Lead Magnets: Best Types For Your Website

If you’re looking for lead magnet ideas you’ll also find it quite valuable to first learn the basic features of the perfect lead magnet. After all, what would a good lead magnet idea be worth if no one wanted to download and implement your solution?

Putting together the perfect lead magnet funnel to persuade website visitors to join your email list can be a roadblock for coaches, online entrepreneurs, experts, bloggers, and service providers.

Questions like “What do I offer?”, “Will people read it?”, “How long should the lead magnet be?”, and “can I get done for you lead magnets?” often confuse business owners who end up stalling instead of growing their online audience.

In this post, we’ll show you how to create the perfect opt-in offer. We will break it down into 5 simple traits that will make your lead magnet irresistible.

What is a lead magnet?

But first, let’s explain what a lead magnet funnel is all about. Those who are just starting with online lead generation may not be familiar with what lead magnets are and how they can help them boost their lead generation process.

A lead magnet is some freebie you’re giving away in exchange for a person’s email. In other words, if you’re looking to subscribe to a website visitor to your mailing list, you need to have some kind of incentive in place.

Such an incentive, namely a lead magnet or, otherwise called, an email opt-in offer, could be a report, a video, a cheat sheet, a checklist, a template, or practically anything else that your audience will want to get their hands on.

A perfect lead magnet will be the ethical bribe for people to give up their email, and we’re going to share 5 important tips on creating a high-converting lead magnet.

Are There Lead Magnet Templates?

There are…  Sure.  But the best thing you should do is decide what you want to write…  Then find the best format to convey that information.

There are lots of different styles of lead magnets.  Lead Magnets for coaches might be an 8 page PDF that teaches a 4-step breathing pattern that’ll get the client’s minds right.

Similarly, a B2B business might have a one-page checklist that includes all of the things you need to account for before rolling out a Window’s based email server.

In both cases, a lead magnet template doesn’t apply…  But the material itself lends itself to the format.

Ya know?

Why Your Lead Magnet Title Matters

The first thing we need to get out in the open is that most lead magnets suck.  The reason you can’t get more than 15% conversions on landing pages doesn’t have anything to do with the page itself…

It’s your lead magnet!

Anyone can write a report titled “7 Ways To Double Your Revenue,” or “8 Conversion Hacks For Your Website.”  Take 5 minutes and cruise around online and you’ll be surprised how many similar titles you’ll find.

The key is to be specific – to let a prospect know exactly what they’re downloading – and make sure that the material is unique enough that the only way for them to consume it is to go through the lead magnet funnel!

Because let’s face it…  If your lead doesn’t at least look at your stuff, they sure won’t be on your list for very long!  How many times have you downloaded something and never opened it up?

My point exactly :0)

So, rather than start from scratch, let’s just see if we can give the first title, “7 Ways To Double Your Revenue,” a makeover…

• 7 Secret Persuasion Tricks To Increase Webinar Conversion
• Seven WordPress Plugins That Increase Visitor Engagement (Without Them Even Realizing It!)
• 7 Passive Ad Networks That'll Increase Website Revenue In The Next 15 Minutes
• Seven Email Templates To Re-Engage The Email Subscribers Who Have Already Written You Off...

 

See how that works?

Be specific.  Deliver value.  Get the lead.

Now, you’re smart so I’m sure you’ve already picked this up…

What does a super-specific lead magnet title let you do on the thank you page?!

Add an upsell!

That’s right…  If someone just downloaded a report titled, “Seven Secret Persuasion Tricks To Increase Webinar Conversion,” what do you think they’re interested in?

Webinars!!

This means you can sell webinar courses, done for your services, coaching, and anything in between…

Welcome to the magic of creating sales funnels.

Now, let’s get back to lead magnet funnels…  There are 7 different types of lead magnets that we use, with a very strong preference for #1 and #5…

(NOTE For a full tutorial on how to create a lead magnet – click here!)

Show off your perfect lead magnet

And, by the way, you want to place that offer on a beautiful page, right? With Scriptly’s drag-and-drop page builder, you can create amazing opt-in pages in seconds.

Here’s a preview of Scriptly’s dozens of page templates and their template categories:

Watch this quick video to find out how fast it can be to create a bold, high-converting opt-in page for your lead magnet funnel. Not only is it easy to create the layout, but also you’re given the option to populate web copy automatically so it matches your ideal customer–we’ll say more about that further down this post.

1. Give a specific solution for a laser-targeted market

The perfect lead magnet needs to provide a clear solution for a problem a particular audience faces.

Put simply, you don’t want to go vague with the content of your opt-in freebie.

For example, “How To Make Money Online” sounds too generic, doesn’t it. It doesn’t let the reader know if it’s just for them, if it’s something they can do and if it will get the results.

Although the idea is big and interesting to most people, the headline is so incredibly vague.

Such lead magnets are not targeted to a specific niche and they don’t present a crystal-clear solution.

On the flip side, instead of saying “How To Make Money Online” you can use a title such as “How To Use The World’s Leading Freelance Marketplace To Make Up To $10,000 A Month As A Beginner Web Designer”.

Now, that is a lot more specific. And of course, you can rephrase the title if you want to remove earning claims or mention the name of that specific freelance marketplace—which is UpWork.

