How do you attract new clients and customers without spending a huge amount of time and money on advertising your brand? 

For a lot of small businesswomen, this is an invaluable skill as you build your business and your client base.

And the answer is actually a lot more straightforward than you might think. To attract clients, you need a magnet – a lead magnet.

To attract clients, you need a magnet – a lead magnet.

The Power of Lead Magnets

So what is a lead magnet, you ask? 

In a nutshell, a lead magnet is a free or low-cost incentive or gift that you present to your target market in exchange for their email address or other contact information. Potential customers will give you their email address in exchange for that gift, if it is enticing enough. This is an effective lead generation strategy that helps you build that oh-so-important email list. 

And while building your fempire, you need to make growing your email list a priority so that you can start making connections and start moving your leads through your sales funnel.

And without lead magnets, it’s a much harder – and slower – process to build that list. 

My milkshake lead magnet brings all the boys new customers to the yard.

Now, you may already be using a CTA (call to action) in your blogs, social media posts, videos and website pop-ups asking people to subscribe to your mailing list.

And this is a good, but passive and slow way to build your list. 

But if you want to become a total marketing bossbabe, you need to step it up and start actively asking for those valuable email addresses. 

If you want to become a total marketing bossbabe, you need to step it up and start actively asking for those valuable email addresses. #emailmarketingtips Click To Tweet

So what makes a lead magnet different from the call to action you’re already using?

It’s about access, exclusivity, and the quality of the content.

Lead magnets are what is known as gated-content, meaning that in order to access them, your audience has to fill out a form and give you some personal information. 

Most people aren’t willing to just hand over their names and email addresses without a compelling reason to do so, even if they’re part of your target market and a fan of your brand. Your lead magnet is that compelling reason, and the more valuable it is, the more people will be willing to join your list in exchange for that offer. 

To learn more about creating your free lead magnets, watch get our free #1 Strategy to Grow Your Email List from Scratch mini-course. 

Is Your Lead Magnet Useful, Entertaining, Educational, or Community-Building?

Before we get into a few of the different types of lead magnets, let’s talk about the different categories your lead magnet content may fall under.

Useful
These types of lead magnets are usually popular, as they offer specific solutions to an issue your target market is facing. Their purpose is to save your customers some time, effort, and money.

Entertaining
These lead magnets are novel as their main purpose is to simply offer your customers some form of entertainment or enjoyment.

Educational
Educational lead magnets are, of course, educational in nature. Their purpose is to teach your audience about a specific topic that they are looking for more information on. These types of lead magnets have the added benefit of helping establish you as an industry expert.

Community-building
These types of lead magnets are useful when you want to foster a dialogue with your audience. They help build brand loyalty and can also encourage interaction within your audience. 

So what categories are right for you?

It’s important to know the category before choosing a type of lead magnet as it helps you define the purpose and its goal.

What does your target market want from you? This will depend on your industry and your demographic. A life coach’s primary purpose is probably going to be offering education, while a company like Buzzfeed focuses primarily on entertainment. 

So know your purpose before you move on to choosing a lead magnet to create. 

And once you’ve decided on your purpose, you need to choose the right type of lead magnet for that purpose.

11 Lead Magnet Examples to Get You Started

And to help you out, here are 11 of the best lead magnets that you can use to grow your list and build your fempire! 

Checklists (Useful)

Common format: fillable PDF
Checklists are probably one of the best converting lead magnets out there. They are both easy to create and easy to consume and are a popular choice for both customers and creators. 

Check out our free lead magnet checklist! 

See what we did there?.. That’s a lead magnet 😉

Reports (Educational)

Common format: PDF 
Reports are one of the more common types of lead magnets. They are an opportunity for you to educate your audience about a specific topic or aspect of your business. They should be relatively short and to the point – don’t overwhelm your audience by including too much information. 

Calendars (Useful)

Common formats: Google Sheets, Trello, fillable PDFs.   
Calendars are a popular lead magnet to use in a number of industries. They are easily made and highly customisable. The type of calendar you offer can be specified for your industry and for your audience. If you’re in the fitness industry, you might offer a meal planner or an exercise calendar. Or if you’re in marketing you might decide to create a really simple social media calendar or something similar.

Free Trials/Sessions (Useful)

Common Formats: In-person meeting, phone call, video call
Instead of creating a physical piece of content, you may choose to offer a free trial or session as your lead magnet. This is more commonly used by services and can be a great opportunity to build relationships with new, potential clients. For example, at Fempire we offer a free 30-minute coaching session with one of our Fempire coaches. 

Ebooks (Educational)

Common format: PDF
Another really common lead magnet you can create is an ebook. Like reports, lead manget ebooks can be a great way to provide information about a specific topic that relates to your business or a course that you offer. It needs to be relatively short (less than 20 pages), as anything long or hard to digest will stop your prospective customer from progressing through your sales funnel. Ebooks are a very popular lead magnet idea for coaches.

Templates (Useful)

Common formats: Google Sheets, PDF
Templates are also a popular, easy to create lead magnet. Templates provide a starting point for your audience to solve their issue themselves by filling in the blanks provided. 

Webinars (Educational)

Common Formats: Webinar platform e.g. EasyWebinar, WebinarJam
Webinars take a little bit longer to plan and set up but can be great converters. They don’t have to be long or overly involved, in fact, I would recommend creating a simple webinar to start off with. Once you start to become known as an expert in your industry, you can offer longer, more involved webinars. 

For example, at Fempire we run our Marketing & Social Media WebEvent. You can join us at our next WebEvent by joining our email list and keeping an eye out for announcements. 

Quiz (Entertaining)

Common format: Digital, PDF
Your lead magnet doesn’t always have to be a way to impart your wisdom or even be very useful. Sometimes all your target market wants is some light entertainment. Quizzes are a great way to do this as they intrigue people and trigger curiosity. You just need to find a topic that is both relevant to your audience and your business. 

To create your own quiz, check out one of these lead magnet tools: Lead Quizzes, Interact, Survey Monkey.

Worksheet (Useful)

Common format: Fillable PDF, Google Docs
You’ve probably come across a lot of free worksheets online, and there’s a reason for this – they generally make pretty good lead magnets. They provide a structured learning experience which appeals to a lot of people. 

Facebook Group (Community-building)

Common Formats: Facebook, Zoom, Clubhouse
That’s right, your Facebook group can be a lead magnet! These are generally private facebook groups where your target market can network and discuss common issues. You might set it up so that only people who sign up to your list can join. Get creative by making them use a secret password to join or keep it exclusive by only sending them an invite to the group once they’ve signed up through the lead magnet form. 

Infographic (Educational) 

Common formats: PDF, PNG
As you can see from the example, Infographics are super visual and so they do a great job of breaking down difficult to digest information and making it interesting. They can make great lead magnets, however, they can be time-consuming to create so you need to ensure that the information you’re including is relevant and enticing to your target market

Lead magnets, when done well, can be incredible assets that help you grow your email list, expand your customer base, and even help you establish yourself as an industry expert! 

So if you’re not currently harnessing their power, it’s time to start getting creative.

We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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Don’t forget to sign up for our free Lead Magnet mini-course to learn more about creating and promoting your own amazing lead magnet!

And if you have any other questions about lead magnets, leave a comment below as we’d be happy to help. 

If you’d like more personalised help in building your business, fill out this form, and we can set you up with one of our amazing female business coaches. Xox