The Comprehensive Guide To Lead Magnets For Entrepreneurs
Updated: May 6
Wanna know the best way to get good leads for your business? Are you trying to build your email list, but don’t know how to get subscribers?
Lead magnets are exactly what they sound like. A magnet for leads. They help businesses and entrepreneurs just like you go from zero to thousands of subscribers. Well, if the lead magnet’s a good one.
If you want to know how to create lead magnets for entrepreneurs, keep reading my comprehensive guide to lead magnets for entrepreneurs.
What Is A Lead Magnet?
Let’s face it. No one just gives out their email and information without something in return. A lead magnet is what you offer them for it.
This is incredibly important to create good leads for your business. Lead magnets attract viewers and convert them into leads and customers.
They do this by helping potential customers find your business useful.
How Do They Work?
First, you offer your lead magnet to your website viewers to generate interest, attract leads, and gain their contact information.
The viewer will see your lead magnet, and if they like it, they’ll give you their name and email address.
This is when a prospective customer becomes a lead. After they’ve gotten the lead magnet, you send them emails to help convert them to paying customers.
Benefits of Lead Magnets For Entrepreneurs
Lead magnets are an incredibly important marketing tactic for any business. But, what do they actually do for entrepreneurs? Let’s talk about some of the benefits of lead magnets for entrepreneurs.
Getting Real Leads:
You want to make money, right? Of course, you do. That’s the reason you started a business. But, you can’t do that without customers. And long before they’re customers, they’re simply website viewers. Viewers that you need to entice into becoming a lead by offering them something.
Growing Your Email List:
The second most important benefit of lead magnets for entrepreneurs is their purpose: to grow your email list. After you have your list, you can use email marketing to promote your business, interact with your customers, and learn more about them.
Demonstrating Your Service/Products
A lead magnet can be a free demonstration of how you help your customers. This is what generates interest in your business. For example, if you run a subscription-based service, you can offer a free trial of that subscription for a week.
Promoting Your Business
Again, a lead magnet is a taste of what your business does. In doing so, this is helping to promote your business. After you grow your email list, you can sell your business even further using email marketing.
Creating Brand Awareness
If you’ve started a new business, you need to get your brand out there. A lead magnet is a really good way to introduce your brand and market it, (all without the use of ads). It generates real interest for your business and puts your brand on the map.
What Makes A Good Lead Magnet?
There are a few things that go into a good lead magnet that actually does its job: getting you leads. Let’s get into someone the things that a successful lead magnet has.
Readily Available
No one wants to sit around waiting for something after giving you information. People want something they can access and use immediately. Your lead magnet should be available to download ASAP.
Here’s an example. If you’re offering a free webinar to showcase your coaching business, give your leads get the link to the webinar as soon as possible. Also, run it immediately.
Easily Consumed
Your lead magnet needs to be easy to consume. That means that it needs to be easy to use or read. No one is interested in complicated. Make sure that your lead magnet is easy to follow along with.
For example, an eBook needs to be easy to read. Use short sentences and paragraphs, as well as infographics.
Solves A Problem
If your lead magnet doesn’t solve a problem or provide a solution for your potential customers, then it’s pretty damn useless. Your lead magnet has to do something for your potential customers.
Ensure your lead magnet provides a real solution to a common issue for your leads. Go back to your research on your target audience to do this.
Here’s an example. If you’re a coach with a goal-setting lead magnet, create it so that your potential clients set proper goals they can accomplish.
Provides Real Results
Not only does your lead magnet need to have a real solution, but that solution has to have proven results. You can’t give your potential customers something unsuccessful. You’ll only look like you can’t help them. You don’t want to waste their time.
The results of your solution should be at the forefront. Emphasize that your solution has been successful. Give them something you’ve done yourself.
Highly Specific
I may sound like a broken record, but you need to know who you’re creating this lead magnet for. You will likely need to create different lead magnets to suit the different needs of your target audience.
Your lead magnet also needs to be highly specific to your product or service. This is a taste of what you offer and what you can do for your customers.
Make sure that your lead magnet is extremely relevant to your business and is highly specific to the customers you’re trying to attract. For example, if you’re a boutique owner, a catalog or style guide would be a great lead magnet to show exactly what you have to offer your customers.
Demonstrates Your Value Or USP
Again, a lead magnet is your chance to really showcase what you can do for a potential customer. You need to show them why they should pick you over your competition.
Viewers won’t become leads or customers for no reason. They have to be led towards you, especially if you’re competing with big businesses like chains.
Clearly demonstrate why your business is so valuable. For example: if you’re a financial advisor, a great lead magnet for you would be a calculator to help your leads know what their goals are before coming to you.
Showcases Your Expertise
Your lead magnet needs to show off your knowledge and experience in your niche. You need to position yourself as an expert in order to gain trust from prospective customers.
