10 Lead Magnet Ideas + Examples

A landing page will fall flat on its face if the lead magnet sucks.

And since the entire purpose of a landing page is to convert targets into customers, it doesn’t make any sense to stick a sucky lead magnet on it—that’s like paying for something that’s broken on purpose 😳

Wasting conversion opportunities at the landing page stage isn’t a small thing because it

• ruins the end game of your Google ad campaign
• ruins the end game of your SEO efforts 
• empties your conversion funnel 
• wastes money 😞
• lets your sales team down 😭
• hurts your credibility 😣
• is dumb 🤪

Use a sucky lead magnet one time, and it’s FUBAR (f*cked up bad all round) 👈 There’s swearing involved.

But how sucky is it? And what makes it suck?

We figure all that out in the rest of this post. 

We also give you 10 lead magnet ideas that work amazingly well and tell you why they work so you can use a few of them to

• bring home the end game of your Google ad campaign
• bring home the end game of your SEO efforts 
• fill your conversion funnel 
• make money 🤑
• make your sales team happy 😁
• build credibility 🥰
• feel confident about your landing page conversion rate optimization (CRO) 😎

Is your free consultation lead magnet the same lead magnet used by all of your competitors? Be honest. If it is, that’s a doozy sin according to lead magnet dogma.

As Peep Laja over at Conversion XL advises,

“What makes a good value proposition? An offer that’s differentiated from your competitors.”

The Free Consultation offer might be what you want to offer your prospects, but it’s a lead magnet that’s best offered at the end of the buying cycle. 

Which means no one wants your free consultation.

Why?

Because a free consultation means your visitors already know that consultation is what they need. It means they’ve already researched their problem and compared legal organizations, and they’ve picked you as their representative firm.

But 99% of your visitors haven’t done that research. 

They don’t know the value of your free consultation, and they don’t see it as something to get excited about. 

So what are some better lead magnet ideas? 

Let’s start with a clear definition first and talk about how to make a lead magnet before hitting that list.

A lead magnet is something you give away to get something. The thing you get is an email address (or phone number). The thing you give away is valuable information that your potential customer wants badly enough to hand over their contact information.

A lead magnet is a marketing tool that generates leads to fill your sales funnel. 

Lead magnets can take the form of an eBook, whitepaper, toolkit, checklist, template, email course (step-by-step tutorial), video course, swipe file, printable workbook, infographic, coupon, ultimate guide, and similar downloadable assets.

Our client, BigTime Software, saw their conversions increase by 47%, in part because of their landing page lead magnet.

A good lead magnet must look as good as it works; its form must be on par with its function. It also needs to have a clear call-to-action (CTA) so your prospects know what they’re getting. 

You can use a SaaS app like Canva to create lead magnets or opt for a lead magnet generator like Beacon.

Or, if you have in-house designers, they can make fantastic lead magnets for you.

Then you add those high-quality graphics to your form and hook your CTA button up to email list management software like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Klaviyo, AWeber, or Constant Contact.

Let’s get creative. 

Here are 10 of the best lead magnet examples you can use to push your visitors toward that conversion step (opt-in). Use this top-ten as a lead generation cheat sheet for your content marketing team.

This is a low-friction, easy-to-make offer that not many companies use, but it can turn you into a trustworthy industry thought leader.

Emma, an email marketing company, packages up value in a fun and easy way. They make brand awareness lead magnets to convince people to take the first conversion step.

Cynthia Price (Director of Marketing at Emma) explained how this type of approach works for them:

“We get that someone seeing a display ad isn’t necessarily interested in learning more about our product just yet. It’s all about brand awareness, and more importantly for us, trust-building. So we offer content that we think will be valuable and helpful to our audience’s marketing efforts. It starts our brand relationship off on the right foot, helps them understand the strength of our expertise, and paves the way for us to nurture or retarget them in the future.”

Find an interesting angle you can take on stats and figures that will delight your target audience in an educational way.

If you’re familiar with social proof and the conversion power of other people vouching for your products and services, then you won’t be surprised that case studies make valuable lead magnets. 

There’s a reason why half of all content marketers depend on case studies as lead magnets for conversions. According to HubSpot’s 2021 State of Marketing Report, they’re #3 on the list. 

But using a case study as a lead magnet (which works because your customer does the convincing) only works if you use them the right way. 

Here’s what your case study should include:

• The problem that existed
• What the strategy was to fix the problem
• Visual proof of what you did to fix it
• Before/after stats from your improvements
• Testimonial from the happy customer

That’s it. 

Keep it straightforward. Anything else is overkill. Learn more about where you should place your case studies, what format to use, and how the layout should look.

If you have a product or service where the lifetime customer value exceeds that of a few corner store bananas, then using a well-designed t-shirt as a lead magnet is a great idea to differentiate yourself.

 But don’t cheap out by slapping your logo on a Walmart tee.

Instead, take the time to find a quality designer on Dribbble and get some custom ink printed on high-quality American Apparel shirts.

It’ll cost you a little more money, but the impression you make is priceless.

There’s a reason why highly-respected companies like InVision use t-shirts to drive email subscribers:

I’ll give you my email, follow you on Twitter, and add you on Facebook—because I want to win.

Giving someone a branded product immediately builds loyalty if you do it right. 

Downloadable things are awesome. 

They work even better when paired with the right topic at the right conversion moment.

Makes sense.

Let’s use ourselves as an example:

At KlientBoost, we offer Google Ads and CRO landing page services.

On our blog, we write about conversion rate optimization, landing page design, retargeting, Google Ads management, and other PPC channels.

We use a lead magnet with a high chance of conversion success on the right side of every blog.