See how instead of tackling the entire subject of making money on the internet, we have narrowed it down to a specific topic that gives a solution to a specific audience—beginner web designers who want to make money freelancing.

And here’s an example of a specific freebie offer in a different, but well-defined, niche.

Let’s see another example of a bad lead magnet funnel. “How To Speed Up Your Website”.

Who is this for? A solopreneur? A blogger? A developer? Is it good for a blog? How about a large eCommerce site? Is it suited for HTML websites or WordPress only? These are only a few questions that a potential lead can have before they decide to download your lead magnet. You get the picture… And because the headline is too vague a lot of visitors will leave your site without taking action.

Transform that into “The Non-techie’s Guide To Doubling The Speed Of Your WordPress Blog” and you have a specific topic for a laser-targeted audience.

Keep in mind, when brainstorming on the perfect lead magnet topic, that you need to abandon the idea of a big overarching market. It’s hard for some people to do that because they feel like they will close fewer deals with clients. But the truth is that narrowing down to a particular niche will help you create high-converting lead magnets, better products and generate more sales because your marketing messages will speak to these people’s needs.

As Tim Paige of LeadPages put it, “If you want a lead magnet that draws in the folks that you would want to become customers, then you always need to think about their wishes, their desires, their biggest pains, or their biggest pleasure. ”

2. The perfect lead magnet promises one major result

An effective lead magnet would need to give a big promise and sell people on a big idea. You don’t want to promise that your lead magnet will deliver on a ton of things.

You want to show your prospect that, after they consumed and implemented the content of the opt-in offer, they will have arrived at a specific, measurable result.

At the same time, you’re inspiring your audience to believe that the solution is possible. You want to give them hope, examples, and strategies to help them believe they can get the same good results.

You’re not giving necessarily the whole “how-to” process and you’re not giving up your expertise. You don’t need to go and create a 70-page ebook on the entire subject you shouldn’t be doing that.

All you need to do is focus on one basic result you want your potential customers to get. One thing that will demonstrate that your solutions will work for them. If you were to make a lot of promises, your leads wouldn’t have the time or energy to implement them, and, in turn, they wouldn’t get results. Then, they will be under the impression that your methods don’t work.

If you take our original example of “The Non-techie’s Guide To Doubling The Speed Of Your WordPress Blog”, the content of your lead magnet could be about this: How to install a free plugin from the WordPress repository, set it up with two or three clicks, and how to measure their blog speed before and after installing the plugin. Give them images, examples, and practical tips along the way.

When you limit the promise to a known, specific result it’s more likely that the reader will implement your ideas and be happy with the outcome.

Always keep in mind that people are looking for results; that’s why they’ll google something like “how to speed up my blog”. They want to find a DIY way to get the best result possible.

Answer their question in a specific way, and you have your perfect lead magnet funnel. Give people measurable outcomes, like percentages, numbers, or timeframes, e.g. such as to accomplish something within 1 hour or 3 days, and so on. Whatever is most appropriate to your offer.

Build that specific result into the title of your email opt-in offer to attract more people who want fast, measurable results.

3. Will give immediate gratification

This takes us to the next point, which is that the perfect lead magnet funnel will give your audience instant gratification.

You know as well as we do that patience and attention span are constantly diminishing due to a ton of information we receive every day, mostly on the internet and on our smartphones. We all spend hours consuming content and we all feel more often than not that we need quick and easy solutions to our problems.

We won’t judge it but it’s a fact that people are accustomed to immediate gratification on social media, and that fact has altered our behavior. Instead of resisting the trend for instant gratification, what you should do instead is to use it to benefit your online business.

For example, the following offer promises result in under 5 minutes.

This characteristic of a perfect lead magnet goes hand in hand with the previous point we talked about. The major difference with this is that you don’t want your lead magnet to deliver on something huge.

To build your list, you don’t need to create anything big, like an ebook on how to create a complete sales funnel from top to bottom. Such a monster tutorial will take time and effort to implement, so it won’t give people immediate gratification.

Think for a minute; When people land on your page they are warm already. That’s because they’ve either searched on Google or clicked on your ad. They are so in the mode of finding an answer right now!

Then, they go enter their email to download your seemingly perfect lead magnet funnel. They’ll feel like they have the solution in hand and it’s only a matter of seconds before they read all about it. Now, they are even warmer and in the mode of taking action. They download and open your lead magnet.

They are curious to start consuming the content. This is exactly when they need to feel that your solution is something they can implement right away. They also need to believe that you will deliver on your promise.

So, you want to move the new subscriber down the pathway of belief right from the very beginning. You want to amplify their hopes that they can get the result they crave. They need to believe that a solution is possible.

Again, mind that you can’t solve all of the people’s problems with one PDF. What you want instead is to take them one step further to transform their current state into an ideal new state.

You want to have them realize that they have taken the first important step, that they made that headway. Simply put, you want to give your new lead a quick win.

You want to give them a link to go to your site and see more of your services, share a testimonial about you or just tell you about their results. This way they will acknowledge the fact that your methods work, and this can spark a conversation. This perfect done for you lead magnet funnel is going to help your business when people get results and engage with you because they are now going to think of you when they need similar services or solutions.

4. Can be consumed in just a few minutes

We have kind of touched on this but it’s important to stress this idea because it is essential to a perfect done for you lead magnet; You need to make sure that your email opt-in offer can be consumed in less than 30 minutes (ideally in less than 15 minutes) and on any device.

