In recent times, creating leads has been a challenge for some businesses. In fact, according to the State of Inbound 2018 report, 63 percent of those surveyed said their biggest challenge was lead generation.

Twenty-nine percent also said that finding the right technology for their business was problematic. So there are two challenges mentioned here, the first is how you can create a lead magnet that converts and second, which tools will help you achieve it.

This article is aimed at helping you solve the two problems. At the end of it, you will know how to create a lead magnet that convert and the tools needed. Lets dive in.

• What is a Lead Magnet?
• Why Does Your Business Need a Lead Magnet?
• What are the Features of a Good Lead Magnet?
• Why is Your Lead Magnet not Converting?
• How to Create a Lead Magnet That Converts
• How can you Promote Your Lead Magnet?
• 10 Tools to Help you Create Lead Magnet That Converts

What is a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email address or other contact information.

Lead magnets usually offer a piece of digital, downloadable content, such as a free PDF checklist, report, eBook, whitepaper, video, etc

Read Also: Top 30 Content Marketing Tools

Lead magnets are one of the best ways to increase subscribers. If you don’t have a lead magnet or you don’t have a good one, read on to see how you can one that will convert.

The immediate goal of a lead magnet is to get email subscribers. There are only so many people who will like your content SO much that they’ll just subscribe to your list in order to receive emails from you.

A lot of people will simply read a bit and then leave, and a lead magnet is designed to incentive some portion of those people to give you their contact information for later follow up.

Where many business make a mistake is in thinking that “some portion” means “as many as possible”, but we’ll get to that later.

Because you are giving away the lead magnet for free, it’s typically important that it costs you little to nothing to create and distribute. This is why ebooks are one of the most commonly used types of lead magnets.

As a digital product, once the initial file is created, it costs nothing to copy and give away as many copies as you like.

Here are several different types of leads magnets that are commonly used:

• Whitepaper
• Coupon or Discount
• Ebook
• Video Series
• Access to a Database
• Checklist
• Case Study
• Downloadable Blog Post
• Webinar
• Email Series
• Educational Course
• Free Software Tool
• Free Trial of Premium Software

The type of lead magnet you choose will depend on your business. What does your audience want? In what ways do they consume content? What is your team even capable of producing?

But ultimately, a great lead magnet comes down to two simple things:

Attract The Right People

A common misconception with lead magnets is that more = better. If Lead Magnet #A gets double the subscribers of Lead Magnet #B, it must clearly be the superior choice.

Right?

A 30 second conversation with anyone in sales will tell you otherwise. If option #B is getting highly qualified leads while option #A is getting unqualified leads, it’s not even a contest.

If quantity was all the mattered, we could just do Macbook Pro giveaways all day and get “leads” by the thousands. And barely any of those people would be even remotely interested in purchasing our product.

Quality is even more important than quantity when it comes to evaluating a lead magnet. You want to attract as many of the right people as possible while not appealing to those outside your niche.

A great example of this in action comes from Ulyses Osuna of Influencer Press. Influencer Press is a PR agency that gets people published on popular business blogs like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, etc. Accordingly, their sitewide lead magnet deals specifically with this goal.

For anyone interested in getting published on a site like Forbes (the target market), an inside look at Ulyses’ email correspondence is a very attractive offer. At the same time, it’s not going to be a must-download for virtually anyone outside the target market.

In other words, it hits the nail right on the head.

When pitching your lead magnet, try to hit on the following four points whenever possible:

• Promise: promise something specific in exchange for the user’s email
• Target: make it very clear who the lead magnet is intended for
• Key Benefits: like with direct response copywriting, address all key benefits the lead will get from your lead magnet
• Call to Action: call the reader to take action, enter their email, and receive the lead magnet

Attracting the right people is a big first step, but it’s still only half of the story. We still need to do one more thing.

Position Leads For Purchasing

Your lead magnet’s usefulness doesn’t end when the visitors clicks “subscribe”. In fact, it’s just getting started.

The lead magnet will set the tone for your relationship with the lead, so even if you attract the perfect leads, it won’t mean much if engaging with your lead magnet leaves a bad taste in their mouth.

