10 Tactics To Create Your Ultimate Lead Magnet

Last Updated 2 months by Emily Standley-Allard

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An important part of having an online business is creating some buzz and excitement around it. Lead magnets help lead up to the goal of people eventually purchasing your products. The way you go about this first is to build trust with your audience by creating amazing free content they need and want. The journey to discovering what they actually want can be kind of tricky and this is where lead magnets can give you a clue. Here’s 10 ways to create the ultimate lead magnet and get more people to sign up for your stuff!

Why Do I Need a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet or ‘opt-in’ is an incentive (think of it as a tasty free snack or appetizer) that sellers use to offer potential buyers in exchange for something. Usually an email address.

Mmm…free donuts!

You can also accomplish two vital things with lead magnets.

1) distribute your amazing content and

2) determine exactly what type of content your audience wants.

Once they trust that your content is worth devouring, they’ll start to seek out your advice regularly on a particular topic(s) and have confidence in you to provide them with information that is potentially worth paying for down the road when you roll out a really special offer.

The way to start this journey is to create a freebie otherwise known as an opt in or ‘lead magnet‘.

If you build an attractive freebie that does well, your email list will grow, and your business can start to thrive.

However, if you build an unappealing freebie that no one wants, you’ll get no leads.

Start first with some testing.

Your freebie must be attractive enough to get people to sign up for your email list. This is the ultimate goal. Email is the best way you have of keeping in touch with your audience, your potential customer base.

It’s never too early to start your email list.

15 Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List

This post covers the ultimate ways to create an irresistible freebie that will start your sales funnel.

The goal of this is to position you as the Rockstar expert in your niche and have people downloading your lead magnet faster than you could imagine.

What Does a Lead Magnet Consist of?

A lead magnet can be anything from a digital product (eBook, PDF, swipe file, report, course, video series, checklist, printable, email template series, etc) or something that offers supreme value to your customer offered for FREE in exchange for their email address.

Which Format Should I Choose for My Lead Magnet?

I would look into what your competitors are doing. If your top competitors are doing videos, then put out an interactive eBook.

If they’re doing ordinary pdf files, you’ll kill it with a Video!

If they’re printing out black and white dull planners, you create a plethora of colorful scheduling sheets, planners, calendars etc. Get it? This way you’ll stand out all the more.

If you have a lot of technical aspects to go over video is a great medium for people to understand. But if you’re not comfortable doing video that has to be taken into consideration.

You could also hire someone from Fiverr to do it for you as well.

Sometimes a library of resources is an excellent freebie to offer. Instead of just one option, you give your customer a whole library packed with awesome information they can access at any time.

Be that valuable information, printables, how to guides, cheat sheets, planners and more.

Do I Have To Create My Freebie From Scratch?

I bet you’re probably thinking this is a ton of work! All that information to give away for free? But wait, it’s really not because you know what? I have a great tip.

You already have freebies to offer your readers.

If you have built up a bulk of great content on your blog, you have information you can turn into PDFs and repurpose your best posts into a lead magnet.

Just go into your analytics reports and see which ones you get the most traffic from. And then convert it into a PDF. If you don’t have Adobe you can simply download Print Friendly & PDF and turn it into a PDF with the click of a button.

Naturally you can create new ones from scratch to offer as well. I’m not saying not to.

But this is a simple and easy way of putting together a whole library of goodies that not everybody has seen all together before.

Whatever you offer make certain that it is your BEST work. You don’t want to send out a mediocre freebie. There’s no purpose in that except to give your reader a reason to unsubscribe from you!

It has to be of true value, so make sure you overdeliver. It must be more of what they were expecting. If it’s not, they will go elsewhere.

The better it is the more worthwhile it will be to you further down the road. You will be the prime reason for your customer returning to you for top notch services and or products you offer.

How Do I Decide What to Offer?

This totally depends on what your niche is and what your target audience wants.

What do you want to be known for, the expert at, the authority on?

The best way to find out what to offer is from your audience. They are the ones who will tell you what they want to know. Take a survey, a poll, ask questions. Go on Facebook groups and read the most popular questions and comments in your niche. The ones that keep coming up over and over again.

Listen and listen some more to your target audience. That’s the only way you can truly find out what will be most beneficial to your readers.

If you simply choose something because you love the topic, you could be totally off base and waste a lot of time and energy for nothing.