Long videos, 30-day challenges, or a 70-page ebook won’t do the magic trick. It’s not necessary to have extensive introductions and conclusions. No need for much detail about the topic. You want your leads to be able to consume your content fast, on their computer or mobile device, and be able to start seeing results quickly.

Use images or screenshots that demonstrate what you want to explain. This will help you make your paragraphs shorter and easier to read. Checklists and cheat sheets are preferable over the typical ebooks because the user can quickly scan the whole content.

Other ideas for perfect, easy-to-consume done for you lead magnets are resource lists, email swipes, newsletter templates, lists of ideas, short screencasts, or audio files.

You don’t need to impress people with size because the longer your lead magnet the fewer people will read it anyway. If you want to give them more content, you can then direct them to an additional resource from within the free ebook. Now that these leads have entered your funnel you can communicate with them and provide them as much content as you want.

As we mentioned before, internet users are overwhelmed with information. You need to keep that in mind if you want to publish the perfect done for your lead magnet out there. You don’t want your work to be another PDF collecting dust on the user’s hard drive.

Your top priority is to get people to download the lead magnet, and your next goal is to motivate them to instantly consume your content, instead of filing it on their computer. If they leave it for later, that later will most likely never happen.

5. The perfect done for you lead magnet has a high perceived value

Marketers say that videos are products with a high perceived value compared to ebooks.

That makes sense because everyone understands that a video requires equipment and technical know-how while an ebook can be created using any word processor. Of course, perceptions change over time as technology and marketing tactics evolve.

A perfect lead magnet doesn’t necessarily need to be a video but it needs to have a high perceived value. This doesn’t have to do with a dollar amount; The perceived value is completely different than the price. In terms of how users perceive it, the lead magnet needs to seem valuable because they will expect it to solve a nagging issue.

Some marketers rely on psychology when they say that their ebook is “Valued at $17, now available for free.” In most cases, this is a marketing trick because they never really sold the ebook for that price. They’re just amplifying the perceived value.

You don’t need to play games like that though; you can increase the perceived value of your perfect lead magnet by stressing the benefits of using it. If you can convince your targeted audience that you can give them a reliable solution with this lead magnet, then you have a winning case.

To accomplish that you need to know exactly who your ideal customer is. Paint the picture of your customer’s avatar as clearly as possible.

Scriptly’s customization features will help you do that. With Script, you can create as many customer avatars as you want, understand their situation, and find the big concerns that they have so you can then build better done for you lead magnets and better option page copy.

Then, when you use Scriptly to create a drag-and-drop option page, you have the option to press a button and auto-populate your page with a sales copy that is customized for the chosen avatar.

How cool is that?

In essence, when you’re speaking to a well-defined customer avatar you will know the single biggest concern they have. You can create an effective lead magnet to solve that. You can promote that lead magnet by writing a good landing page copy that increases the perceived value.

Let’s talk about the best types of done for you lead magnets to use…

Lead Generation Strategies That’ll Get You Leads!

7 Types Of Done For You Lead Magnets

If you want to profit from your email list, you need to get the lead…  There’s no better way to do that than to start solving problems for your prospects and packaging the solution up into something that folks will opt-in for…

Once you start getting leads, then you can start having Scriptly write your emails for you!

1) Report or Guide

The ‘report’ is the standard done for your lead magnet for good reason – it works!  We’ve found that oftentimes a report or a guide will get cheaper, higher quality leads than a video ever will.

Things to watch when it comes to PDF downloads are:

• You MUST, MUST, MUST deliver value.
• Your reader should have the ability to DO something contained in the report that will give them gratification of some kind.
• There should be at least a little bit of bonding that takes place in the report, so your new lead gets to learn a little more about you!
• A good length for a free report is 8 to 12 pages, normal spacing and typefaces.
• Most important of all - it needs to focus on ONE specific, clearly identified problem!
• And...  Make sure it contains some kind of call to action at the end of it!

With reports, the more clearly you state the benefit, the better your conversions and lead costs will be.

2) Cheat Sheet or Process Map

I love process maps because they cut through a lot of BS real quick.  More to the point – your prospects will love process maps even more!

In a lot of instances, the sequence of events is what trips people up when they’re trying to accomplish a certain task, be it setting up a website or editing a perfect black and white photo.

By outlining a complicated process and breaking it down into small, easily understandable chunks you’re doing your folks an incredible service.  They’ll know that you:

• Have the 'process' down to a science (increasing trust...)
• Are able to perform that process for them or teach them how to do it themselves

Both of those outcomes lead to more sales for you, in a very short amount of time!

3) Software

The software was what I was meant to do with my life, and I’m just now finding that out.

One of our software applications is TimeSlots, a sales call scheduling software…  It has a 14-day free trial.  I don’t need to tell you how awesome that is for getting us leads!

The beauty of software is that its core function is to solve a problem for users, instantly.  Plus, there’s an immediate gratification element to it that can’t be matched.

The best way to turn your software into a lead magnet is to have a ‘Free Trial’ set up.  They get full access to all of the features of your software, and after 7 days or 14 days, they need to join to keep using it.

4) Checklists

Much like ‘Process Maps,’ checklists are awesome tools for describing a set of actions that someone needs to take to accomplish a task correctly, without actually giving them the tools and the training to do it…

The 2X checklist is what we gave away on some of our live webinars.

