The biggest obstacle faced by digital marketers is reaching new customers. A lead magnet is one of the easiest and greatest ways to generate more leads. In fact, the lead magnet is the cornerstone when it comes to improving your conversion rates.
However, it is important that you offer something in order to be seen by the right people. Whether it is an eBook or discount, the lead magnet you offer has an impact on the number and quality of leads you generate.
In this post, we will discuss 21 lead magnet ideas, but before let us understand clearly as to what actually a lead magnet is.
What is a Lead Magnet
A lead magnet can be described as a free resource that catches the attention of your potential customers. The free content encourages visitors to subscribe to your emails and eventually become buying customers. That’s why lead magnets should be an integral part of your company’s content marketing strategy.
Though lead magnets can take any form, they generally have the characteristics listed below:
- Promote your business and generate leads
- Delivered free of cost to the subscriber
- High perceived value in terms of helpfulness or information
Lead magnets help prospective customers move through the awareness and engagement stages to the conversion and purchase stages. Furthermore, different lead magnets may be used at different stages of the sales funnel.
Why Use a Lead Magnet?
If your goal is to grow your business by generating more leads online, then you need to use lead magnets. Irrespective of whether you are running a small blog, membership site, podcast, or full-fledged eCommerce website, you need lead magnets.
People will share their email addresses only if you give a good incentive. This is true even in the case of top brands. As an online marketer, your job is to make a compelling offer so that your target audience shares their email addresses with you.
The concept becomes clear when explained using an example. Imagine that you have posted a blog on “Top 10 ways of improving customer service” and you are asking the readers to subscribe to your email program so that they can receive updates. A few visitors may subscribe to your email updates but you cannot expect an overwhelming response. On other hand, there will be many takers if you allow your subscribers to download a PDF file that contains a real-life case study of a business that used your strategies and improved its customer service.
Now that you have understood the importance of using lead magnets, let us learn to create an effective lead magnet.
How to Create a Good Lead Magnet?
It is not very difficult to create an effective lead magnet. A good lead magnet will not only attract more visitors but also help them convert and become your customers. It is, therefore, important that you consider the following aspects when creating a lead magnet.
Define your target audience
The first and most important step when building a strategy is to have a clear understanding of your target audience. Once you are clear about your buyer persona, understand their needs by visiting multiple platforms they often go to. A lead magnet can be considered a resource that provides your target audience with solutions for their needs.
The biggest mistake that marketers make is striving to attract a large number of people. Actually, what you should do is exactly the opposite. Your lead magnet should be specific and attract only the people you actually want to attract. If the lead magnet you create is not relevant to the needs and wants of your audience, they are not going to be attracted. Most companies may have several buyer personas. Each lead magnet should target only one of them.
Create your lead magnet
When it comes to creating a lead magnet, design and content have a key role to play. While the design should be simple, intuitive and easy to understand, the content should address and solve a need of your audience. For instance, if travellers are your target audience, you can create a checklist to help them easily plan their trips. Or else, you can offer them a free places to visit guide that they can download.
When creating your lead magnet, you should always remember to include related services in it. For example, offering a recipe PDF as a lead magnet for a chef will be more attractive rather than providing sample chapters of the book.
Define the Journey
It is also important that you define a visitor’s journey to become a customer in the future. Landing pages, CTAs, and pop-ups are some of the proven options you can make use of.
Landing pages are stand-alone web pages that ask a visitor to take just one single action. On the landing page, you can ask the visitor to enter his/her email address to access a free download, register for a webinar, or call for an appointment. A well-designed landing page will be devoid of distractions and be focused on one CTA or call-to-action. The benefit of creating a landing page is that its URL can be easily shared in emails, on social media posts, and in paid ads. Furthermore, a landing page is best used when promoting a free or paid offer.
