What Is a Lead Magnet?

What Are the Most Common Lead Magnets?

The most common lead magnets are written downloads such as guides, checklists and templates, interactive tools such as calculators and assessments, events such as webinars, and specific free offers such as an estimate, an audit or a sample. Which kind fits depends less on the format than on how close your buyer is to a decision when they meet it.

Common kinds of lead magnet and when each fits

In ProfitPaths®, 5K’s method for building a predictable revenue stream, a lead magnet built for your most profitable kind of buyer is called a Prospect Magnet, and the Prospect Magnets step sorts the kinds into those for buyers who are already looking and those for buyers who haven’t started yet. A lead magnet is free in money, but it’s never free to the buyer, who pays with contact details and with time, so its value has to be obvious before they ask for it.

How Do You Know a Lead Magnet Idea Is Good Before You Build It?

You know a lead magnet idea is good before you build it when it solves a problem your best-fit buyer already has, is specific enough that people who will never buy don’t bother asking for it, and leads naturally into a conversation about the offering you most want to sell, while do lead magnets work covers how to judge one once it’s live. How polished it looks matters far less than that fit.

The Prospect Magnets step sets out the five tests we run before a magnet goes live, and the quickest way to see what they ask for is one magnet that passes them.

None of the five tests asks how long the forecast is or how it’s designed, though in the work we review that’s often where a lead magnet’s budget goes.

How Do You Create a Lead Magnet?

To create a lead magnet, start from your most profitable kind of buyer and the decision they’re facing, choose the smallest thing that would help with that decision, try it by hand on a few real buyers, and then build the page, form and follow-up around it. The order matters because design, software and promotion are the expensive parts, and the hardest to undo once a magnet turns out to be the wrong one.

1. Name the offering and the buyer it’s for, the ones you chose in the IMPACT Offering and IMPACT Prospect steps, because a magnet built for everyone attracts everyone.
2. Ask your best salespeople what that buyer asks before they’re ready to buy, on early calls and before price comes up, since those questions are the raw material for a magnet the buyer already wants.
3. Pick the kind by how close the buyer is to a decision, using the table above: something they can use on a decision for buyers who are already looking, and lighter material for buyers who aren’t.
4. Work out what you can afford to spend to deliver it, against the most you can spend to win a customer, a ceiling with no fixed rule because it depends on how long customers stay, how soon their profit arrives and how long your cash flow can wait; the Channel Selection step shows how to set yours.
5. Make the first version by hand and offer it to a few good-fit buyers, before you pay for design or software, so you learn whether they want it while it’s still cheap to change.
6. Decide what the form asks for, which is whatever sales needs to qualify and follow up, and where to place a lead capture form covers where it goes on the page.
7. Decide who follows up with each request, and how fast, before the magnet goes live, which the Prospect-to-Lead Conversion step covers.

How long a lead magnet should be, and how much length adds to its price, is covered in how much does a lead magnet cost, and the short version is to answer the buyer’s question first and put the detail behind it.

What Is a Lead Magnet Funnel?

A lead magnet funnel is the path from the place a buyer first sees the offer, through the page and form where they ask for it, to its delivery and the follow-up that turns the request into a sales conversation. The magnet pays off only when every stage after it is built as carefully as the magnet itself.

1. Where the buyer sees it, such as search, targeted social ads, outreach or a partner, which how to promote a lead magnet covers.
2. The page built for it, which repeats what the buyer clicked on and shows what they’ll receive, as how to design a good landing page explains.
3. The form, which asks for what sales needs and no more.
4. The delivery, which is the moment the buyer is paying the most attention to you.
5. The follow-up, where a person talks to the buyer about their situation, and how to follow up with sales leads covers timing and wording.
6. The count of customers, tracked from request to signed customer in your CRM, which tells you whether the funnel works.

When we design a funnel, we try to make the delivery itself the reason for a conversation, so an assessment’s results are walked through on a call rather than emailed as a file, and a forecast is delivered by the person who prepared it. The term “funnel” often brings to mind an automated email sequence after the download, and that sequence can keep a buyer warm, but in our experience it rarely does the job of the conversation.

Do You Need a Lead Magnet?

You need a lead magnet when your best buyers spend time researching before they’re ready to talk to sales, because it gives them a useful reason to raise their hand early instead of leaving your site with nothing. You probably don’t need one when buyers decide on the spot, or when your best buyers are a short list you can approach by name.

These signs, in our experience, usually mean a lead magnet would help:

• Your only offer is “contact us” or “request a consultation,” which asks a buyer who is still researching to commit to a sales conversation before they’re ready.
• Your site gets visits from the right kind of company but few inquiries, which why is my website not converting helps you diagnose before you assume the offer is the cause.
• Buyers reach your sales team having already been helped by a competitor, with a budget figure, an estimate or a shortlist someone else gave them.
• You have a library of downloads but can’t say which ones produced customers, in which case the job is choosing which to keep, and how to conduct a content audit shows how.

If you sell to buyers in the European Union and rely on their consent to send marketing email, Recital 43 of the GDPR presumes consent isn’t freely given when a service depends on consent it doesn’t need, and Article 7(4) says that must be taken into utmost account,¹ so make the marketing opt-in a separate choice from the download and confirm the specifics with your counsel.