This is where a lot of businesses and marketers mess up. It’s somewhat easy to think of a lead magnet pitch that will excite your audience and get them to enter their email. It’s a lot harder to deliver the goods with quality that is worthy of the hype.

“Download the 10-step process I used to make $100,000 in 3 months with no prior experience.”

That sounds great. I want to make $100k in 3 months. If you don’t seem like a hack, I’ll probably give you my email on the off chance you can deliver on such an insanely big promise.

And when you inevitably don’t, you will never hear from me again.

That’s an extreme example, but it illustrates how simply getting the email address doesn’t mean you have a legitimate lead. If you don’t deliver the goods, you can kiss that lead goodbye.

But fulfilling your promise is the easy part.

The trickier part of this second objective is actually positioning the lead for purchasing. The goal here isn’t to simply not annoy the lead. They’ve just requested a custom piece of content from you. They have literally asked you to send them a pitch.

Obviously, you can’t give them a pitch disquised as a lead magnet. That fails everything we just talked about. Deliver on the promise first and foremost.

But take every opportunity to establish your expertise, demonstrate your past results, highlight your value, and position yourself as a great purchase in their minds.

A great example of this comes from Dave Rogenmoser of Entrepreneur Alliance.

Dave’s lead magnet promises to help users create a $10k per month cashflow business, and instead of providing a simple PDF, he directs leads to a lengthy, well-designed HTML page, complete with multiple chapters, real data, and step-by-step instructions.

Throughout the guide, he references products he sells, pitches his membership site, and positions the reader to respond to the follow up emails in his autoresponder.

You can’t skimp on quality, and you can’t forget to position the lead for purchasing.

Both are essential to your lead magnet’s success.

Why Does Your Business Need a Lead Magnet?

If you want to generate leads online, then your business needs a lead magnet. Period.

Why? Because email is a very personal thing. People aren’t simply going to give you their email address without a good incentive, even if they like your brand. As a marketer, it is your job to give them a compelling reason to do so.

For example, let’s say you have a blog post on the top 10 ways you can improve your customer service. At the end of the post, you ask readers to join your email list for “updates”.

Or instead, you could ask readers to join your email list and get a free, downloadable PDF case study, detailing a real-life example of one business who used these 10 strategies to improve their customer service.

Which offer do you think will get the most email signups?

Precisely—the second one!

So, now that you understand the importance of lead magnets, you may be wondering what makes a good lead magnet.

What are the Features of a Good Lead Magnet?

There are 7 things that your lead magnet should do if you want it to be absolutely irresistible:

1. Solves a real problem – if your lead magnet doesn’t solve a real problem that your customer avatar has, or if it doesn’t give them something they really want, it won’t work at all.
2. Promises one quick win – your lead magnet should promise (and deliver) one quick win for your avatar. In other words, it should help them to easily achieve something.
3. Super specific – don’t create a lead magnet about something general. The more specific you are about the benefit of your lead magnet, the better it will convert leads.
4. Quick to digest – PDF checklists tend to convert really well because they are so quick and easy to digest. eBooks or lengthy reports may make your prospects feel overwhelmed.
5. High value – your lead magnet should have both high perceived value and high actual value.
6. Instantly accessible – your lead magnet will work best if it is something that can be delivered right away. People love instant gratification.
7. Demonstrates your expertise or UVP – when someone consumes your lead magnet, it should demonstrate your expertise or your unique value proposition. This helps turn leads into customers down the road.

Why is Your Lead Magnet not Converting?

Most of the problems come down to failing our two objectives, but even if you knock those out of the park, there are other factors that can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

1. Generic promise that doesn’t appeal to a specific audience
2. Intriguing promise that appeals to the wrong audience
3. Weak content that doesn’t deliver on promise
4. Solves a problem, but not an urgent one
5. Lack of trust signals or social proof on landing page
6. Poorly designed graphics on landing page
7. Weak headline or CTA on landing page
8. Solid content that fails to position lead for purchasing
9. Autoresponder content doesn’t synergize with lead magnet
10. Lead magnet doesn’t synergize with tripwire product

While we don’t have time to dive into each one of these mistakes, any one of them can derail your lead magnet’s performance.