(After all, we do want to convert them to a sale at some point, right?)

With a well-thought-out checklist, you can demonstrate that you know the material inside and out, and also point out things that your prospect might be missing!

This is great for getting them to raise their hand and say that they need your help!

5) Videos

One of the ways that a lot of marketers try to get leads is to give access to a ‘free video.’  From experience, I can tell you that sometimes it works…  And sometimes it doesn’t.

If you’re demonstrating something highly visual, like training a dog, swinging a golf club, adjusting a camera for the best portrait, or building something out of 2×4’s, then a video is a good medium to share that content.

If you’re doing something that’s NOT visual, like talking about marketing strategy, explaining the big benefit of life coaching, or teaching someone how to ward away panic attacks – a video lead magnet is a bad way to go.

The point of the video is to move them along in the sales process, and it’s almost impossible to do if the video isn’t engaging.  You’re far better served to choose some kind of PDF download that you can give away…

6) Tutorials

I’m a big fan of point and click tutorials for teaching as we have in Lead Fire – and they make excellent done for you lead magnets.

I can’t tell you how many people have emailed me saying they printed them out and rely on them every time they need to set up a new campaign or a new website.

As further evidence of this, one of the biggest tutorial sites online is Envato Network’s TutsPlus.  For years, they’ve put together incredible tutorial sites, and now they’ve got so much content that they’ve put a big course kind of wrapper around it, making it a HUGE challenger in the digital course space!

7) Quiz or Survey

And finally, quizzes and surveys, like what we have at Ask.

What’s funny is that quizzes and surveys have been around forever, and marketers are just now touting them as the ‘best way to engage users’ because you can get feedback from your readers a bit differently and immediately segment them into buckets.

Years ago, we called this list segmentation…  When someone fills out a survey and selects (A) as their choice, they get put into one autoresponder.  If they select (B), they get put in another autoresponder.

That’s the crux though…  When you use a survey as a lead magnet, your lead conversion will most likely drop…  But your engagement will be a lot higher, meaning you’ll have better quality leads!

It’s worth A/B testing.  I’ve seen campaigns that use surveys so effectively that it doubles optin rates.  I’ve also seen campaigns where conversions were below 10% (which is dismal!)  It’s all in how you set them up!

(NOTE: Once you get your lead magnet set up, the next step is to add one of these Lead Magnet Plugins to your site to start converting traffic to leads!)

Some Niche Lead Magnet Use Cases:

We work in a log of niches and even have a Lead Magnet Creation Service of sorts…  We just write them for all our funnel clients :0)  A sales funnel never gets published without a lead magnet – they’re that important.

With that said, here are some niche thoughts.

Lead Magnet Ideas for Coaches

We do a ton of work with coaches – building sales funnels and driving ad traffic to their automated webinars.

Lead magnets for coaches are where a LOT of the heavy lifting is done in a sales funnel.  Coaches need to solve one problem clearly, concisely, and quickly before the prospect will do anything else.

Here are a few examples of lead magnets:

• 4 Foods You Can Buy At The Grocery Store Have Instant Energy
• 3 Steps To Changing Any Habit (No Matter How Addicted You THINK You Are)
• 5 Tips For Increasing The Quality Of Your Clients
• 16 Things That’ll Improve Your Relationship With Your Spouse In 7 Days Or Less

Now, you can write about anything you want…  But depending on what kind of coach you are, those are a great start!

Real Estate Lead Magnet Ideas

We’ve got a lot of real estate clients too and I’ll tell you…  If you’re a real estate coach, you’re probably going to be writing about one super-specific method in:

• Finding deals
• Flipping properties
• Holding real estate
• And financing real estate deals…

A 6-8 page report is going to be perfect for you.  Help someone solve a problem they’re facing and you’ll have a client for life.

Again, these done for you lead magnets to need to be followed up by automated webinars and other sales offer that’ll put money in your bank account.

Now, let’s get to work in creating your lead magnet…

So, let’s put in some time on getting your lead magnet set up…  It’s pretty easy and once you’ve done it a time or two, you can whip them out in record time!

The first type of lead magnet funnel that we’re going to use for your campaign is a ‘report’ or a ‘guide.’

Special Reports or Guides get great for generating leads, they’re easy to create, and you’ve already got all of the software that you need to get one set up on your computer.

Plus, we’ve found that oftentimes a report or a guide will get cheaper, higher quality leads than a video ever will.

There are some things to take note of when it comes to creating a report to give away, including:

• You MUST, MUST, MUST deliver value.
• Your reader should have the ability to DO something contained in the report that will give them gratification of some kind.
• There should be at least a little bit of bonding that takes place in the report, so your new lead gets to learn a little more about you!
• A good length for a free report is 8 to 12 pages, normal spacing and typefaces.
• Most important of all - it needs to focus on ONE specific, clearly identified problem!
• And...  Make sure it contains some kind of call to action at the end of it!

With reports, the more clearly you state the benefit, the better your conversions and lead costs will be from paid traffic.

Let’s get into your step-by-step action plan:

1: Figure Out What You’re Lead Magnet Will Be About

The first thing you need to think about is what your lead magnet will be about…

There’s a fair bit of strategy that comes into play here because you want your lead magnet to stand out among all of the other ones out there…

… And you want to use your lead magnet as a way to position you and your products correctly since you’re going to be selling to these leads through email!

