Lead Magnet

What is Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet forces your website visitors to exchange information such as their email address to gain access. This can be content such as a whitepaper, ebook or newsletter.

It is content that promotes knowledge but also provides information that helps a potential customer find interest in your product or service.

Or the lead magnet could be a free product sample, trial subscription, demo or other product/service related incentive. Of course, no one has the right to enter their email address. Lead magnets should provide value to the reader in exchange for choosing to receive market news in the future.

What makes a good lead magnet?

The best and best converting lead magnets share the same key characteristics:

They are relevant

Even the best offer will fail if it doesn’t resonate with your target audience.

It’s also important to remember that a large number of low-quality leads can bounce back big time, spending a lot of wasted time following up. Make sure your lead magnet serves an important part of your target audience for a necessary purpose.

Some understand the value

What do you offer to provide to my email address?

If it’s something I can find elsewhere with a quick Google search, I probably won’t bother subscribing to your list.

The best lead magnets offer expert insight, insider knowledge, a quick way to get something done, or other creative and unique solutions that can solve a real people problem.

How can you help me access your lead magnet to save me time or money or improve my life in some way? It serves your business purpose

A good lead magnet is the first promise you make when a person asks you to give you their email. You don’t want to be hung up on a clickbait offer that you can’t deliver.

But if you can solve the full scope of the problem that leads to a good candidate for your business… what’s the point?

The best lead magnets can solve a problem enough that the person knows you’re an expert (or your product is the answer) and can take them the rest of the way.

10 Examples of large lead magnets

Check out these examples of lead magnets and discuss with your team which format best suits your marketing goals and customer needs.

1. White paper

A whitepaper is a deep thought leadership piece that shares unique data, insights or advice with your audience.

And if you offer them on demand after the first live event, the webinars can keep coming for months or even years.

It helps the reader understand a complex problem and what steps they need to take to solve it. They are especially useful in B2B marketing, where clients often have a longer sales cycle and need much more information to make purchasing decisions.

2. Webinar

Webinars give your audience the opportunity to immerse themselves in compelling video content and often ask questions in a Q&A session.

Keep each webinar strictly focused on a specific problem or pain point. DocuSign does this well. Collection of on-demand webinars.

There is no doubt as to who they are or who they serve.

Mini e-book guide

Like a white paper, e-books and other guides address a specific problem. And like white papers, they can vary in length from a few pages to 100+ pages. However, unlike whitepapers, e-books are unlikely to be data-intensive; they are easy to read and often act as a conversation guide to help readers fully understand the topic.

Each of them takes a deep dive into the direct topic and helps the reader really master it. This is great for exchanging email addresses.

Templates

How many times have you created a spreadsheet, slide deck, checklist, or other piece of content from scratch and thought, “There has to be an easier way!”

Editable templates are a great way to avoid reinventing the wheel. Why not build on the experience of others while shortening your own learning and management curve?

Product samples testing

Who doesn’t want to try before they buy? Sephora takes the traditional in-store product sampling experience and customizes it online with the option of sending two product samples to your home.

Product or test samples.

Of course, these lead generator samples have to get there somehow.

To process your free sample orders, you’ll need to log in or enter your address and email as part of guest billing.

And this is where you are asked to opt-in to receive further communications.

This lead generator is even more powerful because if you like the product, you will not only be more receptive to future offers, but also more likely to buy outright.

Automated evaluation

Does your team have the capacity to build a tool that automates the process of providing a personalized prospect assessment?

The Google Ads Performance Grader eWeb Services does exactly that. Prospects link their Google Ads account to the benchmark and get insight into how their campaigns are performing against industry benchmarks.

Performance benchmark and rater available.

And who do you think would reach out to them for help improving their scores?

This kind of lead generator is incredibly persuasive because it shows the prospect exactly what they need to do. It’s only a short hop if they join you to help you do it. 7. Real World Assessment

This is obviously not for everyone, as providing free audits as well as other types of evaluations can be a time and energy drain.

However, it will work well if you have a small specific audience with immediate needs.

This is especially true where providing some kind of insight – such as Majestic’s backlink analysis – as the ranking can lead to many problems.

Real world backlink evaluation tool. Many companies—especially software vendors—also offer custom audits for potential customers who know they have a need but aren’t sure of the size—or how to approach it.

If you can convert enough leads for the new company to cover the cost of setting up the service, it might be worth looking into.

Training videos

Maybe your potential customers know your brand but are still unsure about you.

In that case, giving them access to video tutorials can be the key to converting them into loyal users. Data visualization software Tableau offers a library of training videos – you must register to watch.

Practice collecting videos to generate leads.

This is a good lead generator where you have complex and varied features and really want to showcase your product capabilities while also getting a prospect in your funnel.

Case study

Case studies can provide compelling evidence of your business’ capabilities as part of the negotiation and sales process. However, there are several ways you can use them as lead generators as well.

One is to download the case study in PDF format and create a “gating” of registration download requests.

Another (and perhaps even more compelling) way to use a case study for lead generation is to put it as news as blog content and calls to action.

Research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie shows us how it’s done with examples like this one.

The work is set as editorial content and is available for all books on the site. It also helps to attract organic search traffic.

And like most case studies, it immediately challenges the reader to approach them from a “Look what we’re doing!” point of view.

As you learn more about navigating LNG as a first-time buyer, you’ll also be asked to connect with their team to discuss your unique circumstances twice on the case study page.

Tests, surveys and polls

Interactive elements that allow you to learn more about your future self and follow up on relevant information for them are a win. And according to Survey Any place, you can cut your cost per lead by up to 90% with lead generation quizzes.

Tools like these can give you personalized messages, change the completion message based on user input, and integrate directly with some CRMs so you can follow up with leads easily.

Your lead generator is the first step to building a relationship based on trust and respect with a mutual exchange of value.

Find an offer and format that supports your business goals and the needs of your target customer.