Looking for lead magnet examples to help inspire your own offers?
This post gives you 11 different ideas for lead magnets that are known to convert well, including examples of them in action from top sites around the web.
A #leadmagnet offers something of interest and value to people in your target market in exchange for their contact information.Click To Post On
But first…
What Is a Lead Magnet?
A lead magnet is something of interest and value to people in your target market that you offer to them, usually for free, in exchange for their contact information.
It’s called a lead magnet because it is specifically designed to attract leads.
The more attractive you can make the lead magnet to people you want to add to your sales funnel, the more leads you’ll generally be able to attract.
It means prospects can get some kind of immediate value from your business via a simple no-obligation micro step.
Lead magnets offer prospects an opportunity to get immediate value from your business, usually for free, via a simple no-obligation micro step. #digitalmarketingtipsClick To Post On
Lead magnets provide a hassle-free way for a prospect to raise their hand and say they’re interested in what you do but without making any kind of commitment.
However, it’s worth spending some time beforehand determining the exact type of person you want on your list.
For example, offering a $10 Amazon voucher might get you a lot of leads—but they’re not necessarily going to be interested in what you have to sell them.
Instead, the lead magnet needs to be designed to attract the attention of people who are as similar as possible to your ideal customer.
You’ll find several lead magnet examples below from across different industries to help inspire your own.
Before designing your lead magnet, determine exactly who you want to attract. Who is your ideal customer? #leadgenerationClick To Post On
Recommended: What Makes a Good Lead Magnet?
Creating a Lead Magnet
Watch the following short summary of the different tools available that help you create lead magnets:
Alternatively, click here for the full guide.
How Do You Use a Lead Magnet?
Once you have a lead magnet, you can offer it different ways to attract people onto your list.
These might include:
- One or more landing pages that you link to from content and/or advertising…
- Inline forms and pop-ups on your website…
- Native lead generation adverts on platforms like Facebook.
Generally these will require some form of integration with your autoresponder service, so that as soon as someone enters their details, they get some kind of response back to their inbox right away.
Where the lead magnet is available digitally—such as a video or cheatsheet—you’ll nearly always want to make this immediately available to your new lead as soon as they sign up. This might be via a thank you page and/or via an immediate follow-up email.
Where this isn’t possible or practical—such as when you’re offering a free consultation—you’ll still generally want to contact them as soon as they sign up, usually via autoresponder (perhaps in addition to other contact methods), to confirm what their next steps will be.
Top Lead Magnet Examples
1. Video(s)
Videos are engaging, perceived as high value, and can help the prospect to rapidly develop a sense of relationship and connection with your business.
You can offer a single video, perhaps only a few minutes long, or multiple videos.
Make it clear exactly what the benefit the prospect will get from watching the video(s).
Make it simple and relatively quick to attain.
For example, here’s an example from Piano Genius, which offers 8 videos to help the prospect to play their first song on a piano in less than 20 minutes, in exchange for just a name and email address.
That’s a high value offer, and one that’s likely to achieve high conversion rates with the right traffic.
Once created, you can potentially host the videos on YouTube, perhaps available via a private link rather than published publicly.
But you can run into issues with YouTube showing ads for other businesses in your video, and suggesting other videos from other providers at the end.
For more control over the video and better analytics, you might like instead to use a private video hosting platform like these, which are designed specifically for business and marketing purposes.
2. Cheatsheet
Another highly effective lead magnet is a cheatsheet, or similarly some kind of checklist or tip sheet.
This type of lead magnet provides immediate value and is easy and quick for the prospect to take advantage of.
Cheatsheets are also easy and quick for the business to create, perhaps repurposing some existing content like a blog post.
It only needs to be a single sheet, provided digitally via PDF, and can be easily created using a tool like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or for something more visually appealing, Canva.
Here’s an example of a cheatsheet offer from the Newbie Fitness Academy, designed to appeal to people looking to increase their fitness level and achieve a lean body:
3. Whitepaper/report
More extensive than a cheatsheet, and more applicable to B2B marketing, is a whitepaper or report.
This is designed to provide more in depth information to your target prospect.
The whitepaper or report might be designed to do one or more of the following:
- Help the prospect to make a more effective purchasing decision.
- Illustrate your expertise on a particular topic.
- Increase your authority and credibility.
- Show the prospect how to achieve something.
Here’s an example of a whitepaper lead magnet from remarkable.net, offering expert strategies to help someone boost checkout conversions in exchange for an email address:
This lead magnet is designed to attract people with ecommerce businesses—either the owners, or marketers working within the business—which are making sales but looking to increase profitability.
4. Webinar
Like videos, a webinar offers a high-value engaging experience where the prospect can potentially learn a lot of valuable information on a topic they’re interested in, while also getting to know and building a sense of relationship with the business in question.
Unlike videos, webinars often offer two-way communication, with the opportunity for the prospect to ask questions directly and get the information they need.
They can also be significant lead drivers. For example, hosting a webinar in partnership with another business as a joint venture can generate hundreds if not thousands of new leads within a short time frame.
Webinars can be offered live, as a recorded session, or ‘appear as live’ using software like StealthSeminar.
For live webinars, popular software options include Zoom (here’s how to set a webinar up on Zoom), GoToWebinar and WebinarJam.
Here’s an example of a webinar being offered as a lead magnet by success coach and Chicken Soup author, Jack Canfield.
Notice the clear statement of the benefit to be gained by the prospect (6 Steps to…), the countdown timer and ‘Limited Seats…’ text to provide a sense of urgency, and even a surprise free gift on offer for attending the webinar after registration.