How to Create a Lead Magnet That Converts

For your Lead Magnet to converts, a lot of factors need to come together to form the perfect lead magnet. Some of these factors will be explained here.

Here’s exactly what your lead magnet needs to be:

Goal-driven

While your lead magnet needs to be something your audience will love, it’s also got to work for your business.

Even if you haven’t got a sales funnel mapped out – you need to start thinking about your product/service offering as a sales funnel.

What’s your high ticket offer? What will subscribers be offered after they get your lead magnet?

Whatever you offer next needs to be the next logical step in the customer journey. Everything has to flow from one end to the other.

In a nutshell, here’s how a basic sales funnel will look:

Solution-focused

Do you know what problems your audience is facing? If not, now is the time to define your target audience and create your first persona. Avoid general “top-level” stuff here. It’s often the more specific problems that will set your lead magnet apart.

And if you’re not sure what challenges your audience is facing, you can just ask them. Create a survey using Typeform. Then send it out to your followers via email and social media.

If you need more, sift through Facebook groups, Quora, Reddit, and other communities. You may even find some insights in the comments of big blogs in your niche.

Useful

A lot of readers will subscribe before they buy any products from you. Your lead magnet gives them a taste of things to come.

Whatever you offer has to be useful enough that subscribers will value it and be happy they subscribed. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be so useful that it devalues your paid offering.

Easy to follow

When crafting the perfect lead magnet, readability and user experience are important. Make sure everything is easy for your readers, so they can implement what they learn.

Brief

While this does somewhat depend on your chosen niche, it’s worth mentioning.

Generally, you’ll find that concise lead magnets perform best. An ebook clocking in at 300+ pages may be tremendous value for your audience, but will they use it?

Shorter lead magnets are more likely to be used. So, consider saving that in-depth ebook as a paid product for further down your sales funnel.

Apart from the different factors mentioned above, another important ingredient in your lead magnet is the content. Choosing the right content we help you attract the attention of the right audience and thereby lead to conversion.

Below are some content ideas you can use for your lead Magnet.

Checklists

Checklists are process driven so they encourage people to take action, and they make it easy, too!

They’re straight forward to create and it’s highly likely that you can simply repurpose some of your blog posts into checklists without much hassle.

Templates

This includes audience personas, competitor research, and even lead magnet templates. Like checklists, they’re easy to put together and they’re extremely useful.

Cheatsheets

Think of cheat sheets as the cliff notes of another piece of content. Simply take a detailed piece of content and distill the information down so it’s easier to digest.

Guides

Ebooks don’t convert as well as they used to, but shorter guides can still be effective – especially if they’re well formatted and optimized to encourage subscribers to take action.

Discount codes

Do you run an ecommerce site, or offer any sort of products? Offering discount codes can be a great incentive to build your email list.

Even if you don’t have your own products, you could still arrange deals with your partners and create an exclusive deals page. This could be bundled together with some other content types.

Viral quizzes

Quizzes can be super effective because of how much they get shared on social media. And with the right tool, you can add an opt-in gate to build your email list.

If you use WordPress, there are plenty of great WordPress quiz plugins on the market to help you. Be sure to check out our tutorial on how to build a personality quiz with WordPress.

Social media contests

Like quizzes, social media contests can be a great way to encourage people to subscribe to your email list.

The great thing is that you don’t have to create much in the way of content for this to work. And you don’t even have to give anything away yourself – you can partner up with brands to donate products and discount codes.

How can you Promote Your Lead Magnet?

Now that you have successfully created your lead magnet, it is time to put it in front of your audience. You can employ different methods, however, below are some tips.

1. Create a Landing page

You might argue that a landing page is not really promoting the lead magnet – but it sure helps to pass it around and collect email addresses in exchange for the free content.

But a good landing page can also help with promoting – ask anyone selling products online about the importance of landing pages. They can make or break your online success.

So go ahead and create a landing page for your lead magnet – you will need it in more than one of the following points

2. Write a blog post 

A lot of your marketing comes back to your blog. If you created a lead magnet the topic of the lead magnet is hopefully one that your audience is really interested in.

