Lead magnet types for each sales funnel stage
Some lead magnets are versatile while others better suit specific sales funnel stages. Here’s a general explanation:
Some lead magnets are versatile while others better suit specific sales funnel stages. Here’s a general explanation:
For the top of the funnel, choose broader topics and try out:
For the middle of the funnel, when your prospects are looking for solutions, offer more practical lead magnets like:
For the bottom of the funnel, focus on the benefits of your brand and products or services and offer:
Offer to send a physical catalog or a digital version of it to collect email addresses and promote your products or services. You can also add exclusive deals inside to make it even more compelling. It’s an especially effective lead magnet for businesses providing esthetical value: landscape and interior design companies, clothing and make-up retailers, furniture manufacturers, etc.
Video content effectively compels people to share their contact information. Webinars are especially beneficial, as they have by far the highest conversion rate out of all long-form video content. They work great for B2B customers as you can contact your clients directly. Industry experts you invite will bring over their audience and will probably prepare the content themselves. And after the webinar is over, you can offer its recording as another lead magnet.
Here’s what the webinar lead magnet might look like:
And here is a recorded webinar lead magnet example:
A virtual summit is an online conference bringing together industry experts and thought leaders. It’s a grander event than a webinar, and it usually covers a broader topic and allows for discussions.
SSON asks prospects to share their business emails to attend the Future of Work & Business Resiliency Virtual Summit:
You can offer a subscription to your company’s digest or newsletter. The topic and content you cover in these emails should be relevant to the subscribers, other than that you can experiment with different formats and tone of voice. You can also make your email chain into a nurture sequence to drive leads closer to conversion.
In addition to the digest, Selzy offers a helpful guide to persuade website visitors to subscribe:
You can offer a part of your content to everyone and then gate the rest of it. This way the prospects will be hooked and motivated to provide their information.
Attentive lets anyone read its report, but part of it is exclusive to subscribers:
Get exposure and give your leads a taste of what you offer with a sample book chapter. If they don’t buy the book, you can then begin the nurture email sequence or target them with special offers.
Make sure you clearly present the contents of the chapter you provide, as shown in this example:
If you want to capture picky leads that will hardly share their contact information, try offering a whole resources library. Here, the exclusiveness and the amount of content are the main attraction.
This description is especially compelling since the creator promises a forever pass and even more free resources:
A case study is a detailed examination of a particular case. Concrete numbers and results are the most appealing in a case study, and that’s what draws many prospects in. A case study can also generate links from other resources.
In this example, the company indicated the industry (pharma) to attract interested leads:
Similar to a case study, a success story lead magnet helps to showcase your product or service in action and convince hesitant leads to become paying customers. It’s an especially convenient type for B2B.
For this success story, the company focused on a specific approach used by its client to succeed:
Ebooks are one of the easiest ways to collect lead information. And they also convert the best compared to other short-form written lead magnets. You can adapt one or several of your most popular blog posts into one file and give it out in exchange for a subscription.
This ebook covers a narrow topic that could interest potential cooking website visitors. Plus, it’s extensive with 25 different recipes to persuade people to share their emails.
Reports are research papers on trends. They can attract quality leads and also be a source of links to your website. And if you do meaningful reports, your brand recognition will rise.
GWI made a dedicated landing page for their report on trends to impress website visitors:
A yearly report that contains important industry data can attract many leads. Plus, it’s a great way to generate citations and mentions in the media.
Validity provides a snippet of the content inside to entice the website visitors and showcase the report’s value:
An in-depth description of a product or service and an explanation of how it can solve a client’s issue. A whitepaper should also make it clear why the described solution is one of the best on the market.
Zendesk provides a whitepaper on employee experience as it’s one of the company’s points of expertise:
Guides have the highest conversion rates out of all long-form written lead magnets. Guides and how-tos are instructions covering one of the issues your audience wants to resolve.
Selzy offers an email list-building guide to attract leads interested in email marketing. It is expertise-driven and covers an important yet challenging topic for potential clients.
A toolkit includes the software and tools you use for specific business purposes and explains how you or your company makes it work. It’s insider information that can be especially valuable for B2B clients.
Sage offers a 5-in-1 toolkit to capture website visitors’ contact information:
Cheat sheets are great for target audiences made up of different professionals. For example, you can offer those to software developers or people working with tools that require learning keyboard shortcuts.
