10 Amazing Lead Magnet Ideas and a New Lead Generator [LNIM224]

You know that you need to be building a list for your online business with lead magnets, but do you know why? And do you know what kind of lead magnets to create? This episode solves that for you once and for all.

Show Notes

You’ve heard this all your life: the money’s in the list. But why is this true and why do you need to build an email list?

In general, the purpose of a lead magnet is to get someone’s email address or in some cases, other contact information, to have an ongoing conversation so you can market to them, continue to help them and build a relationship. We generally refer to this idea as permission marketing – someone is giving you permission to contact them in the future – and in general, they’re doing that because you’ve delivered something to them of value.

You want a lead magnet so you can get people on your email list.

There’s Facebook and LinkedIn and you have YouTube followers – why email?

Email addresses are the one thing that you can own and control. An email list protects your ability to talk to your listeners, to your clients, and so forth. The best way to get their email addresses is with lead magnets.

What makes a good lead magnet?

A good lead magnet has intrinsic value. Someone is giving you something of value: their email address. Why is that valuable? Because you are going to use that email address to consume their time and their time has value.
It offers a quick win, something that can be realized immediately. If you can deliver a quick win, people will associate that with you and your brand. That’s going to make them trust you and look forward to future emails from you.
They naturally lead to additional email conversations. If there’s reason or expectation that you’re going to follow up with additional emails after the lead magnet, you are training your subscribers to look forward and expect content coming to you. This will make the transition into normal email marketing much easier.

What should your lead magnet be?

We will list down lead magnet categories but if you can come up with one amazing idea, you should be good to go. You can just keep improving and building on that lead magnet as you go.

General category – this is where you explain something, tell how to do something or talk about what something is about. You could deliver amazing information quickly in a PDF.
E-courses – is when you sign up for a series of emails that take you through something or teach you something.
Video and audio – has a high perceived value, much higher than a PDF report. You can create very intimate, engaging content with video and audio and can be perfect in some niches.
Bonus content – you can offer bonus content in a blog post for some downloadable item or other piece of additional information that’s exclusively available to subscribers in your email list.
Quizzes – they’re engaging and you can use the information that people give you to segment your list. The lead magnet in this case are the quiz results.
Worksheets or workbooks – you can deliver these as a PDF or programmatically, e.g. through Google sheets.
Checklists and check sheets – can be delivered as PDF or through interactive electronics, like through a Trello board.
Templates – can be delivered through ClickUp, Trello or Asana. Software templates save people a lot of time.
Infographics and principles – it turns out that a lot of people like to print these and stick them on areas next to their desks.
Planners and calendars – anytime someone needs to do an overwhelming task, offering them something in the form of a planner can be incredibly powerful.
List – of things, tools, prompts, keywords…these also make great lead magnets.

Links Mentioned In This Episode

YouTube channel
Leslie Samuel’s Blog Editorial Calendar
Free Video Courses on How to Start Your Business Online
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