A friend of mine, Ryan Deiss, says that lead magnets should be ‘splinters’ of what you’re selling.  In other words, they should be small, little sections of the bigger product.

For example:

• Course on real estate investing, your lead magnet might be a report on "3 Ways To Find Cheap Investment Opportunities Using Free Tools."
• Coaching offer on webinar marketing, you have a lead magnet titled, "7 High Intensity Closing Strategies That'll Increase Webinar Conversions By 120 Percent."
• Brick and mortar shop - a car dealership - your report might be "5 Things To Look For That'll Maximize Your Resale Value."

 

In each of those examples, the lead magnet is a small, microscopic part of the larger, overall picture!

A side benefit is since you’re just giving away a piece or a splinter of a bigger picture, your lead magnet will be ultra-focused and easily understood by cold traffic…  Which means your conversions will be through the roof.

2: Open Up Your Editor

Now that you’ve decided on what your lead magnet will be about, it’s time to open up your word processor…

Depending on your computer and operating system, there are three different programs that you can choose from:

• Microsoft Word
• Apple Pages
• Google Docs

It doesn’t matter to me which one you use.  I’m a Mac guy and prefer Pages, but it’s completely up to you.  From a functionality standpoint, they each do the same thing.

In terms of style and logistics, just use the default settings for margins and spacing.  Don’t worry about making the font bigger or changing the style.

Some notes:

• Include an intro section.  Talk about what's going to be in the report, introduce yourself to your new reader, and make sure to talk about why what they're about to read matters.
• Include subheadings.  Break up longer sections of your lead magnet into sections and give them sub-headlines.  This encourages consumption.
• Write like you would to a friend.  Lead magnets serve three purposes - to educate, to bond your new visitor to you, and to sell.  Don't write them like you would a research paper or a corporate memo...

3: Write 8-12 Pages

We’ve found that your lead magnet reports should be between 8 to 12 pages long…  That might sound like a lot, but it goes by fast!

Here’s a little breakdown that you can use as a model for yourself:

• Introduction: 1 Page
• About You: 1 Page
• Report Core: 5 Pages (this is the meat of your report)
• Summary: 1 Page
• Call To Action: 1 Page

And really, the title of your lead magnet is going to give you everything you need to beef up that Report Core section.

If you’re writing a report titled, “7 High-Intensity Closing Strategies That’ll Increase Webinar Conversions By 120 Percent,” simply devote a page to each of those 7 strategies and you’re golden!

Again, make sure to include sub-headlines to break each section up 0)

4: Include Calls-To-Action

At the end of your report, you’ll want to include a call to action to your sales video, webinar signup page, affiliate link, or whatever you’re promoting…

You want to allow your reader to read the report and then click through to continue deeper into your sales funnel.

Usually, the very last section in our reports is a “What’s Next?” section.

In that section, I invite a reader to continue on the journey by signing up for a webinar, filling out a strategy session form, or watching a video.  In each of those examples, they continue deeper on the path.

The person who opts-in downloads your report then reads through the entire thing and clicks through a link is an extremely hot lead.

They liked you.  They liked what you had to say.  And they’re willing to take the next step with you – which means you’re about to generate some revenue!

These are your buyers, which we talked about yesterday.

5: Add Images

After you include your call to action, it’s time to pretty up your report a little bit.

I’m not huge on adding images to every page of a report, but I do try to make my stuff at least a little bit graphically appealing.  You can go off the deep end fast, by hiring an editor and having them mock up a design for the whole report…

Typically, what I’ll do is look for Creative Commons or Royalty-Free images that correspond to the sections of my report, and drop them in.

One thing you do want to make sure to include is a picture of you!  Your readers want to learn more about you, and there’s no better way of fostering a bond than including an image of yourself…

6: Export As A PDF

In Step 2, we listed 3 different word processors you can use to write your report…  Each of them has the functionality of exporting your document as a  PDF.

PDFs are the standard when it comes to reports.  They lock the editor so that a reader can only read what you wrote, and Adobe Reader (the program that opens up PDFs) is on almost every computer known to man.

Plus, your more technologically proficient readers will be able to put their PDF on their iPad or Android tablet and consume your content from there.

Not to mention, with Amazon Kindle and iBooks getting so popular, ebooks and digital files have more value associated with them.  That’s a good thing in the mind of your prospect!

7: Upload Your PDF To Share Online

The last step is to upload your PDF online somewhere, so you can share it by posting a link.

There are a lot of ways to do this…  You can upload your PDF to Dropbox.com and share it with a public link.  You can upload it to Google Drive and give it a public link.

Or, my favorite, you upload your document as a media file to your WordPress website and get your link from there.

After You Get The Lead…

After you get the lead, what do you do?  Do you sell them something?  Do you give them a bunch of free content and build a relationship with them?

The best answer – both!

Inside Axis, we have an Email Copy App with 26+ email templates that’ll move prospects from just getting to know you to buy your stuff as soon as you send out an email.  It’s all copy and paste.  Click here to learn more >>

Ready to craft your next lead magnet?

So these are our top 5 tips for creating the perfect lead magnet. Put them to use when you’re in the process of creating a new freebie to entice subscribers to join your list.