Here’s a cheat sheet dedicated to using one specific software — DocuSign:
Like cheat sheets, checklists are great for professional audiences, especially people who need to perform repetitive or attention-demanding tasks with multiple steps. For example, if your prospects are editors or publishers, offer a pre-publication checklist to ease their work processes. Checklists are also great for event planning or preparation like moving, traveling, weddings, college admissions, etc. That’s why it is one of the most versatile lead magnet types.
Visual materials help to understand the topic better, so it’s a convenient lead magnet for education. But it’s also great for professional use in presentations, for example.
Templates are practical and (if they are expertly made) can be used multiple times to boost your brand recognition. Plus, these are for all kinds of industries.
Here’s a possible template lead magnet for SMM:
A spreadsheet is essentially a type of template that offers structured content and can stay relevant for a long time. You can either provide downloadables or files designed to be printed depending on your and your audience’s needs.
If you have a presentation, you can turn it into a lead magnet. It’s a versatile approach suitable for any industry.
Here’s an example from a cosmetic business:
Scripts are phrases prepared for different scenarios like cold calls, meetings, interviews, presentations, and more. As a lead magnet, they can be used by various businesses. As it is useful content, prospects will be more inclined to share their contact information.
Pipedrive offers scripts as a lead magnet alongside the tips in their blog article:
A swipe file is a collection of text examples. It can include anything from headlines to sales emails depending on the purpose and prospect’s needs. Swipe files are used by marketers, copywriters, and other writing professionals for inspiration. This lead magnet may be hard to prepare as you need to parse through lots of data to find worthy examples, but it will certainly garner the attention of quality leads.
Vanguard Marketing made a landing page promoting its swipe file with clients’ testimonials and the founder’s citation to show the value of the lead magnet:
A workbook is a file with tasks and multiple steps made to help your audience learn something new and practice. It’s a natural lead magnet for education, sports, health, and wellness industries.
MLC used a workbook format to help its prospects plan their finances:
A worksheet is a one-page learning document with tasks and exercises. You can offer multiple worksheet lead magnets instead of one workbook.
Worksheets are great for education, but they can be useful in other spheres too, as shown in this example:
If your sales cycle is long, you offer event preparation or long-term services, you may want to opt for a planner lead magnet. You can promote your services throughout the planner and also mention specific dates or periods relevant to your business to motivate prospects to use your services.
Wedinspire highlights the number of pages and mentions planner content to demonstrate the lead magnet’s quality and benefit for website users:
Make the work of your prospects easier by offering them a calendar lead magnet. It’s easy to produce as all the relevant information is freely available. You can mark public holidays, important marketing dates, annual professional conferences and conventions, and anything else.
Here’s an example for HR leads:
Offer printable cards, posters, trackers, and other materials and brand them to stay top of mind for your prospects. Every time they will use a printable from your website, they will be reminded about your brand.
Here’s an example:
Mind mapping is a great thinking and ideation technique that you can use to your advantage. Create a helpful mind map template or offer a pre-filled one to entice your leads.
Audiobooks — just like videos and ebooks — are actually useful for any business. Whatever your product or service is, you can turn helpful content into an audio format and attract avid listeners and collect their email addresses.
Here’s an example:
Podcasts usually have open access, but you can gate them too. There are dedicated services for private podcasting that make people subscribe to listen to episodes.
Here’s an example of a self-made gating solution for a members-only podcast:
Email courses are pre-made lessons covering a topic delivered regularly via email. It’s a way to expand your email list and also engage prospects. If the course subscribers see value in your content, they will continue reading your emails even after the course ends.
This course consists of 100 tips delivered over 100 days. The time frame is perfect to get people hooked and anticipating the next email. Plus, one email contains one tip, so it’s easy to read even for people with a tight schedule:
Relevant video content can show your expertise and at the same time showcase your product or service in action. Plus, 90% of marketers say video marketing has helped them generate leads.
Selzy offers a mini-course on deliverability for email marketing beginners. This lead magnet has two significant advantages: the topic is appealing to prospective clients and the course itself is short, so leads won’t feel anxious to check it out.
People want to receive something valuable in exchange for their information, so this lead magnet makes total sense. You can offer a sample of your product or service or just a helpful tool to satisfy one of your prospects’ needs. This lead magnet raises brand awareness and nurtures loyalty.
Shopify offers a lot of free tools that help businesses, here’s one example:
Quizzes tap into natural human curiosity and effectively capture leads’ information. Prospects will be more likely to share their emails if the quiz had several questions and was time-consuming. To not lose their progress and learn about the results, website visitors will likely opt in for your emails. Quizzes are common in psychology, coaching and advice, and health niches.
