The Top 5 Essential AND EVERGREEN Lead Magnets
It's not a secret that growing an email list audience in addition to your other social media platforms is essential to building a business that allows you to leverage passive income. You need two things to grow that email list: a CRM (Client Relationship Management) tool like MailChimp or ConvertKit and a lead magnet for people to "opt-in" to receive.
I have a list of 30 lead magnets if you need help with ideas but lead magnets boil down to 5 basic formats.
1. PDF Resource (e-book, workbook, checklist, etc)
2. Action or Accountability "Challenge"
3. Strategy Call
4. Educational Webinar or Workshop
5. Mini-Course
The simplest lead magnet could take you 5 minutes to create, and 10 minutes to set up for delivery and 30 minutes to craft the graphics and copy. In one hour you could be growing an email list.
Seriously.
But that may not be what is considered a "high value" lead magnet.
Depending on your goals, you may want to have a more developed or "high value" gift for you opt-in subscribers. This is where a webinar, workshop or mini-course would come in but those are much more time and labor intensive to create, setup and promote. However, they have higher conversion rates for turning opt-in subscribers into clients or customers.
Get My Decision Matrix for Choosing the Best Lead Magnet for your Business
Let's break down each of the lead magnets and some of the benefits to each.
1. PDF Resource (e-book, workbook, checklist, etc)
You can create a simple checklist or bullet point guide in a word processor such as Microsoft Word, Pages or even Google Drive and export it to a PDF format. Depending on your content this can be a very quick yet lucrative list growing lead magnet.
It can be a PDF about anything really. You can also market it as an e-book or a workbook if it is multiple pages.
I encourage clients to start here if they are at the very beginning and need to just start growing their list.
Create the magnet, set up the lead page or landing page, set up the auto-delivery in your CRM and promote it on your social media platforms of your choice.
2. Action or Accountability "Challenge"
A "challenge" is an opportunity for someone to get a low level of accountability to work on something they need to do but have been struggling to take action on.
For example, there are "visibility" challenges that can look like a 5 day series either in a Facebook group or drip email sequence. In the challenge, participants are encouraged to take specific actions to post about their service, a tip about the industry they are in, share a testimonial from a client, an insight regarding what they wish they had done earlier and so on. It helps get your ideal client persona unstuck and allows you to showcase your authority and authenticity (or your expertise and personality.)
This allows you to nurture and educate future customers and clients. By setting this lead magnet and system up on auto-schedulers you can be passively building an engaged audience or list while focusing on other tasks.
Create the idea of the challenge, set up the lead page or landing page, write the daily challenge action copy for your emails or posts, create graphics to go with each day, set up the auto-delivery in your CRM and promote it on your social media platforms of your choice.
3. Strategy Call
If you feel like you show up best in a one-to-one (1:1) scenario to showcase your services and expertise, then offering a free consultation or strategy call may be a great option for you. This can quickly eat up time in your week so you should consider how many of these you would like to offer each week. (Tip: Limited slots creates urgency for the potential clients anyhow so by time-blocking for your own sanity you can create a positive by-product in your potential clients!)
Create the copy and parameters for the call, set up the lead page or landing page with an auto-scheduler ( I use and recommend Acuity), allow them to choose a time that works best for them, show up and serve!
4. Educational Webinar or Workshop
Out of all the lead magnet options, this one can be the longest and hardest to setup due to the many moving pieces to consider, especially as a newbie. However, once you do it once, it gets MUCH easier each time you do it, since you've set up most of your systems and slide decks. By offering the education for free it can be a VERY good list builder and it can also be one of the MOST lucrative forms of income with an incentivized offer at the end of the educational portion of the webinar.
It's also a great investment of your time because once you create it, you can repurpose it into a course or workshop and sell it passively.
Create the webinar slide deck and offer, set up the lead page or landing page to register for the webinar, create a cart for the offer, create email reminders, create promotional copy and graphics, promte, show up and do the webinar!
5. Mini-Course
If done well, this can be one of the most passive and evergreen lead-magnets you can create. However, it does require a bit of fore-thought as to how it best fits into your sales funnel. By choosing a foundational topic and explaining it well you can promote your mini-course YEAR ROUND since it will always be relevant to your potential clients and customers.
You can do a mini-course either as a drip email sequence or via a course platform such as Teachable or Udemy. If the course is extensive you may need to craft copy, graphics, video tutorials, PDF guides, workbooks or other materials, depending on your industry.
It can be as simple or complex as you like. I offer a free mini-course that is fairly extensive that I continue to build out as I create more relevant content.
It's called The Legacy Driven Entrepreneur and covers the basics of business such as Branding, Building a Website and Basic Online Business Methods as well as some bonus modules from guest experts on pricing, accounting, and marketing. Feel free to check it out as a sample of a mini-course.
Create the course content, set up the lead page or landing page to opt-in to the course, create a drip sequence or upload content to the course platform, create promotional copy and graphics, and promte it!
All of these lead magnets are great options.
In fact, I recommend building up to having at least one of each in your online business.
But that can feel overwhelming. Depending on your business and goals, you may find that one lead magnet is a better fit than the other. So how do you choose?
Fortunately for you, I've created a decision matrix that will help you decide what lead magnet idea to pursue based on 4 specific criteria. It's a no brainer system that is plug and chug and helps you visually see what is the most OBVIOUS choice for your business based on your needs and goals.
Everyone's business is different so I don't like to offer cookie cutter solutions. Instead, I prefer to give you tools and strategies that empower you to take a solid, proven model (Like list building with lead magnets) and customize it for you and your audience.
Again, you will be making the BEST decision for your business based on 4 qualifiers. With the decision matrix you will list out your best ideas (if you need ideas, get 30 here) and then rate them according to how time intensive it is to develop, your personal excitement about creating it, the likeliness of growing your list or platform and the likeliness to be monetized and actually help you generate income either immediately or down the road.
Because what's the point of doing something you are mega-stoked about but has no income potential? That would be a waste of time!
If you are dragging your feet to build a mini-course but know it has great ROI (Return On Investment) potential, it will probably come through in the quality of your course.
These are important things to consider when deciding what lead magnet to create next. Struggling to decide what lead magnet to create first? Get my tool for making decisions that make sense for YOUR business!
