Part One in this series is How to start and email marketing campaign.
Lead magnets are those free gifts or promotional items that you give to visitors in exchange for their email address. Most savvy online shoppers will not give their email address to just anyone, and these days many will not give it to you for free. Competition is fierce these days, and you want to not only get people to give you their email address but you want them to stick around so that you can help them for years to come.
So, in regards to your niche, what does your customer want? And how can you give it to them? Your goal is to create a highly specific answer for their question, while creating a relationship that will last. Start by creating a list of situations that your customer deals with daily, and your solutions to these situations.
You must understand your niche and understand your audience when choosing a lead magnet to give to them. You want to know who your ideal customer is, what they really want and what they will buy, so that you give them a taste of what you have to offer them. Instead of a checklist of the “Top 10 toys for dogs” you might go with “Top 10 toys for poodles” or “Top 10 toys for pugs”, noting that there are specific needs for specific dogs. You are attracting poodle owners, or pug owners, but not all dog owners.
Your lead magnet does not have to be long or wordy. A one page checklist will do. You just need to solve ONE specific problem for your specific audience. Offer them the one “big thing” they want to solve their problem, something with a high perceived value – just don’t make it look free. Use vague descriptors like “free report” or “free toolkit”; give your subscribers quality, but not so much quantity as to replace your blog!
Keep your magnet simple, so that a person can see right away how it will solve their problem. This gives them immediate gratification. You also want it to be action-driven. Give customers something that they can do right away. We will be promoting this in some kind of pop up box on our websites using MailChimp, and we want a headline that will entice viewers to click and subscribe.
You can create a document in either Word or Pages, and then choose “save as .pdf”, making it easy to upload to your email marketing program.
Here are several options for lead magnets
- The “cheat sheet”/ handout– One or two pages with checklists or mind maps (a graphic representation of ideas or concepts) that is easy to follow.
This is what a mind map looks like. - Templates– Make this to support what you are selling on your website, not replace it! This could be ad placement templates, a free crocheting pattern template, or a free “starting your…” template.
- Guide/Report– The most basic of lead magnets, but it works! Be specific. You need to present information for one specific goal to one specific buyer-type. Think “10 Must Have Tips for Software Developers”. Specific offer (10 Tips) for a specific buyer (software developer). Target only a specific audience, which you want to be your audience.
- Sales material/consultation– Pricing (exchange email for the special price that only I can get you), incentives to buy (exchange email for a 20% off coupon), or trade email for a catalogue.
- Discount/ free shipping– If you sell physical products, these are great incentives for a buyer to give you their email address.
- Toolkit/Resource list– This might be a small collection of items, such as an e-book, a worksheet, a report or any combination of these, ready to use.
- Free Training– A video, workbook, webinar, or a combination of any or all of these. Step by step solutions to problems are an excellent offer, and if you are creating and starring in the video, even better! This makes it more personalized.
- Survey or Quiz-With results delivered by email. Try Interact They have a limited “Free Forever” plan.
- Test or Assessment– For example, “Signs that your dog’s obedience training is working” and then a list of things that prove or disprove that the training is working.
Free tools to use
There are many free tools available on the internet for creating stunning lead magnets. Check out these free tools and see if it sparks your creativity for providing a service that no one else is offering!
– Beacon Go to Beacon to turn blog posts into an ebook, checklist or resource guide. Super easy and fast! Go here first 🙂
– Canva Create your ebook cover, checklist, cheat sheet, or infographic.
– The Stocks. High quality and royalty free stock photos from 19 providers including Pixabay.
– Piktochart “An easy to use Infographic maker”. You can watch the demo right on the home page.
– Small PDF “We make pdf easy” is their tagline. (Use it free, twice per hour).
– Gleam If you want to offer a contest or competition, then Gleam has what you need to get started
– Flipsnack Flip book creator and editor.
After checking out your beautifully crafted and exciting free gift, your subscribers should be happy enough to stay subscribed and keep checking out your amazing content week after week…fingers crossed! You can also create a free gift to someone who is planning to unsubscribe, which will be covered in part two of the MailChimp training.
I hope that you have enjoyed this article. If you see errors or omissions, please contact me at support@fearlessaffiliate.com. If you like this article, please leave comments in the box below and consider sharing it with others.
Hello Irma,
Wow! What an excellent list of ideas! I am still relatively new in the Internet Marketing Industry,so I am always looking for useful training and ideas. I have book marked this page for future reference. I have created my very first lead magnet, a free E-Cookbook. I created it using Flipsnack.com. You can use them for free, but they also have a very reasonable paid membership. It was easy to use, and I am pleased for my first attempt. I have used Canva to make infographics for posts and pinterest pins and I love it! I’m not familiar with the other suggestions you made, but I do plan to check them out.
Thanks Kathy!