Show off your knowledge in an eBook or guide that can teach your potential customers something, giving them a big reason to trust in your products or services.
Types Of Lead Magnets For Entrepreneurs
According to this article from OptinMonster, the leading conversion experts, there are 5 types of leads for entrepreneurs:
Useful Lead Magnets
Useful lead magnets are used to bribe your potential customers by doing the hard work for them and offering a solution that saves them time, money, etc.
This kind of lead magnet demonstrates why a potential customer may need your services. For example, a useful lead magnet for an event planner would be a calendar or event checklist.
Educational Lead Magnets
Educational lead magnets teach potential customers something relevant to your product or service. This shows that you’re an expert in your industry.
And it shows that your potential customers can trust you. For example, a social media coach can offer an email course on how to gain an Instagram following.
Entertaining Lead Magnets
Entertainment lead magnets like quizzes are solely designed to entertain your prospective customers. It’s simple but extremely effective because people love to be entertained.
Community-Building Lead Magnets
Community-Building lead magnets allow leads or customers to communicate. Some examples are membership sites or social media groups. People really value connection and comradery. And if you’re able to give that to them, you’re gonna go far, kid.
Bottom-Of-The-Funnel Lead Magnets
Bottom-of-the-funnel lead magnets like coupons are created for people who have entered your sales funnel one step from the end. These lead magnets take them one step closer to becoming paying customers.
Best Lead Magnets For Entrepreneurs To Grow Their Email List in 2022
Here are the top lead magnets for conversion and email marketing to help you grow your business this year.
1. Calculator Create a calculator that helps your potential clients how much they need to save or make for their goal. Calculators are good lead magnets for entrepreneurs in the financial industry.
2. Catalog A catalog showcases all of your products in one place. If you offer a variety of items, this can be a great way to showcase everything you have.
3. Calendar Help your potential customers stay organized with a calendar. You can customize the designs to help promote your brand too.
4. Challenge
If you’re an entrepreneur that has to challenge clients, you can test your leads with a mini-challenge. This can also be a community-building lead that gives leads a glimpse of the connections they can make.
5. Cheat Sheet If you’ve got a solution to a difficult problem, share it in a cheat sheet. Help your leads break down the issue and solve it.
6. Checklist Make sure your potential clients are prepared by offering a checklist. Checklists keep your leads organized and ready while showing how you can really help them.
7. Coupon Coupons are an easy bottom-of-the-funnel lead magnet that can lure a lead to conversion. This is especially useful for highly-priced products and services.
8. eBook Go in-depth on a topic in your industry to show how much of an expert you are. eBooks don’t have to be novels. A few pages will be good enough.
9. Email Course
If you have something to teach your leads, an email course can be a great way to do this. It also gets lead used to getting emails from you.
10. Free Quote For service-based businesses, a free quote may not seem like a magnet. But it is. Instead of just giving your leads a price, step it up by explaining how you’re going to do it.
11. Free Trial A great way to lure some leads for your subscription-based business is to give them a short and sweet trial of your service. It doesn’t have to be too long. It can be a week or a day, or even per service.
12. Gated Content Gated content is content that is hidden behind a lightbox popup box. This can be a blog post, video, anything. But it’s hidden, and can only be revealed if the reader subscribes.
13. Giveaway A great way to showcase your products and gain some leads is a giveaway. After all, who doesn’t love free stuff? You can host it on your social media channels or blog.
14. Newsletter
One of the most common lead magnets for blogs is a newsletter. This allows you to share exclusive information and give your leads updates.
15. Prompts Some people like to write or journal, but they have no place to start. Prompts are great lead magnets for entrepreneurs like writing coaches to help their potential clients find their creative spark.
16. Quiz People love taking quizzes to pass the time. And it sometimes helps tell them more about themselves. Create a fun quiz to entertain your prospective customers.
17. Resource Library When you have multiple lead magnets, it’s great to have one place to have them all for your potential customers. Have a resource library that is password-protected for email subscribers only.
18. Templates A template is a perfect lead magnet for entrepreneurs that want customers who don’t know where to start. Whether it’s a planner template or a resume template, it’s a great way to generate interest.
19. Webinar
Give your potential readers a presentation of something with a webinar. It’s simple to follow and easy for your leads to see how you can help them.
20. Worksheet/Workbook
A workbook or worksheet provides your leads with a foundation of how to work a problem out themselves. It’s a useful lead magnet that is very popular for bloggers and coaches.
Need Help Creating A Lead Magnet That ACTUALLY Converts? Hire A Pro!
Are you too busy running your business to create a lead magnet? Do you have no idea where to start with creating good lead magnets? Hire me to help you!
As an expert copywriter, I can help you create a lead magnet that actually gets you leads and helps your business thrive! Let’s have a chat today so we can get started!