Remember, if there’s not a demand for it, it doesn’t matter. There won’t be any subscribers.

Grab These FREE Email Templates To Grow Your Business From Anywhere!

How Do I Make My Freebie Look Professional?

I have to say one of my pet peeves is when I download something and open it up and it looks like someone’s elementary school kid did it. I’m sorry but you really have to put some effort into your lead magnet’s appearance!

First impressions do make a difference. It could have incredible information in it, the likes that no one has ever read before, but if it looks unprofessional your readers won’t believe in it.

I use Canva for work which is the paid version. You can also use the Free version for professional looking PDFs, graphics and more.

They have tons of fabulous options for eBook covers, social posts, templates, fliers, logos etc. And it’s so easy to use anyone can do it. Even without any design experience.

How To Create a Printable for Free in Canva

Make Sure Your Freebie Has a Magnetic Headline

Headlines are critical! Headlines can literally make all the difference. Why did you click on this post? Because of the headline right? If it had a crappy headline like ‘How To Make a Freebie’ you probably wouldn’t of clicked on it I’m guessing.

Read this post by Copy bloggers the authority in copywriting to get the best information on how to write sale clinching headlines.

How To Write Magnetic Headlines That Sell Anything

It’s the best advice in the world for writing headlines. Seriously.

Tips for headlines that grab your attention are:

Make it engaging, intriguing, enticing
Don’t make it too long
Be specific – ’10 Ways to…’
Offer a Definite Solution
Be controversial

How to Make Sure Your Freebie Stands Out

The last thing you want is for your freebie to go unused. Your reader signed up for it for a reason. They wanted to get something out of it.

Make certain that this is actually possible. For example, don’t just jot down a bunch of tips or links without any explanation behind it.

Make sure that your freebie delivers what was promised. Don’t make it too simple that it’s worthless and the person could of found it online if they googled it. On the flip side, don’t make it overly complicated either. Stay on topic. I once got a freebie with so much information it was too overwhelming and I never wanted to look at it again. It was just too much!

Be sure to provide enough substantial information so your reader definitely feels they can implement what they wanted to find out in a way that makes it easy for them.

Don’t forget to add your own tone and personality in there too so you don’t sound too dry and like a technical instruction manual. It should be interesting and fun.

A call to action leading them to other posts you have read that may be helpful is also a good idea. Whatever you believe will be helpful to your audience.

Don’t be afraid to ask them for their input and their opinions. What problems they are having that they would like solutions to.

Make Sure Your Freebie Is Easily Shareable

Just like you do with your posts make sure that your freebie is super easy to be shared on social media.

For example: [bctt tweet=”Always ensure your Freebie is easily shareable with Click To Tweet.”]

A social share plugin like Social Warfare or Social Pug (now Grow) works great for me. I highly recommend it because it’s totally customizable and doesn’t slow down my site at all.

How Does My New Subscriber Get My Freebie

There are several ways that a new subscriber can get access to your freebie. The way my subscribers do is through Convertkit.

Converkit offers the ability to create a customized opt in form that you can use to promote your freebies and anything else you want your readers to be aware of. It’s more expensive than Mailerlite which is only $10 per month and free up to 1,000 subscribers but a lot of bloggers use it because it has so many amazing features like autoresponders, landing pages, sequences and customized forms.

You can pick your own image, enter your own text and then you simply add a link for the freebie you wish to add. You have the option to enter several different ones either in the middle of a page or at the bottom, or have it pop up. They also have lead pages, broadcasts and entire sequences you can design as well.

So basically, when you enter your email the subscriber receives a welcome email and then a thank you with the freebie’s download link.

There are many other ways for subscribers to receive their freebies.

WordPress Digital Downloads
Podia (what I use)
Dropbox
SendOwl
MailChimp
Aweber
Mailerlite

Don’t Forget to Promote Your FREEBIE!

As always don’t forget to promote, promote, promote!! Remember the 80/20 rule. Blogging is 80% promotion, 20% writing.

Super places to promote your freebie:

Pinterest
TikTok
Twitter
Feedly
Mix.com
Facebook Groups
Pinterest Groups/Tribes
LinkedIn
Instagram

Ultimate List to Get More Website Traffic

Conclusion

I hope this post was helpful to you. Traffic is key for your blog and business and getting new subscribers. It may take time but don’t lose faith!

Keep writing those awesome posts, offer amazing optins and freebies, create great content and your work will get noticed!

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