In this post we will show you how to create lead magnets for your business. Included in the post you can find;

1. What is a lead magnet?
2. Video walkthrough and examples
3. Worksheet download

Content marketing is often referred to as a “pull strategy,” as opposed to a “push strategy.”

Instead of pushing out messages about how great your business is, content marketing aims to create customer-focused, engaging content. This content should attract (or pull) your target audience towards your product or service.

That’s why, following on from mapping your content themes in part five, the sixth part of our Growth Mapper framework is dedicated to magnetic content — and in particular, lead magnets.

This type of content draws a reader in with the promise of solving a particular problem. They get the solution in exchange for their email address, ultimately nudging them along the funnel, from a cold and casual browser to a warm, ready-to-buy lead.

And in this short post, we’re giving you a sneak peek at our Lead Magnet exercise — a quick way to drill down into the problems your customers might encounter and the types of content you need to publish to solve them.

Here, you’ll learn:

• What all great lead magnets have in common;

• How to create your own using our Lead Magnet Builder exercise;

• And how doing so can be the first step towards a relationship built on trust.

Plus, at the bottom of the post, you’ll find a free worksheet download to help you build your own lead magnet from scratch.

Ready? Let’s go.

A lead magnet is exactly what it sounds like: something that pulls your customer towards your business that they then access in exchange for information (hence the “lead” part).

Of course, people don’t just hand over their email addresses on a whim. An effective lead magnet needs to offer your visitor value to make it seem like a fair swap.

This is usually a piece of content that will help them solve a problem, like a newsletter, eBook, guide or whitepaper — or it might be a product demo, trial subscription, or free sample.

The best lead magnets tend to have the following three things in common:

• Relevancy: Your lead magnet needs to resonate with your target audience. It has to agitate a pain point and offer most of the solution (not all of it — more on that below).

• Value: We mentioned value above, but it bears repeating. What are you giving your prospect that’s of equal value to their name and email address? Will accessing your lead magnet make their life better or easier? Will it save them money? What’s in it for them?

• Purpose: Spoiler alert. A lead magnet’s true purpose is to generate a lead. While you want to make sure your content is valuable, you can’t make it too valuable. Otherwise, you might solve your prospect’s problem outright without them needing your (or your product’s) help.

The following exercise can help you create an effective lead magnet that hits all three of those points with ease.

In the graphic above, you’ll see two sections. The first focuses on providing your customer with just ONE win. A win starts with solving a single problem or challenge. Or, in other words, we want to ensure our lead magnet is relevant and valuable to a customer’s pain point.

These problems should come easily once you’ve created your ideal customer profile and content map.

The second section focuses on breaking down that one big problem into smaller, more manageable chunks, from which we’ll create our lead magnets.

So, let’s take a look at this exercise in action below, where we use a wannabe woodworker and a novice baker as our examples.

This exercise is a super quick and effective way to provide your customer with value equal to their name and email address.

To start, we fill in the first section with a couple of wins: one for our woodworker and one for our baker. Our woodworker wants to build a log store, while our baker (unsurprisingly) wants to bake a cake. Nice and simple.

The next stage is to chunk these down into their composite parts. You take the main problem, challenge, or goal and break it down into even smaller issues that require a specific solution.

• For the woodworking project, our prospect might lack a reliable and easy-to-follow blueprint for a log store, or they may not know which tools or materials they need to do the job properly.

• Meanwhile, the baker might be looking for a specific recipe type (sugar-free or gluten-free, for example) and step-by-step instructions.

Once we’ve chunked down these problems, we select one and aim to solve it for the customer. In doing so, they hand over their email address, and we achieve a conversion. At that point, they’re in the pipeline and can be nurtured with additional sales and marketing activities.

Finally, we choose a format for our lead magnet. The quality of content is obviously important; however, the medium in which it’s delivered can’t be overlooked. For example, both our woodworker and our baker may wish to print out their step-by-step instructions to scribble on or score out the steps as they go. So, rather than confining this content to a web page or video, it might be better served as a printable PDF.

With your content and format selected, you now have a lead magnet you can map against the AIDA (attention, interest, desire, and action) journey. At each touchpoint, you can offer a valuable solution while moving them along the sales funnel.

Key Takeaway: Before someone buys from you, they need to know, like, and trust you. From the moment they land on your website, they get to know you. A lead magnet can go some way towards helping them like you, trust you, and ultimately buy from you.

Let’s revisit our woodworker example one last time to illustrate this. Let’s say you’re a timber merchant and you want to target amateur woodworkers to move some excess stock. By creating a step-by-step guide to building a log store, complete with measurements and tool and timber recommendations, you’re providing real value in exchange for your prospect’s info.

You could then use their name and email address to run a personalised follow-up campaign, encouraging them to bite the bullet and start their log store project. And guess what? You can supply them with the timber they need to make it happen.

That is a lead magnet in action.

Head over to our Resources Area to access the Profit Workbook, and discover a whole range of resources to implement in your business. Or, if you’re ahead of the game, book a call in with our Growth Experts.

We’ve designed each section of our Growth Mapper framework around a critical part of your business growth. We start with the basics and drill down into the details, giving you a clear picture of the opportunities and challenges moving forward.