I will add Flipsnack.com to the list of free tools. I wanted to make an info graphic for a freebie, but could not organize what I wanted to say into that type of project, but I plan to make one soon for an upcoming post.
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Hey Irma,
You have some excellent ideas here. I have been thinking about what kind of freebie I can give, but I haven’t come up with anything yet. This information helps a lot. I will bookmark it and return for sure. By the way, I’m in the make money online niche and was thinking of creating a list of “Ways to make money online” to give away. What do you think?
Anyway, thanks for sharing.
Hi Gary, and thank you for stopping by today!
I think that is an excellent idea, as long as you do not give too much away. Just a little taste to encourage visitors to return for more vital information that they need. Best of luck!
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Hi Irma, interesting topic I must say. To make an e mail campaign is on my mind for quite some time. I checked the Beacon program a little, what a nice idea. I hope it is for free or not too expensive 🙂 When I find the time I will consult your website to get started with my campaign.
Thanks a lot and see you.
Hi Stefan, and thanks for stopping by,
Beacon is free, but it puts a logo on your finished product. I can live with that, at least while I am learning about these programs.
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Hello and thanks for sharing, your post is very informative with great information. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for stopping by today Norman! I appreciate your kind words 🙂
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Hi, Irma!
I came across the concept of lead magnets while scrolling through my Facebook feed this morning, so I had to look into it some more on Google, and now here I am at your website. 🙂
After reading your article, I can see why lead magnets are important and why business owners should use them for collecting email addresses and building up their customer bases.
As a newbie blogger myself, this is definitely something I would love to do for helping a lot more people and really scaling out my online business.Personally, I like the sound of creating a cheat sheet and even a quiz for fun.
Thanks also for the list of free tools because they will be massively helpful. I’m already a user of Canva and it really is an awesome tool for putting our creativity skills to the test and impressing our readers.
Neil
Hi Neil, and thank you for stopping by!
There are so many interesting and fun things to learn about when building out a blog, but creating a lead magnet has been the most fun for me. Being able to create a nice product to give to visitors has been on my mind a lot lately, so I am glad that I have found some helpful and free tools to share with others!
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Hi Irma,
I found your post very enlightening. It gave me several ideas for a lead magnet but it also made me question the one that I have been working on. Several years ago my wife published a book on Amazon about online dating and one of my niches is online dating. I wanted to offer them the book as a lead magnet but after reading your post, I am thinking it may be too much. What are your thoughts on the matter?
Hi Matt, and thank you for dropping by!
Personally, I think you should sell the book on your site with an Amazon link. If the book is no longer on Amazon, sell it on your site for possibly a discounted price or sell it for the regular price and create some freebies to go with it.
You have an amazing opportunity here to generate a lot of traffic. I am not sure if there is a way to track the sales (bonus code?) to get people to buy the book and then get a bonus for buying. So many choices!!
You can also create a new, smaller ebook by condensing some of your older blog posts into a new “freebie” format. You can give the freebie away with a link to the Amazon book! My mind is spinning now. I think you can do some amazing promotions with what you have!
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Hi Irma, you gave some very nice ideas for a freebie on my website. I will try Beacon and Piktochart.
I may create a small ebook to give for their email address. I was thinking that I should create one with many pages but I like your advice. Small but interesting and actionable.
Have you any recommendation for an autoresponder?
Hi Ilias, and thank you for stopping by today,
I am currently using MailChimp, as it is free and simple to use. I have a post about it, and I will be creating a post on merging MailChimp with the newly created lead magnet from today’s post so that it becomes a functional freebie!
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Really good post here, Irma. It is important to have something to offer your potential readers if you want them to perceive you as a provider of value. Thanks so much for your resources there at the end!
Hi Steve, and thank you for stopping by,
You are welcome!
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Hello! I love your options for lead magnets! This has given me a few ideas that will help me with the site that I have chose to create and the niche I have chosen to promote. It is fun and energetic and keeping the materials light and easy is very important to me so your approach to simplicity matches perfectly. Beacon or Canva are definitely going to be places I will be visiting soon! Thank you!
Hi Tamara, and thank you for stopping by!
Yes, I was surprised at all the cool, free websites that can help create free giveaways. I think I will be spending a lot of time at Beacon 🙂
Cheers,
Irma 🙂
Great tips. I never heard of many of those tools, I need to check it out. And when I think about it, you’re so right. People think you need to create this long ebook or something for a lead magnet, which just isn’t true. As long as it provides value, it can be just one page, like a cheat sheet or checklist.
Hi Ben, and thank you for stopping by,
I have been hung up on doing a giveaway just because I thought that it needed to be bigger than a checklist. I was able to create a nice looking checklist, that I had made in Word, in under 30 minutes. Now I have something of value to give to my subscribers!
Cheers,
Irma 🙂