You can program a pop-up screen on your website in such a way that it appears the first time a new visitor comes to your site, every time he/she visits, or until the visitor completes the form. Pop-up boxes can be programmed in many different ways based on the page which they have visited. Pop-ups are very effective in capturing visitors’ attention. Furthermore, a pop-up box is best employed to encourage visitors to enter their email addresses and register for a free offer, e-newsletter, or other quick offers you wish to promote.
When it comes to the CTA, it should be clearly visible and the button should be placed at the most prominent locations on the landing page as required.
With the help of all these, it is easy to create a lead magnet that converts, but the most important aspect is keeping your lead magnet updated all the time for the best results.
Lead Magnet Strategies & Examples
1: Whitepapers
A whitepaper or a book provides in-depth information, perspective, advice, or unique data on a topic that you can share with your audience. It enables your readers to learn about a complex issue and teaches them exactly what they should do to solve the same. White papers or books are particularly helpful in B2B marketing. This is because the sales cycle is longer and clients need to have a lot of information to make the decision to purchase something.
“Networking and your competitive edge” is a white paper that provides in-depth information about network security for decision-makers. It explains the “network edge” idea and how it can be secured using the company’s products in a simple manner. The paper balances the text with graphics and offers infographics for text-heavy pages.
2. Templates
A template provides an outline or a starting point for users who plan to do something. All that the users have to do is fill in the required information. Templates are great lead magnets as users can copy, customize, and use them. These are just perfect for the visitors to your site as they can create something for their own use. You can create different types of templates for your audience if you know what they want to create. Typically, templates are mid-funnel lead magnets.
Google Data Studio SEO Template by SEMRUSH
The Google Data Studio report template developed by SEMrush for SEO specialists is downloadable and can be modified to suit the needs of individual businesses. That is why this is a great asset as far as marketers are concerned.
3: Free Trials
Free trials are helpful in making your product sell itself. This eliminates the need for marketing, advertising, promotion, etc. Your customers will decide to continue to use your product after they try it for a specified time. This means you have been successful in providing them with a fantastic experience. You can use a free trial as the lead magnet so that customers understand the benefits it offers.
Netflix allows its customers to use its OTT platform for 30 days for FREE in exchange for their email addresses. Users can subscribe and continue to use the platform or cancel their subscriptions whenever they want.
4: Assessment
Assessment tools work really well when it is used near the launch of your product. If you have a tool that enables your audience to assess their financial status or you design a quiz that helps them identify the kind of property they want to invest in, you can use it as your lead magnet. The only aspect that you have to take care of when developing a quiz or an assessment form is that it should enable your audience to move from their current status to where they aspire to be.
On-Page SEO Checklist: How to Fully Optimize Your Posts (optinmonster.com)
This on-page SEO checklist from OptinMonster is very handy as it allows you to assess whether a website owner has covered all aspects of SEO for their website. Users can take a printout of this form and use it as an assessment tool when they want to optimize a website page for SEO.
5: Expert Advice
If you are an expert in your niche, you can convert your expertise into a lead magnet on your site. You just have to share some key information in exchange for the visitor’s email address. However, you must ensure that the expert advice you provide helps the subscribing visitor to move closer to his/her goals.
Neil Patel
Neil Patel is an expert in the field of digital marketing & content strategy. He has his own agency Neil Patel Digital, which provides digital advisory and execution services to grow business. Neil Patel blog has a lead magnet to grow traffic through SEO, Content Marketing & Paid Media.
6: Free Audit
You can offer a report, a service, or other important information that is generally not easy to obtain for free. Providing a web page audit for FREE works as a great lead magnet. They provide your audience with a unique experience of your brand and also offer them customized services. This, in turn, enables you to collect phone numbers and other personal details apart from their email addresses.
SEMRUSH Free SEO Audit
SEMrush offers free SEO audit to the visitors coming on to their website, this allows users to test the product and learn more about how their website is performing in organic search.
