Lead magnets are a great way to introduce potential students to your course, as well as build your email list. It is about the value they get from using your product or service. 

Also, lead magnets don’t need to be difficult to create. In fact, there are really only two “rules” to lead magnets—they need to offer something to the potential lead and they need to showcase your knowledge. Lead magnets can be whipped up in a matter of hours or take a few days depending on the type of lead magnet you use. 

What makes a good lead magnet?

A good lead magnet is course subject appropriate 

Any lead magnet you create should be related to your course subject – there’s no use in creating an eBook on budget travel when your course is on caring for reptiles. Lead magnets on random subjects essentially just clog your website and it doesn’t allow for a clear idea on what your potential students should be expecting. 

Try and link your lead magnets in with your course subject – even if it is an off-shoot topic, it should be in the same information niche. 

A good lead magnet is easy to understand

A lead magnet needs to be easy for the reader to understand and absorb. While we may have a lot of technical or high level information in our course, we need to break that down into easy to manage chunks. This may mean you create a few different lead magnets, or that you use the more captivating pieces of information in your lead magnet to draw people into your course. 

When creating a lead magnet, consider that the person reading it may be completely new to your field – what is the base information they need to know, to know that your course will help them? 

A good lead magnet delivers quick wins

Potential students will sign up for your email list or for your lead magnet because they are looking for quick wins—that is, information that will teach them something in a few pages or in a short video course. 

Some ideas for lead magnets that provide the quick win include:

• A free PDF that solves a micro problem – a “how to” or 10 simple techniques type PDF
• A handy checklist – find a pain point and keep your checklist under 15 items
• A Q & A of the most asked questions  you get or common questions in your industry
• A recommended list of tools or resources 
• Downloadable templates
• A chapter of an eBook 

A good lead magnet is relationship building

When you first put your course out there, there’s a good chance that not many people will know who you are, and it will take some time to build up a trusted audience. Lead magnets can fast track that relationship building by showing your potential students that you know your stuff, and that your knowledge can help them. 

A nurture email sequence is a great way to show this knowledge, drip feeding a little bit of information every email. This email sequence should be sent to everyone who downloads your lead magnet, and you may even like to create one for people who enquire about your course. 

Building a Lead Magnet

So now we’ve looked at the features that identify a lead magnet, how do we go about making one? 

The first thing you need to do when creating your lead magnet is to brainstorm and create an outline of what you want your lead magnet to be and what you want it to provide. 

Think about the pain points people experience related to your course subject, what information they need that could fix those pain points, and what information you can provide to them to give those quick wins. 

Once you know what you want to provide, it’s time to pull the content together. This might mean going through old blog posts and pulling out relevant information, or going through your course and deciding which chapter will work best for your lead magnet. 

Types of lead magnets you should consider using

Ebooks 

Ebooks or mini guides solve a specific problem and they are also easy to create, which makes them great lead magnets. Ebooks are educational, entertaining, or even highly visual.

Ebooks tend not to be data-heavy; they’re easy reading and often conversational guides that help readers fully understand a topic.

If you have a series of blog posts about a related subject, you can compile the content using Canva or Designrr and transform them into a mini ebook. You can even create mockups for your ebooks to make it attractive for your audience to download for free.

Successful lead magnets offer an instant reward to your visitors and ebooks check off that box easily. 

Quizzes

An interactive quiz enables you to learn more about your prospect and let you follow up with targeted information specific to them. Also, studies show that people always want to learn more about themselves and their environment, thus quizzes are a great way to attract and covert leads to your course.

What is also great about quizzes is that they are easy to use and can be used over time making it a simple but effective lead magnet. There are online quiz maker tools like Interact that can easily help you generate quizzes to engage your audience.

Webinars 

Running a webinar as part of your marketing gives potential students the opportunity to see what you know and to get a feel for your course.

Webinars give your audience a chance to dig into engaging video content and, often, to ask questions in a Q&A session. 

If the content is evergreen, you can offer recorded webinars as an on-demand after the initial live event, which can deliver leads for months and even years to come.

Keep each webinar narrowly focused on a specific problem or pain point. Tools like eWebinar and Webinar Ninja can help you host webinars in no time.

Mini Courses

Selling your courses is a way to feature your expertise to an audience. Why not allow people to experience what it’s like to join your course especially if they are not ready to make a full commitment. 

Though not as quick to create, mini courses are excellent lead magnets because it is a great way to give your audience a chance to try out your courses. This gives them a huge win since courses tend to offer more information and solution to their problems. 

Thinkific is a great too for hosting your free courses and making them available for your audience to join and leads your students to the platform where your course will be delivered.

Challenges

Starting a series of challenges is a great lead magnet option as it allows your audience to follow along and participate each activity, plus it gives them a win after every challenge. 

Challenges can be in a series of emails using a tool like Mailerlite and can be anywhere from three to 10+ emails that cover a specific topic. Challenges can also be delivered on social media like your Facebook Group community.

In addition, you have multiple opportunities to nurture your audience and guide them down the buyer’s journey. Challenges give your students an interactive way to experience your courses or you as a teacher which will ultimately bring them to your purchase content. 

Final takeaway

Creating a leading magnet is all about educating your market on your topics or industries which can then guide their purchasing decisions. A good quality lead magnet is a great way to attract new students to your course, and introduce yourself and your knowledge to them. 

Sponsored Content: This post is sponsored content and the placement has been paid for or contains affiliate links. For complete information, see our terms of use.