You can also implement these practical ideas to transform your existing low-performing lead magnets into new exciting lead-grabbing offers. Now, creating the perfect lead magnet sounds a lot easier, doesn’t it?

And as a parting piece of advice; don’t forget to include a call to action (CTA) in your lead magnet. It should be a CTA that helps the new lead go deeper into your sales funnel to eventually become a customer. So, as an example, a CTA could revolve around a paid product that would complement the freebie at hand. If you decide to use a CTA in your lead magnet, make sure you don’t reverse the traction they’ve already gained.

You want your readers to implement your solution and get results. And, you can still email them anytime in the future to promote your products.

If you’d like to look into having us set up a lead generation system or a sales funnel that includes a Done For You Lead Magnet for you, go ahead and tell us a bit about your business here!

GSDdaily Episode 82

This is Lead Generation Week. Basically, the idea is to arm you with a lot of tools that you can use to generate leads online. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that you have everything you need. From a Facebook standpoint or Google standpoint, or SEO standpoint to generate leads in your business quickly and easily. It's really what this week is about. Now yesterday, we talked about some lead generation strategies and some affiliate marketing. We got into some different things regarding how to generate leads online.

Today, we're going to talk about lead magnets. Basically, what I just linked to you is a guide on how to generate your own lead magnets. There are lots of different ways to create a lead magnet that you can give away to get leads from. One of the easiest and best ways of doing it for most of our clients, have we put together a report, a six to eight-page report. Usually, that gives away some nuggets gives away some information. The big thing is, you want your reader to have an aha moment.

What is a lead magnet?

Now, a lead magnet is simply something you give away in exchange for an email address or the name or a phone number or whatever. You are putting together, you're packaging your knowledge, your experience, or whatever, into a thing, an asset, a PDF. Preferably something that you can just send them quickly through an email. They can download from your website. You're giving that in exchange for their email address. Now, you're grabbing their email address, that you can market to them. That email address needs to go in your CRM. Whether you're using Infusionsoft or Ontraport or ours, which is Access or Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign. They are giving you their email address as an exchange for the lead magnet that they are downloading.

They're downloading the PDF and they're consuming the PDF. Then you're also able to email them tomorrow or the next day. You're able to put them in your retargeting sequence on Facebook. There are lots of things you can do once you have that email address. The important thing is that they receive something of value in the report that they get, the lead magnet.

Done For Your Lead Magnet

1. Title matters

There are lots of different ways, lots of different formats that you can have in a lead magnet, but most importantly, your title matters. It matters more than you would think. Your lead magnet, whether it's a report, a spreadsheet, video series, no matter what, the title needs to very clearly and succinctly tell what's in that report, tell what's in that lead magnet because if it doesn't, then people, they're just going to pass by it.

They're just going to disregard it. They are going to keep moving and that's it, that's the problem. Here we have a couple of examples.

We have Seven Secret Persuasion Tricks to Increase Webinar Conversion. Now, that's a very specific title. You know exactly what you're getting when you download that thing or Seven WordPress Plugins That Increase Visitor Engagement Without Them Even Realizing It, you know exactly what you're downloading. You know exactly what you're getting when you enter your email address in that box. Seven Passive Ad Networks That'll Increase Website Revenue in the Next 15 Minutes. Again, you know exactly what you're getting. See how that works, you be specific, deliver value and you get to lead. It's really as simple as that. When you do that, then you're able to turn ads on.

You can drive cold and warm traffic, pay for people to sign up as a lead on your list.

Now, the antithesis of that, the other side of that is if you have a shitty title. Let's say you have a title and your lead magnet is Four Ways to Double Revenue in the Next 60 Days. Well, anybody, literally, could write that lead magnet. Nobody knows what they're downloading when they get that. What's going to end up happening is if you start running paid traffic to it, or you put it on your website or whatever, nobody's going to opt-in because nobody knows what is in that report. Now consider, Four Ways to Double Your Revenue in the Next 30 Days, let's say, okay, or Seven Secret Persuasion Tricks to Increase Webinar Conversion.

Of course, Seven Secret Persuasion Tricks is going to win. You know exactly what is in that report. Now, the Four Ways to Double Revenue whatever, it could be anything. That's the problem is it probably is anything, anybody could write that report. If they're in business, anybody could write that report. You want to make sure your title or your headline makes perfect sense.

2. Landing Page

The lead magnet must be shown, you want to make sure that you have a particular landing page that is written for your perfect laser-targeted market, your customer avatar, the person who will be downloading your report, and who will be buying your services. Make sure that the lead magnet is written for them. Here's a great example. It's an old example, but it's a really good one.

This is Survival Life, Grow Enough Food to Feed a Family of Four in Just Four Square Feet of Space Even if You Don't Have a Yard. The super-specific headline on this landing page. The landing page is very simple. You just got an email address and get instant access. You got your Ecover graphic and that's it. It's easy to understand what is in this thing.

3. Promises one major result

Your perfect lead magnet also promises one major result. In this example, we have Five Ways to Improve Your Mobile Conversions. Now, we know exactly what is in this lead magnet. The lead magnet promises one major thing. In the digital marketing world, this is called product splintering. It might be a website conversion, your splintered lead magnet would end up being a very specific thing inside of that version vertical.