If you’re reading a post about PPC, would you like a free marketing plan that includes a PPC strategy?

But a blog post isn’t the only place you should promote your freebies.

You could use lead magnets on exit popups or in hero sections of service pages like we do on our Google Ads landing page.

Your goal should be to either create a more appealing version of the content that’s been done before or cover something new that no one else has.

Differentiation + lead magnet topic timing for the conversion win.  

If you’ve ever run a webinar that got great results and helped out a ton of people, why not use that pre-recorded webinar as your lead magnet?

CXL does this with hundreds of webinars and allows people to watch and learn in exchange for a completed form.

Make it simple, but only allow people access to the specific URL after filling out your form.

With live webinars, it’s common to see high conversion rates on the actual sign-up page, but keep in mind that they’re also a thought leader type of site, so you may not see the same results if you’re just starting out.

If your business model requires human interaction, then there’s a good chance your clients and prospects want to hear from you first, either through a pre-recorded webinar or podcast.

Milking a piece of content for all it’s worth = yes. 🤑

Repurpose the slides from your webinar as another lead magnet.

At SlideShare, there’s a tool called LeadShare that collects leads from your SlideShare presentation ✨👏 ✨

If you designed a beautiful presentation that got people’s attention, there’s a good chance you can capture their information on the last slide with a lead generation form.

Many stories and case studies have examined how companies use SlideShare to generate traffic, leads, and sales. The marketing software Marketo uses SlideShare to trigger alerts when leads come in containing specific keywords.

Recycle what works, and the possibilities are endless when it comes to lead magnets.

When you use a marketing tool, you make great lead magnets. 

But what happens when you engineer a marketing tool for lead magnets?

A tool is valuable to a visitor who’s interested in making high-converting lead magnets. But, as the owner of the tool, it’s a valuable way to capture conversions with the Make Your Lead Magnet (CTA) button.

This is more of a programming/coding commitment than other lead magnets we’ve talked about. But don’t rule out the value of it when you have enough traffic to justify the time and money to build it.

No brainer, right?

So many software brands offer the chance to try their services for free. Kinda like Unbounce does at the end of each of their blog posts.

There are plenty of freemium lead magnets out there, but we’re going to focus on one: test driving your bread-n-butter offering.

Whether you’re B2C (Business to Consumer), B2B (Business to Business), SaaS (Software as a Service), or HaaS (Human as a Service 👈 here’s lookin’ at you, Uber), give your prospects a peek at what you can do before they buy to increase your chances of closing more business.

It’s a phenomenal lead magnet.

The more quality traffic you drum up, the higher your likelihood of getting more free trial conversions.

So if you’re thinking:

“That doesn’t apply to what I do. My business isn’t software. I’m a human that does human things.”

My response would be:

“None of your competitors are doing this, so you should give it a shot.”

And then I’ll raise my eyebrows, give you a wink 😜, and reassure you that if you’re confident in what you do and your ability to bring results, then a free trial can be a great way to get your foot in the door.

And then, want to know what you can do with that? Turn it into a case study

(see #2 👆).

Put in some free work to generate social proof for yourself and, if all goes well, maybe even sign on some new clients.

Even if you’ve been in business for a long time, a free trial can outperform a free consultation all day long if no one else is willing to do it.

Just like the guide and the eBook, mini-courses offer educational value.

Online education is expected to reach $374.3 billion by 2026. You can sell your services and show off your expertise while making a lucrative, passive, long-term buck.

But how is this a lead magnet? 

If you give away your course, aren’t you giving away your own formula?

It’s a lead magnet opportunity because you give away parts of your course, and not all at once. 

These courses work with weekly emails (build your email list), videos, audio recordings, and quizzes that separate the lessons. This way, your business holds value to the subscriber/purchaser over time.

“Video content is the preferred lead magnet type among solopreneurs, who account for 60% of our study participants.”— GetResponse

Continuously offer your services to your audience and be sure to sell them on the convenience factor of becoming a true customer rather than just a mini-course subscriber.

One of our clients, Cell Vault, increased conversion volume by 86%, in part because of quiz lead magnets.

I saved this one for the end because calculators aren’t the easiest lead magnet idea to pitch. They can be complicated and require coding skills or developer assistance.

But we live in an age where typing is taught instead of cursive and coding is taught in school as part of the science/math curriculum. It’s becoming commonplace. So if coding isn’t a problem for you, this can be an effective way to capitalize on opportunities other prospects miss out on.

There’s nothing more persuasive than coding a tool that shows people data specific to them.

HubSpot agrees. 

Have you ever wondered how your site stacks up against the competition? Use HubSpot’s Marketing Grader to find out. All it takes is your email to get the results 😏

Calculators (graders) are created to increase trust and establish the companies who offer them as the authority in their space.

VWO made an A/B split testing calculator as a lead magnet.

Simply hand over your contact information to get the A/B test results. Once you point out what’s working (and where there’s room for growth), it’s an easy upsell to the rest of your sales team.

Digital marketing uses SEO to get people to your landing page. But you need effective lead magnets to convert those people into customers once they land there.

What type of lead magnet you use is up to you depending on your industry, bandwidth, skills, CMS integrations (Shopify eCommerce apps or WordPress plugins), and your offer. 

Whether you’re a freelancer, entrepreneur, blogger, small business owner, or CRO designer for a performance marketing agency that tops $200 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue), the perfect lead magnet idea has loads of perceived value attached to it that addresses your website visitors’ pain points so well they can’t wait to fill in your lead gen form to get it. 

Take those new leads and feed them into your next email campaign for even more conversion domination 🥳

Want to know what else you can use to improve your marketing strategy? 

Social proof. 

We talk about where to put social proof next.