If you're looking to grow an online business, lead magnets are a key tool in owning your audience across different platforms. Lead magnets help you to grow your email list by offering something in exchange for someone subscribing to your emails. Usually, this "freebie" is a resource, like a helpful piece of content or a downloadable guide.
Since lead magnets help you build up your email subscriber list, they're an important marketing tool and a valuable piece of any digital growth strategy. And there are other benefits, too—by offering a piece of helpful content for free, you build authority and trust with your target audience and establish yourself as an expert in your content niche.
If you're wondering how to create a free downloadable lead magnet, look no further. We'll walk through the easy steps to use Beacons's free lead magnet creator and set up your lead magnet today.
What is a lead magnet?
Let's start with the basics. A "lead" is a marketing term for someone who has potential to become a buyer. In digital marketing, leads may be people who have interacted with your landing page, website, or social media profiles, but hasn't actually purchased anything yet. Think of them as potential customers.
The act of lead generation is when you build up your list of leads. These are people you can market to directly who have a higher chance of converting, or becoming a buyer.
A lead magnet is a free product that someone can claim and download in exchange for submitting contact information such as their email address or phone number.
Offering a lead magnet is one of the most popular lead generation efforts in digital marketing because they're mutually beneficial: a compelling lead magnet offers something of real value to the fan, and the marketer who set up the lead magnet is able to grow their email marketing list.
How do lead magnets work?
The mechanics of lead magnets are fairly simple. When someone lands on a landing page (such as a website or Link in Bio), they will see a prompt with a CTA to enter their contact information in exchange for a free download.
After they enter their email address, they are added to the email list in the email marketing tool, and their free download is sent to them via email. Then, the person is subscribed to future emails from this sender.
Ready to start using your own lead magnet? Get started here! Download our Lead Magnet Template and get your lead magnet set up today!
What information can you collect with lead magnets?
The goal of a lead magnet is not to make money—the goal is to collect contact information.
This is especially important for content creators who primarily work on social media platforms. By collecting your fans' contact information off of social media, you protect yourself from vulnerabilities of social media algorithms, shadowbanning, and other forces outside of your control.
Building an email list is how you can truly own your audience, instead of renting from social platforms.
Most common information you can collect with lead magnets
The most common contact information to collect are names, email addresses, and phone numbers (if SMS marketing is important to you). We recommend you focus on these piece of contact information to begin with. If you want to keep it very simple, just focus on collecting email addresses.
More creative information you can collect with lead magnets
However, you can also collect other information from your website visitors or link in bio visitors through lead magnets such as location, birthday, hobbies, etc. If you choose to collect this additional information, it's best practice to explain why you're collecting this info and what you plan to do with it, as it can be considered sensitive.
What products make good lead magnets?
Lead magnet ideas can come from anywhere. Any digital content that can be sent to your fans online can be a powerful lead magnet if you explain its value clearly.
While more enterprise-focused businesses might choose to use a PDF download of a case study or particularly detailed blog post as their lead magnet, content creator businesses tend to focus on content that's more consumer-friendly to collect new leads.
These digital products all make great lead magnets for creators and entrepreneurs looking to grow their email list:
- Template
- Guide
- List
- Unreleased video
- Exclusive course or lesson
- Bonus audio content
- Song clip
- Document
- Photo
- Preset
- Phone or computer background
- Recipe
- Fitness plan
- Notion page
Use what you already have for lead magnet content
You can make a great lead magnet by turning an existing piece of content you already have (like a TikTok, blog post, YouTube video, or podcast episode) into a written guide in one of these downloadable forms:
- Google Doc
- Notion page
When you use the lead magnet generator on Beacons Store, you can deliver your product as a digital download or URL. This is also a great way to drive the subscriber to content you already have on social media, and continue to get engagement to your content long after the original post.
What tool should you use to create a lead magnet?
You can save yourself time (and money!) by using an all-in-one platform to set up your lead magnet, collect contact information, and send emails. Beacons is the perfect platform for creators to find everything they need to build lead magnets, grow their email list, and send beautiful emails.
Use Beacons Store as a free lead magnet generator
Beacons streamlines your marketing funnel with a built-in lead magnet generator. When you add a link to any digital products you want to sell on your Beacons Link in Bio, you can quickly and easily turn it into a lead magnet.
Beacons will generate a beautiful product page for you to market your product with images, descriptions, and even product reviews if you have them. Then, you'll be able to add an email collection block to your Link in Bio, and set up an automatic email to send your digital product to new subscribers when they submit their contact information.
With Beacons, this whole process is automated, so you don't have to worry about connecting different tools together to create a lead magnet, build your email list, and send emails. You can do it all in one place, completely free.
How long should you spend creating a lead magnet?
You don’t need to spend days or even hours crafting a beautiful, 10-page ebook. The perfect lead magnet just needs to provide your community with enough value that you start to build more trust with each follower. It can be a very simple piece of content that helps a fan accomplish a small task, addresses common pain points, spells out simple best practices, or provides a little bit of extra entertainment.
Lead magnets are low risk because they shouldn't take too long to create, yet they are widely successful in building massive contact lists because they don’t cost a thing to your community besides their information.
Use a template to set up a lead magnet in minutes
Lead magnets can take as little as 5 minutes to set up, and they put you in the driver's seat to own your relationships with your followers.
To get set up as quickly as possible, use our template designed by our product team: Download our Lead Magnet Template and start building your email list in minutes!
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