The 12-question quiz from Gretchen Rubin’s website ends with this screen that motivates people to enter their email addresses:
Surveys or polls are not only sources for future content or decision-making, they can also serve as lead magnets. You can either simply collect prospects’ emails as a way to identify them, ask them to share their information to win a prize, or send them the survey or poll results.
Here are the first and one of the last survey screens to motivate people to share their information:
Tools to calculate specific metrics (like ROI or LTV) that will showcase the results only after the prospect shares their email address. It’s a great lead magnet for B2B clients, but you can also use it for B2C purposes (for example, offer a truck size estimation for moving based on the number of boxes, etc.).
In this example, website visitors fill out several parameters to get a customer service forecast. The results, however, are only available after a person enters their email:
If your services’ prices or conditions highly depend on the project, you can offer free estimation. Leads will better understand what they will be getting into, plus you can add their emails to nurture sequences and work with their objections and concerns afterward.
Here’s an estimate request example for a development company:
Reduce friction and make a compelling argument in favor of your service with expert advice. It’s a great lead magnet option for service providers and agencies.
Hally Labels provides a free consultation and at the same time asks website visitors to opt in for an email newsletter:
Reduce friction, show off your product, and collect customer information — all at once. You don’t have to offer all features, just enough to get the prospect on the hook. And even if some prospects don’t become paying customers, you can survey them to understand your target audience better.
Salesforce offers a month-long free trial with some restrictions:
If your product or service is complex, you can have a guided experience instead of a self-service. This way you can both showcase your offer and have a salesperson persuade a prospect to make a purchase.
Omnifia clearly lists its benefits for clients to convince website visitors to book a demo:
Provide early access to your product or new features to attract leads and turn them into loyal customers. Plus, you can then collect feedback from early adopters. Prospects will more easily share their information if they feel the offer is exclusive, so you can even make it limited to only a certain number of people.
Here Front not only collects participants’ emails but also inquires about the service usage to better understand its user base:
Similar to the previous example, you can collect first-party information and attract new subscribers by asking them to join a waitlist.
Orbit Health uses this tactic to asses the service demand and also send promotional emails to newcomers:
Like a free trial, this lead magnet allows potential clients to try your product. At the same time, you can collect valuable first-party information and add a new subscriber to your list. It’s important to pick a suitable product, though, to make the offer appealing to as many people as possible.
La Roche-Posay provides a free sample of its moisturizer and at the same time asks leads to specify the information about their skin and subscribe to receive the company emails:
If you have free products to offer but don’t have enough for free sampling or want to have a themed lead magnet, try out giveaways. Even if the chances are slim, people will be inclined to share their contact information to win something valuable.
Burnaby Now created an interactive web page for its Mother’s Day giveaway to make the occasion even more special:
This lead magnet is another way to use prizes and gifting to capture leads. Sweepstakes may be held online and offline, with or without numbers given to each participant. If you plan to have a big prize, you can hold an event to reveal the winners in your brick-and-mortar store to hopefully bring more foot traffic and make potential clients your buying customers.
Get entries from engaged leads and encourage them to become brand ambassadors with this lead magnet. The task part limits participation but also serves as a quality check. Make sure the challenge isn’t overbearing, though, and provide prizes worthy of effort.
It’s another universal lead magnet, so the food industry makes use of it as others do:
Similar to the previous lead magnet, a contest generates engagement and can boost brand recognition. Contests can have a panel of judges or jury to rate each entry, they can also be based on public voting results. If you choose the latter, you can also generate more engagement and subscribers.
Kikkoman displays participants’ entries to encourage competition and shows how much time remains until the contest closes:
A 15% discount on the next order can accomplish two things at once: you get a new email list subscriber and compel them to make a purchase.
Make the benefit clear, and prospects will likely subscribe:
This is a popular lead magnet for e-commerce. It provides a tangible benefit and encourages the purchase.
Here’s an example from Getty Museum Store:
If you have a loyalty program, offer free initial bonuses for a subscription. It’s a great way to both provide value and encourage prospects to make a purchase.
Here’s an example with a generous offer of 3,000 bonus points:
People enjoy being a part of an exclusive community. You can either create full-on members-only websites or groups (on Facebook, for example) or simply offer additional content and features to your subscribers.
Here, members gain several advantages that make it hard for website visitors to resist signing up:
