5 Lead Magnet Ideas for Any Business

To be successful at any business, we tell companies to have a lead magnet of some kind. If you’re unfamiliar with this term, it’s an irresistible offer that provides a visitor or prospect with some form of very specific value. This offer needs to be good enough to make them trade their personal contact information for it. Here’s a breakdown of what we mean.

The most important words to remember are: Value and Specific.

Being specific is the key to developing a winning lead magnet. There’s no need to make the “ultimate guide” and go into fine details when creating a formula (you don’t want it to sound like work.) Instead, you need to offer a solution to solve a lead’s specific problem.

This will make your content easily consumable and highly desired.

For example, let’s say that you created an organizational chart template. This product has a high level of potential — it’s a simple template or swipe file that also tells you whether or not your customers have a team. It’s a win-win solution.

You also need to bring value to come up with the right lead magnet, but this is a twofold step. First, you need to create the perception that the value you offer is high, then you need the value of your product to be just as high. You don’t want to market something that just isn’t impressive; otherwise, people will think you’re just as unimpressive.

Now that you’re caught up with what a lead magnet is, here are five of our most effective lead magnets that anyone and any business can use.

1. Templates All the Way

Believe it or not, people absolutely love templates. People go wild for lead magnet templates because they are the best shortcut to reach your audience. What makes them so great is that you don’t need to be in the landing page business, website creation space, or email business to create templates for your customers, you can do it any time you please.

A template is a simple tool that you can hand over to your audience, which they can fill in and implement in their business. You can also create plenty of other solutions such as ad templates, email templates, customer persona/avatar templates, and marketing scorecards.

2. Checklists and Cheat Sheets

A checklist or cheat sheet is one of the most effective kinds of lead magnets because let’s face it, nobody wants an eBook or a PDF. No one has the time to read long books anymore, but people will make time for content as long as it’s precise and can be easily absorbed.

A cheat sheet can be excellent for niches that need reference points, making marketing and business the perfect choice. You can create a keyword, buzzword, or a glossary cheat sheet, and even a list of simple calculations that many people can benefit from. The easiest way to create a cheat sheet is to find out what questions your audience is asking, then gather the answers and place them inside a user-friendly reference guide.

Using a checklist, while different, can be a much more effective solution. Our team believes in providing step-by-step, tactical advice and that anything outside of that is unnecessary fluff. Making a checklist is a great way to ensure that tasks get done correctly the first time around.

Whichever industry you work in, you can find a checklist that you can make use of. Creating a useful checklist involves making sure that it addresses a specific task that people need to do, then put it to the test using the “Peanut Butter & Jelly” method. This is a great way to teach your team how to explain something step-by-step.

The Peanut Butter & Jelly test provides you with the steps you need to go through while allowing you to address the process sequentially and concisely. For example, if we were to ask you, “How do you make a PB&J?” obviously you’d answer with “You gotta spread peanut butter first,” but we’ll follow up with, “But where did you get your peanut butter? Where did you get that?” and “Where do we spread it?”

3. Discounts or Free Shipping

While coupons aren’t real lead magnets, you can still take advantage of free shipping and discounts so you can turn them into a lead magnet that will tick most of the boxes. If you’re running an e-commerce or a brick and mortar shop, you may not have too many ideas for lead magnets. On the other hand, if visitors are already on your page, you don’t want them to navigate away from a potential purchase.

To make your life easier, just offer free shipping or enter a discount in exchange for their contact information. Yes, it’s as simple as that. Aim to get new visitors coming to your site and lower the barrier for entry — this will make the decision to buy much easier (which can happen right at that moment or during the follow-up emails you send later.)

4. Video Training

No, we’re not talking about webinars. While it’s true that webinars are an excellent way to find leads and create sales, they are meant to be an event. When someone declines the invitation for that webinar, you can’t be sure if they’re saying no to the content, date, or time.

Limited-time and on-demand video training have been a game-changing tool in recent years. However, we’ve steered away from using evergreen webinar funnels and instead provide premium video content with the promise of access to it as long as they register within a designated time frame. The key is always to provide your audience with ACCESS.

In this way, whenever someone arrives at your landing page, they’re not worrying about checking the calendar or weighing options. But they are surely evaluating your content and the value it can provide them, so make sure they understand that. One last thing, placing “limited time only” is the hook that will trigger their action, so make sure that it’s a good one!

5. Swipe Files

Many businesses will have an email folder full of swipe-able emails, a Slack channel just for swipe-able examples, and a swipe-able pages (for content, copy, and design) bookmark folder. If you’re not like these businesses, however, you need to be. You have to be obsessed with the industry you work in, and in doing so, you may even surprise yourself. This is where the swipe file comes in.

The swipe file is one of the most potent lead magnets you can make use of. This is because two essential truths make a swipe file that makes them desirable and useful:

  • People are lazy
  • There’s too much readily available information online

If you’re correctly curating swipe files, you can complete a huge amount of research to compile what you’ve discovered into a single file and then provide it to your audience in exchange for their contact information. Swipe files can be used for more than just lead magnets. Here are other ways that swipe files can be used:

  • Social media swipe file
  • FB Ad templates
  • 101 Blog subject lines

Recap

So, to wrap it up, you need to take advantage of these lead magnet ideas and strategies to establish a long-lasting and robust business. Providing your audience with Specifics and Value is all you need. With just these two words, you can create the following:

  • Templates all the way
  • Checklists and cheat sheets
  • Discounts or free shipping
  • Video Training
  • Swipe files

Are You Ready To Grow Your Business?

Contact us today and see how Mad Capper Marketing can help you grow your business and client database with our proven 5 step program
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