Lead magnet, freebie, opt-in – whatever you call, a lead magnet is a great way of building up your email list, showcasing your depth of knowledge on a topic and building trust amongst your audience. But when you think about choosing the topic for your lead magnet, it is easy to fall into the trap of just focusing on a topic you know a lot about.

Of course, you want to create something on a topic you are confident in, however, it’s important that you are strategic about your choice of topic and you consider what you want the outcome of your funnel to be.

Your desired outcome could be:

• Selling a passive product
• Directing possible clients to a Facebook group
• To raise your visibility and build trust in your brand and services
• Or to launch a new product using the lead magnet to collect suitable leads

Once you have a clear understanding of your objectives, designing and drafting your funnel will become so much easier.

So work backwards and pin down what your end goal is. Are you trying to find out more about your audience? Present yourself as an expert in your field? Are you trying to build trust or get them to buy something?

Your outcome should impact the topic that you choose. If your intended outcome is to sell a passive product, the topic of your lead magnet should be directly aligned with the topic of that product.

Once you have a clear understanding of your end goal, you can then move on to thinking about:

• The topic you are going to cover
• The format you are going to use for your lead magnet
• How much value or information you are going to give
• How you are going to deliver the lead magnet to your audience

Lead magnets for lead generation

This could be the first touchpoint a customer has with your business so think carefully about what kind of first impression you would like to make. If this isn’t the first touchpoint, will your lead magnet help to build upon a previous positive first impression you have made?

Your aim here could be to build trust with potential clients, whilst also showcasing your knowledge and expertise. You need to provide a credible source of information that addresses the problem your ideal customer has. The best lead magnets for lead generation are those that your audience will find value in downloading and that is easy to consume and implement into their business. 

Lead magnets for a passive product funnel

This is an opportunity for you to create a lead magnet that will lead customers to the next product in your passive suite. For example, if your passive product was a pre-recorded Instagram Masterclass, your lead magnet should be something that would lead your reader naturally into wanting to purchase your passive product as their next step. Therefore your lead magnet could be an e-book on how to write converting captions on IG, or how to sell through stories on Instagram.

By ensuring the two are linked your lead magnet will act as a pre-qualifier to your passive product. If you know that someone needs support with IG captions you could hazard a guess that they may need support in other areas of Instagram as well and so your offer of an IG masterclass is going to be much attractive and have a higher rate of conversion.

Lead magnets for a live launch

Quite often, the starting point with this lead magnet is to think about the pricing of your final offering first. For example, If your aim is to sell a high ticket offer such as your 1:1 coaching or a group mastermind, a 5-page e-book may not be sufficient. Would this be enough to build the trust required to invest at that level?

In this instance therefore, giving them an insight into your coaching through a webinar or similar live challenge will showcase your skills and expertise more effectively and is a more relevant experience in this situation.

These kinds of lead magnets will also really encourage engagement from your ideal client and build momentum for your launch! Remember, like the passive funnel, your lead magnet should be relevant and a lead in to the offer you are going to make.

To summarise, regardless of what your lead magnet is, it needs to:

• Be easy to understand, consume and implement
• Be specific – covering one small topic and offering real, tangible and valuable information
• Meet a need or help solve a problem your ideal client is having
• Be valuable and showcase your skills and level of expertise
• High quality and branded to ensure you are building your brand identify
• Be relevant to the next step offer

So as you can see, there’s a lot more to choosing the perfect topic for your lead magnet than you might think! However, I hope these tips give you some support and remember – start at the end and work backwards! Being strategic when choosing your topic will help you create a seamless customer journey for your audience, improving your chances of conversion and converting leads into paying customers! 

Want to learn more about lead magnets? Check out my blog – 10 tips to creating the perfect lead magnet.