provide a direct link or instruct them to check their email.

5. Set Up Automation: Use automation to add leads to your CRM and send an email with access to the lead magnet. Tools like Mail Mint, integrated with WPFunnels, can help you set up these automation flows seamlessly.

6. Promote Your Funnel: Share your lead magnet funnel on social media and run paid ads to drive relevant traffic. While paid video ads may have low engagement for B2B services, a well-designed funnel provides more detailed information on the lead magnet’s benefits, improving conversion rates.

By following these steps, you’ll be able to create a high-converting lead magnet and effectively capture leads through your lead magnet creation process.

6 Proven Lead Magnet Ideas for Your Business

Follow the most common types of lead magnets that most businesses have used to collect leads successfully.

1. Solution-Focused Template or Handbook
2. Limited-time Membership Access
3. Free Consultation Booking
4. Pre-recorded Video Guide
5. Free eBook or PDF With Valuable Guides
6. Partial Free Access To Content

1. Solution-Focused Template or Handbook

A solution-focused template or handbook usually offers a practical approach to addressing common problems within your audience’s sphere of interest, maybe using step-by-step guides or pre-built formats. The ultimate goal is to collect targeted leads while showcasing your expertise.

For example, suppose you’re in the home improvement industry. You can offer a lead magnet, “Ultimate Home Renovation Handbook,” where you can guide homeowners through a DIY renovation process from initial planning to selecting materials and managing budgets.

So if you are targeting homeowners that require home improvements, this would be a great lead magnet to address their pain points and highlight your expertise.

Eventually, you can nurture them and make them realize why taking your service would be the best option to solve other major pain points.

This type of lead magnet will work well for niches such as business consultation, digital marketing, health or fitness, career or personal development, financial advisor, etc.

If you have the resource outline planned, you can easily create this using Canva, LibreOffice, etc.

2. Limited-time Membership Access

This is one of the great types of lead magnets or, rather, a hook offer that works quite well for course creators, online course hubs, and skill development communities.

Suppose you own an online cooking community where people can interact with various chefs and cooks to learn cooking interactively. So, your community may have courses, private live sessions, and even personal coaching services tied to a membership subscription.

In this case, you can offer a 30-day free membership as a lead magnet. If you target the right audience, then this will lead to tons of new members. And after the free period, many will go for your subscription plan (if it’s affordable).

How you manage this will depend on where you maintain this community. If it’s a WordPress site, then MemberPress would be a great option to handle this.3. Free Consultation Book

3. Free Consultation Book

Sometimes, people just want to talk with someone before even considering taking paid services.

For example, if you are a legal advisor for businesses, people would rather want to get on a call with you, share their situation, and find out what you can do to help them.

In this case, you can offer a free 30-minute consultation as a lead magnet.

People will naturally want to join here if they have any possible need.

You, however, should be completely prepared with what you want to offer or how you want to handle the session.

So, when you offer such free consultations, write down a script that you will follow. Define what topics you will discuss in proper order. Do not consider going for an open conversation without a plan – in most cases, open discussions will exceed your allotted time.

In fact, without a plan in place, you won’t have much chance of making an offer or giving enough value to gain the prospect’s trust.

This plan will limit the call to 30 minutes, allow you to prove your expertise, and make you join a self-nurturing community where you upload videos on useful legal advice.

The main idea is to be prepared for the call even before you start collecting leads.

You can embed Calendly’s booking form on the landing page to get the bookings.

But we would rather insist you use an opt-in form on your landing page to collect the names and emails. Upon submission, you can send out an automated email with the link to Calendly’s booking form. This automation can easily be done using Mail Mint.

4. Pre-recorded Video Guide

One of the high-converting lead magnet ideas would be a video guide that offers useful solutions.

Once people sign up via your opt-in form, you can set automation to send an email with a private link (preferably password-protected) to a video you recorded to offer a guide to a particular pain point.

So, as a lead magnet, you have to record a video, embed it on a webpage, and password-protect it.

Here is an example from MasterClass.

You can use Flixier, InVideo, Visla, etc., to create and edit the videos.

5. Free eBook or PDF with valuable guides

You could create an ebook or a PDF book where you can share a certain tactic or process along with implementation guides.

As an industry expert, you can easily write down an ebook with a guide to a DIY process for the prospects.

For example, as a business coach, you can offer an ebook on implementing OKR and Agile for faster business growth. Any business that wants rapid growth and is interested in using the agile methodology will want to collect this ebook. You can then plan the next funnel steps to offer your coaching service.

eBooks give you the added benefit of promoting your brand throughout the book. You also get to include case studies or strategies where people can have to contact you for help. So this usually gives you more value than other forms of lead magnet ideas.

Let’s look at an example from Ooni.

You can try Visme to create ebooks when you have the content ready.

6. Partial Free Access To Content

Often when you create courses or write books, it’s difficult to find a targeted audience with just paid Ads. In this case, you can create a lead magnet funnel and offer the 1st few lessons of the course or the 1st couple of chapters of your book as a lead magnet.

Later, you can run email automation to offer them a chance to purchase the whole thing.

This works quite well for actionable courses and business or self-improvement books.

Teachable or LearnDash allows you to offer a few free lessons or courses. In the case of a book, you can simply generate PDFs of the free chapters to send them copies via email.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve learned how to create a lead magnet and plan its content and usage, it’s time to put those strategies into action.

The types of free lead magnets you choose can vary—what’s important is delivering high value to your prospects to build trust and authority. This will set the stage for a successful lead magnet funnel and help you convert leads into paying customers.

When you’re ready, use WPFunnels on your WordPress site to simplify your lead magnet creation process. It offers well-designed templates for different niches, supports design work, and integrates with CRM and automation tools.

This will help you set up a lead magnet service, manage your leads efficiently, and plan your next promotional campaign effectively.

** FAQs **

What makes a good lead magnet?

• A good lead magnet provides high-value leads by solving a specific problem related to your core product. It should be easy to consume and directly connected to the products or services you offer. Make sure it’s compelling enough to persuade visitors to exchange their contact information for access.

How long should a lead magnet be?

• The length of your lead magnet depends on its format and the complexity of the content. For example, a simple checklist might be just a page or two, while a detailed eBook could be longer. The key is to ensure it’s long enough to deliver value but short enough to be consumed quickly and efficiently.

Can lead magnets increase sales?

• Yes, lead magnets can significantly boost sales by capturing potential customers’ contact information and guiding them through your lead magnet funnel. By offering initial value and building trust, lead magnets help nurture leads and set the foundation for effective sales pitches.

What types of lead magnets work best for service-based businesses?

• For service-based businesses, effective lead magnets include free consultations, service trials, webinars, and detailed guides related to your services. These options demonstrate your expertise and build trust with potential clients, making them more likely to engage with your services.

How often should I update my lead magnet?

• Updating your lead magnet regularly is essential to keep it relevant and effective. Consider revising it when there are significant industry changes, technological advancements, or shifts in customer preferences. A good rule of thumb is to review and potentially update your lead magnet at least once a year.