7: Quizzes
Gamification is a very effective way of attracting leads. It enables you to collect key information about your prospective customers. The interactive quizzes you create encourage your users to share their email addresses. You can use the data you collect to customize your ‘welcome’ email series that highlights the answers provided by your subscribers. Further, you can drive the quiz through discounts. This is a proven way of lead generation.
SKYN created a quiz to understand customer preferences, and recommend toys on their website.
8: Surveys
Surveys are often used for market research but they can also be employed as B2B lead magnets along with eye-catching CTAs. Prospective customers respond to questions on topics related to your industry. In turn, you can information about their interests. You can provide users who answer the questions with an industry report for free. You can also offer the results of the survey as a data pack.
9: Exit Intent Pop-up
An exit intent pop-up is a technique employed by websites and online shops to retain visitors who are about to leave their sites. It senses visitors’ mouse movements and when the cursor goes outside the upper boundary of a page, a pop-up window is displayed. Typically, the pop-up works as a coupon or discount lead magnet. It serves to incentivize visitors who have reached the bottom of your sales funnel.
Exit Intent Pop-ups by OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a good example of an exit intent pop-up lead magnet. When you are ready to leave the company’s website, a message appears, Over 70% of your visitors do just that and never return. Stop losing visitors and get started with OptinMonster
10: Mini Course
Mini-courses teach people to do specific things. It may be a video, eBook, or PDF download. This means that you can use a mini course as your lead magnet. The course you offer in return for your probable customers’ email addresses may consist of elements, such as articles, videos, audio, quizzes, weekly emails, homework, etc.
R Academy’s Introductory Digital Marketing Course” is a good example of a mini course lead magnet. It provides those who are interested with a mini course and gives an overview of Digital Marketing. Then paid courses are promoted
11: Gated Content
Gated content is nothing but a blog post part of which is hidden behind a lightbox popup. This is an easy lead magnet that you can create because you just have to make use of your existing content. Full content will be available only to those users who fill out a form. It is an effective way to collect leads and increase your email list.
OptinMonster creates gated content using its own tools as in the example shown above. It is not difficult to create if you have the right tools with you.
12: Run Contests
Prospective customers will never let go of an opportunity to grab a freebie by exchanging their email addresses. A giveaway offer is more engaging than a standalone message. Furthermore, contests often go viral. You can challenge your audience and make them feel excited about your offer.
SKYNFEEL No More Unwanted Gifts Content
We did a participation campaign, No More Unwanted Gifts, Use a Condom, where the users were suppose to upload their unwanted gift story and get a 20% discount
13: Discounts
Discounts or discount coupons on next purchases is a powerful way to entice your target audience to subscribe. Creating a captivating design and placing the CTA in the right place contributes to making your offer attractive.
The Pahadi Story
We ran multiple promotional campaigns for The Pahadi Story including Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Diwali Sales to drive more customers
14: Free Shipping
Free shipping is a useful lead magnet for ecommerce businesses. It is one of the reasons why customers buy products online. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to use this lead magnet and attract leads.
Here is an example of Melting Hearts, which has free home delivery on product pages, plus it’s communicated in the pop-ups
15: Case Studies
Case studies can be used as lead magnets when promoting the analysis of a specific activity or process. They have three parts: problem, solution, and results. Marketers can make use of case studies to highlight how their company helped a customer take his/her business to a higher level of success. The content may vary based on the type of business, goals, and the stages of the user journey of your prospects. Your goal is to impress your target audience that your product can solve their problems. Case studies are used as lead magnets for prospective customers who are closer to the end of the sales funnel to strengthen their trust.
Above is an example of R Interactives, where we have added a form to download a case study.
16: Calculator
If your target audience has to deal with a lot of numerical data, you can consider creating a calculator and using the same as a lead magnet.
VWO offers some great calculators. A/B Split Test Significance Calculator is one of them. It is a handy lead magnet for marketers looking to increase traffic to their websites.
17: Tutorials
A tutorial can be considered as content that teaches individuals to do a specific thing. It can be provided in the form of a PDF download or video with a list of steps.