That makes the topic perfect for your blog – and if you already created a lead magnet on the topic, writing a post about it should be fairly easy for you.

How is that going to promote your lead magnet? You can offer the lead magnet as a content upgrade within the post. Most of the time the lead magnet will contain a little more content and information than you normally publish in your blog post.

For instance, if your freebie is a list of x tips or y tools – offer a sample (i.e. 5 out of 10) from these tips in the blog post and ask people for their email in exchange for more tips or tools.

3. Share it on Social Media

This is where your landing page comes in very useful: Share a link with a teaser text and an optimized image on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other social networks, where you can access your audience.

You can even create multiple tweets or pins that all point to your landing page. Use different images and texts in your twets and pins.

4. Share excerpts or tips from your lead magnet

Tweeting or pinning your freebie once is not all you can do!

You can share smaller bits, pieces, and tips from your freebie and inspire curiosity to see more of it. You can even create quote images, or post longer text excerpts on Facebook.

Don’t be afraid to give away some of your content for free without an email in exchange: showing what people can expect will earn you trust and help you to promote your lead magnet.

5. Guest post

Offering a freebie should be part of a successful guest posting strategy. A great guest post and a fairly large blog can easily give you up to 100 new signups if you offer a freebie or lead magnet that fits well the topic of your guest post.

The best place to offer the freebie is your guest author bio.

And one of the best aspects of guest posting? You can write an almost endless number of guest posts and keep promoting your awesome lad magnet – and as a „side effect“ you earn a ton of backlinks to your website…

6. Add the lead magnet to your sidebar

The lead magnet should get some space on your website. If you have something to offer (for free) it does not make sense to hide it. Get it out there and show what you have to offer.

If you run a blog, the sidebar usually is a good place to „advertise“ your free offer. If you have more than one (free) offer, you can even create a free resource section.

7. Add it to your email signature

Are you corresponding a lot via email? Why not add your awesome and valuable lead magnet to your email signature? That is a very un-intrusive way to promote your lead magnet!

8. Create an infographic

You can turn some of the key aspects of your offer into an infographic. Infographics are often awesome to share content.

People like to share infographics – make sure that your lead magnet and the place where people can find and download it is mentioned in the infographic.

9. Host a Twitter Chat

Hosting a Twitter chat is more than just tweeting a hashtag and the topic. Make sure you know how to start a chat and attract participants to it.

If you manage to gather an active crowd in your personal Twitter chat, that is not only awesome to grow your Twitter audience, it can also be tremendously helpful to promote your lead magnet!

10. Run a webinar

This one is a little tricky: Webinars need promotion, too! But they still offer you an opportunity to attract more interest for your lead magnet.

For instance, you can invite a guest and co-host a webinar on the topic. This way you can get access to the audience of the co-host for your webinar – and make them aware of your freebie.

11. Promote the lead magnet to your email list

Even though your subscribers are already on your email list you should promote the lead magnet to them. If your freebie is awesome, you want as many people to know about it.

You can even go one step further and ask your subscribers to help you spread the word and share it.

12. Use groups and forums

If you have something to offer for free, let people know. That also holds for groups, for instance on Facebook or LinkedIn. Make sure you follow the rules of the group. If promoting your own content is not allowed, don’t spam the group.

Don’t just share the link to the landing page without any introduction or paragraph about the offer, that is not going to run well.

Most of the time it works best if you share a great tip from your lead magnet and only add the actual lead magnet as further information.

13. Mention it in other blog posts

If you have several blog posts on the topic, link to your lead magnet from inside the articles where it fits.

For instance, if you have a freebie with tools for marketing automation and you have written an article about the benefits of marketing automation in the past: link to the freebie landing page from this article.

14. Use page takeovers or popups

Not all blog readers are fans of these a little intrusive methods to offer free content. But if you have traffic to your blog placing signup forms and free offers strategically on your blog is still a high converting way to turn some of that traffic into email subscribers.