In the previous one, it was gardening. The previous lead magnet that we just covered, the specific major results, a specific transformation that that thing promised, was a vertical garden. It's not the whole gardening space, but it's the vertical gardening space and that's it.

4. Immediate gratification

Now, it needs to give immediate gratification and that's the thing about lead magnets. That's the thing about PDF downloads is when somebody hits your website. They land on your landing page and they click an ad. PDF lead magnets give them immediate gratification. They can enter their email address in a box and immediately get sent to the PDF. The PDF can then be downloaded and don't have to wait to watch a video. No need for them to wait and log into a membership site.

They get an immediate result, which is what your prospects want. That's why lead magnets still work usually better, especially for Facebook traffic. We've tested a lot of different PDF leads, PDF lead magnets versus video lead magnets versus spreadsheets versus software. PDF lead magnets still work better than almost anything else. It's because people are looking for immediate gratification when they're on Facebook. It's as simple as it is.

If you're able to give somebody immediate gratification and immediate download in exchange for their email address, then they're going to opt-in more frequently, they're going to do business with you. You're able to make an impact or transformation in their life that much more quickly when you're able to give them that immediate gratification.

5. Keep the lead magnet short and precise

You also want to make sure it can be consumed in just a few minutes. A six to an eight-page lead magnet, what's going to happen is they're going to scroll down through the lead magnet, and then they're basically looking for whether you're full of shit or not. They're going to open up the six-page report. They are going to look at the cover, they're going to scroll down, most likely it's on mobile, they're going to scroll down. They're going to read your headlines, they're going to look for pay off at some point in the text and then if they find it. Your prospects will scroll back up to the top and read. If they don't find a payoff, then they won't. They will close the PDF up and they will just move on their way.

That's one of the reasons why PDF lead magnets still work well is because they're very, very low risk and they give you their email address. They received the PDF, they open the PDF. They can scroll it, PDFs, it's not like it was five or six years ago, or even 10 years ago when PDFs they were ... Now, we have tablets. At the end of the day, we have tablets. Any device reads a PDF. Before, we used to have to say, "Well, you got to download Adobe Acrobat, and then you got to open up the PDF on your website and then blah, blah, blah." Now, any device can read PDFs and your phone can read PDFs. There are many different ways that they can consume PDF. They're just scrolling down through, making sure you know what you're talking about, and then they will consume it.

6. High perceived value

They will have that aha moment, have that transformation because of the PDF. Now, the perfect Done For You lead magnet has a high perceived value, even though it's free, it still needs to be something that you could charge money for, $37, $67, whatever. One of the lead magnets that we have running, we have a 200-page book. It is a collection of a lot of blog posts, a lot of stuff that was curated and picked up over the years. Rewritten and written and edited and all that other stuff.

Your first lead magnet doesn't have to be that, but it needs to have a high value. You need to deliver something that your end-user is interested to learn, is interested to figure out, a solution that they have for the problem in their business, in their life, whatever. That's what your lead magnet needs to deliver, it needs to have a high perceived value.

7 Types of Lead Magnets

Now, the lead magnet itself, there are some seven types of lead magnets.

1. Report or Guide

We've talked about a report or a guide, a six to eight-page report or guide. You can create it in Google Docs, you can create it in Microsoft Word. You can create it in Apple Pages. It just needs to be a collection. You need to walk through something. It doesn't take a really long time to write. Even if you don't like writing, what you can do is you can actually do a podcast. You can have it transcribed, the text is written out for you. You just go through and edit it. That's how a lot of books are written anymore.

There's no reason why a lead magnet can't be the same. In fact, a 20 to 25-minute videos, like one of these live streams that I'm doing right now. They are transcribed and it turned into about 4,500 words, which ends up being like 10 pages, 12 pages worth of text. Even if you edit it down, you're still going to get five to six pages of good solid text. Well, if you just record yourself doing something like this. Every time we do one of these live streams, we turn it into a blog post. The blog post ends up being 4,000 words. It's one of our central SEO strategies at the moment. All of this content can be turned into lead magnets. It can be turned into book chapters and everything.

The content, it's just going to live on and be mashed up a million different ways. The first type of Done For You leads magnet, a report, or a guide.

2. Cheat Sheet or Process Map

Now, number two is a cheat sheet or a process map. I love process maps. We have talked about mind maps quite a bit. We've talked about some process maps a little bit on the show.

Mind maps are a great brainstorming tool. With the extension of a mind map, you can put together these process maps. You are mapping out a more complex process. Process map or cheat sheet can be done in Google Drawing, Microsoft Excel, or Apple Numbers. You can draw out a process map. At the end of the day, there are so many different ways to create this kind of process map, or these cheat sheets or one-page, two-page cheat sheets with chat boxes. All of it is a super, super high value for your end-user, all of it.

People love that stuff because it keeps them on track. It lets them know where they need to go next. That is one of the core tenets of why people are looking for lead magnets or why people are looking for more information. They're looking for how to do something and they're looking for all of the steps it takes to pull something off.

You delivering that to your prospects is going to be a huge value out in their eyes. Cheatsheets, process maps, really, really good stuff.

3. Software

If you have a programming background or you're interested in learning how to code, you can create software. It is a great lead magnet. In fact, just over the weekend, my wife and I were brainstorming some software that we could give away as a lead magnet. Just some simple stuff, but really powerful and the stuff that I get a lot of questions about.

