Choosing the topic for your lead magnet

How to Strategically Pick a Lead Magnet Topic that Aligns with Your Business Goals and Attracts Ideal Clients

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. 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 product. For example, if the product you wanted to sell was a 3 part Pinterest mini-course showing people how to get started on Pinterest, set up boards, what pins to create, etc - your lead magnet might be some free Pinterest Pin templates or a getting started with Pinterest Checklist or, a quiz helping them decide if Pinterest would work for their business. If you used one of these lead magnets, what you want to sell (the mini-course) is a natural next step for them to take.

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 and email list building.

This could be a customer's first touchpoint 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 while also showcasing your knowledge and expertise. Think about the common problems and challenges your ideal clients have. You need to provide a valuable and useful source of information or a resource that addresses these problems. The best lead magnets for lead generation are those that your audience will find value in downloading and that are easy to consume and implement into their business quickly - everyone loves a quick win! Seeing themselves make progress will build trust in you and your brand.

Lead magnets for a passive 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. You know that if someone downloads a lead magnet on this topic they have a pre-qualified interested in learning how to use Instagram more effectively, therefore, positioning a next step solution to support them even further whilst they are feeling motivated will results in better conversions (sales!).

Lead magnet for a live launch.

Quite often, the starting point with this lead magnet is to think about the pricing/value of your final offering. For example, If your aim is to sell a high ticket offer such as your 1:1 coaching or a group mastermind that costs £1000+, a 5-page e-book may not be sufficient to build enough trust and encourage people to invest.

In this instance, giving them an insight into your coaching through a webinar or similar live challenge will showcase your skills and expertise more effectively. They will get to experience what being inside your mastermind or coaching would be like. Using a lead magnet in this way will encourage engagement from your ideal client (helping you get to know them and have conversations!) and build momentum for your launch.

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 solutions and support

✅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

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!