5. Free Trial
For businesses selling a recurring subscription type product (such as software vendors and gyms), a free trial can make an excellent choice of lead magnet.
To unlock the free trial the user often only has to provide their email address, particularly when offered by software businesses.
This then enables the business to follow up with them and educate them on the benefits of purchasing a full subscription in order to gain full access.
The idea of the free trial is to allow the prospect to get a taste of what the business offers without being under any kind of commitment or obligation.
Here’s an example of a free trial offer being used as a lead magnet by the ecommerce software business, Shopify:
This offers a free trial for 14 days. Other popular free trial options offered by businesses include:
- 7 days
- 30 days
- Even a permanently free version (again, in exchange for contact information), but with restricted functionality.
6. Free Consultation
For many businesses, the most appropriate type of lead magnet is to offer an initial free consultation.
It means the prospective customer can find out exactly how the business in question may be able to help them, based on their own unique circumstances.
Usually, the prospect will leave their details via a form, and the business will then contact them with regard to organizing a suitable time for the consultation.
Here’s an example of this type of lead magnet in action from a home improvement company:
7. Discount Code
In ecommerce-type businesses, a common mechanism to encourage potential customers to join a mailing list (and from there, to start making purchases) is to offer a discount code.
By leaving their email address, the customer receives a code they can then use to get say 5% to 10% off their first purchase.
This type of lead magnet is particularly effective for businesses selling direct to consumers.
Here’s an example from HelloPrint:
8. Email Course
Another example of an attractive lead magnet is to offer a free email course.
This avoids prospective customers becoming overwhelmed with too much information at once, and means you can slowly build your relationship with them and build trust through repeated contact, while illustrating your expertise and know-how.
It’s attractive to leads because they know their own investment of time will be minimal—perhaps just a minute or two per email—while still enabling them to get value and learn something of interest.
The following lead magnet example is an offer for a free 5-day course on productivity from the time tracking app, Timing.
9. Survey
It may not be as immediately obvious as some of the other lead magnet examples on this list, but a survey can work well as an attractive lead magnet too.
A survey is a set of structured questions, usually presented in a particular order, where the subject can select one or, where appropriate, multiple answers, or sometimes type their own answer directly.
Based on the answers provided, the survey can potentially automatically (and immediately) provide a ‘result’ that represents some kind of value.
This can be delivered to the prospect’s inbox in return for their email address. Often, because of the time already invested in completing the survey, there is little resistance to providing an email address in order to obtain the required ‘result’.
A common use of a survey as a lead magnet, though wrapped up in different language, is to offer the prospective customer a free quote.
For example, an insurance company might ask specific questions related to what the prospect is looking to insure, and then provide a detailed quotation based on the answers provided.
Here’s an example of a company using a survey as a lead magnet.
Boot Camp Digital, a company offering digital marketing training, invites prospects to take a Digital IQ Test.
In doing so they are attracting people with an interest in improving their digital knowledge, while pointing out, via the survey, areas where the prospect is potentially in need of training.
10. Printed Book
Using a printed book as a lead magnet can be extremely effective:
- A printed book has much higher perceived value than a digital download.
- Once received, it’s more likely to be read. Digital downloads are often barely looked at, and quickly forgotten about.
- A printed book is hard for someone to simply throw away—it’s likely to remain with the prospect for years as a constant reminder of your existence.
- A book confers a high level of credibility and authority on the author, giving you an immediately status of “expert” in the mind of the prospect.
When used as a lead magnet, while the book itself is offered “free”, the prospect is often asked to just pay for the shipping and handling.
However, with books often costing only $2-$3 each to print, depending on quantities, it’s sometimes possible for this amount to be absorbed into the “shipping and handling” amount.
The high conversion rates that can be achieved from a “free book” offer can reduce the cost per lead (such as when advertising on social media) considerably, to the extent that leads often work out cheaper in the end than offers for some kind of digital download.
The following example of a “free book” lead magnet offer is from Revenue Growth Engine:
11. Templates
Finally, depending on your industry, an offer of free template(s) can work as a high conversion lead magnet to attract leads onto your list.
A free template provides immediate value to the prospect by speeding up the time, often considerably, in which they can achieve something.
For example, the following offer of free, responsive HTML email templates is from 99designs, achieving the aim of attracting new leads while illustrating the type of design expertise on offer:
Other template-type lead magnet examples include:
- Sales headline templates—for example, to attract leads interested in marketing and improving their sales
- Website design templates—likely to attract website developers and small business owners
- Excel and Word templates
- Presentation and infographic templates
- Legal templates (e.g. a privacy policy) with sample wording
- The list goes on…
Think about what kind of templates your ideal customer would find valuable.
Avoid offering lead magnets that attract prospects with no interest in what you actually sell. Design lead magnets to attract your ideal customer. #digitalmarketingClick To Post On
To Conclude
That’s eleven different lead magnet examples to help inspire ideas for your own lead magnets and help attract your ideal customer onto your list.
Remember too that a lead magnet doesn’t have to take long to create. Videos and whitepapers will take longer to put together, but they won’t necessarily outperform a cheatsheet or checklist that can be put together in minutes.
Start with something simple, and test out other types of lead magnet over time to discover what works best for your business.
It’s not necessarily the quantity of leads that a particular lead magnet brings in that’s important. Ultimately, what matters is the quality of those leads and how suitable they are for buying what your business sells.