Just from a content scheduling standpoint

• How do you schedule content?
• How do you brainstorm topics?
• Is there a way to create a nice, simple piece of software that allows somebody to just walk in and do that?
• How do you find that keyword phrases are searched a lot?
• How do you put them on a calendar?

Well, not even walk in, but just go to a page and do it real quick and print out a calendar, could be super powerful.

If you have a software background, there are all kinds of little hacks like that. You would be able to put together, that you'd be able to code up in a week or a weekend. Give somebody more to help them in their business or help. For all of that stuff, you can ask for an email address but a simple little tool is going to be a great lead generation. In fact, Time Slot, our very first software application was used as a lead generation tool before I started selling anything.

4. Checklists

Checklists are great from an instructional standpoint. They're also great from a lead magnet standpoint. Any time that you can simply list out things that need to happen in sequence. Put a little checkbox in Apple Pages makes it super easy. The checkbox is actually just like a bullet. You can just drop a checkbox in, and then the checklist puts it together. Put it behind a lead magnet landing page will work out really well.

5. Video

You would have a landing page promising the result of the video. It is going to be a headline that promises something, some discover. Free Video Reveals How to Rank Websites on the First Page of Google Without Even Trying, any remote address below. It may be Free Video Shows You What Tools You Need to Put Together. A 2x4 end table might not be all that awesome, but the video is the thing that you're giving away. That's the thing that people are opting in for. The headline and landing page are the description of the thing they're opting in for.

That is the thing that ends up needing to be split tested. All that other stuff, but videos, multi-video launch sequences, mini-courses, all really, really powerful stuff. But from a paid traffic standpoint, we haven't seen them. Well, at least I haven't seen a free video course outperform a PDF lead magnet. When you opt-in and hit the play button, you know you're going to invest some time in it. When you agree to watch a video, that payoff might be 4, 12, or 32 minutes in. It might not even mean that video, it might be in a future video. That's one of the reasons why PDF lead magnets are powerful because they can download them. They can see what you're into.

They can go through, find the thing they want to see, and then they can opt-in for a webinar. Then, they can opt-in for a multi-video launch sequence. It isn't until they actually know what you're talking about. They can commit to making that time investment in you first, that's why we like PDFs.

6. Tutorials

There's actually a piece of software that I just found that I'm pretty into, it's called ScreenSteps, screensteps.com. This is tutorial software, basically, it's like knowledge-based software, but you can take screen captures. Then you can annotate the screen captures, then puts them together into a tutorial. There was a piece of software that I built this originally called Clarify-it and ScreenSteps is the extension of Clarify-it.

They didn't go to business. Basically, it was a project that was disbanded because that team was also building the ScreenSteps, it's tutorial-based software. You can take screen captures. You can annotate screen captures and like this guy, I went through and wrote out notes about that screen capture. Tutorials are really, really nice for giving away as downloads.

They're also great for SOPs, standard operating procedures, that you can give to your employees or your team. We use them in both scenarios. We'll build something as an SOP, but then also give it away because our prospects like that stuff.

7. Quiz or Survey

The best part about quizzes and surveys is you can generate leads. You can put them into buckets based on their survey responses. Also, you can trigger different email autoresponder sequences. There are lots of things you can do with the responses themselves. The most important thing is the software. There are lots of different software plugins or different quizzes and surveys and test-taking tools.

Thrive Themes has a really great survey plugin. Wufoo does form, which also has the same functionality. SurveyMonkey has formed, there are lots of different ways that you can skew this. Bucket.io is another one that you can end up putting people into different paths.

I think tomorrow we're actually going to be talking about WordPress lead magnet plugins. We're going to get into a little bit more of this and of course. If you scroll down, there are some lead magnet ideas for coaches. There are some real estate lead magnet ideas. Also, there's some additional material and training on lead magnets.

At the end of the day, the process is really simple.

1. Figure out what it's going to be about. Give it a title, start brainstorming what your prospect wants to see, hear, or read about. You probably already know this. What is a question that you get often again and again, and again?
2. You open up your editor. You open up Google Docs, you open up Pages, you open up Microsoft Word and you just start writing. Oftentimes, I start with a table of contents, and then I just flush it all out. Then you want to write eight to 12 pages. You're going to have an introduction, an about you, a reporting core, five pages. It's really the meat of your report and then a summary at the end and then a call into action.

Every lead magnet needs to have a call to action in it. The calls to action can be to a product or it can be to a webinar. What is the next thing you want your prospect to do? You want to add your images and then you want to export them as a PDF. Then you can share it online, you can upload it to Dropbox. You can upload it to Drive and you can upload it to your website. Then after you get the lead, you move them off into a prospect sequence. That is generating leads from lead magnets in a nutshell.

For Question and Guide

If you would like to talk to our team about any of this stuff, go to doneforyou.com/start. We can recommend what lead magnet to use. We can recommend the emails and landing pages and what it needs to go off into and automate a webinar. That's all determined based on what you're offering, how much you're offering. Is it a $5,000 coaching program or is it a $97 video course or whatever? Fill out the little form and book a time in our calendar. We will jump on the phone and work through an action plan with you. If you have any questions at all just hit up doneforyou.com. There's a little chat box on every single page down at the bottom. You can go through the chat or you can just ask a question and we'll jump on it.