It may seem a little too much work to put into promoting something that does not even make you money. But the truth is that promoting free stuff and earning email addresses from people from your target audience is an important step in your sales journey.

If you fail at promoting free stuff, how can you expect successfully promote anything that costs money?

And this is not work that you do for nothing. You earn a lot back: email subscribers, trust, relationships and brand recognition to name only a few.

10 Tools to Help you Create Lead Magnet That Converts

The task of create a lead magnet might look huge and too much for you to handle, the good news is that there are tools that will make your job easier.

1. Hubspot Blog Ideas Generator 

While this tool is targeted at those who write blog posts regularly and need help when they feel they’ve run out of topics, it’s also a great source of inspiration for lead magnets.

Simply enter a noun or subject you think would appeal to your audience, and Hubspot will give you five ideas for free. Check it out here.

2. Answer the Public

With this tool, simply type in a basic idea you’re interested in, and it will spit out related questions that users ask about it online.

This is a quick and easy way to get a sense of what your audience wants to know about topics related to your business.

A sure way to get more subscribers is to select one key question from the list and build your lead magnet to answer it directly. Check it out here.

3. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

When we talked about the right length for a lead magnet, we included a brief discussion on writing titles that are attractive to visitors.

Since 80 percent of visitors will read the headline, but only 20 percent of them will take action on your content, it’s important to use a tool like the Headline Analyzer to get it right. But not just in terms of length, but in terms of word choice, too. Check it out here.

4. Wistia

Whether you’re looking for a tool to help you make educational video content, or you just want an affordable option for hosting your videos off-site, Wistia is a great choice.  

Landing pages that include video can convert up to 86 percent more visitors than those without, so you may need a video regardless of what type of lead magnet you design.

Cool features of this tool include the ability to capture viewer information right in the video and to insert a call-to-action as well.

5. Canva

Canva is our go-to tool for a multitude of quick design projects. It’s also one of the most affordable and user-friendly options out there today.

With Canva you can design simple graphics that you can save in multiple formats including .gif or .mp4, like the one we use on our lead magnet subscribe box.

With Canva you can also create single or multi-page documents (like checklists or information downloads) and infographics from scratch or by using one of their pre-made template designs.

6. Piktochart

If you want to step up your design skills and create full-length documents (like ebooks and white papers) or presentations, Piktochart is a fantastic choice.

It’s a user-friendly tool that comes chock full with professional-looking templates for infographics, presentations, and reports. You can then add your content and customize your template as you see fit. 

7. Adobe Document Cloud

Consumers are more likely to share personal information in exchange for: 

• White papers (76%)
• Analyst reports (66%)
• eBooks (63%)
• Case studies (57%)

With a complete PDF solution like Adobe Document Cloud, you can take full advantage of all the PDF generation and manipulation features available.

8. Zoom

For those of you targeting B2B buyers, you’ll get more subscribers using lead magnets like webinars and other video tutorials. 

97 percent of B2B buyers surveyed showed a strong preference for this type of prescriptive content. Zoom allows you to conduct live video conferences and webinars as well as record educational screen-sharing videos to be viewed later.

9. Loom

If you are looking to create educational or training lead magnet content, you may need high-resolution screenshots or video recording of the steps you describe. 

Loom allows you to capture these instructional images and videos right from your browser window. You can choose to share just your screen or include yourself in the capture for more personalization.

10. Pixabay

Photographs are another type of visual content you may want to use to break up large chunks of text and support your story.

Read Also: Email Marketing – How to do it Right For Effective Sales Conversion

Since 41 percent of marketers view visual images as the most important kind of content used in campaigns, you don’t want to miss out on bolstering your powerful lead magnet message with high-resolution images. 

Pixabay is an online tool you can use for free to find the right visuals to accompany your content.

Conclusion

Creating a great lead magnet that performs well for your business is really not that hard. It’s simply a matter of attracting the right audience and positioning leads for purchasing.

Unfortunately, many businesses create their lead magnets as a sort of afterthought, failing to invest the time and energy required to make something special.

Don’t fall into that trap. If you sort of just threw up your own lead magnet, take this opportunity to re-evaluate and make sure you’re hitting the right objectives.