What Makes A Good Lead Magnet? Actually, 7 Things! Watch Overview

So you’re considering creating a lead magnet!

With the right approach, your lead magnet will help grow your list with the right kind of prospects who go on to hopefully want to buy from you and become customers.

At least, that’s the idea, right?

But what actually makes a good lead magnet, and avoids you wasting your time creating something that doesn’t perform, or worse, ends up attracting the wrong kind of prospects or damages your ability to build a positive relationship with them?

Let’s find out… tick all seven boxes, and you’ll likely not just have a good lead magnet, but a great lead magnet that becomes an asset to your business for months or even years to come.

1. Relevancy

Your lead magnet must be relevant to the person you’re trying to attract. In other words, your ideal customer!

Hopefully, you have a clear picture of your ideal customer in your head.

If not, get clear on that first.

Then think about what’s going to be relevant to them.

Unless they see your lead magnet as relevant in some way to their day to day life, they’ll barely even notice it, and certainly won’t hand over their details to get it.

But if they feel it speaks to them, if it knocks on the door of their needs, desires and dreams, they’ll enter your world and you’ll find yourself with a new lead.

Think too about why a visitor is on a particular page on your website. If that page focuses on a specific topic (which is usually the case with blog posts for example), you know exactly what that visitor’s informational needs are at that point in time.

So offer them a lead magnet that’s directly relevant to the content of the page, and that in some way provides further information or help to them.

Because your offer is so relevant to that visitor when they arrive, this will give you a far higher opt-in rate than a more generic ‘join my newsletter’ type offer.

2. High Perceived Value

A lead magnet is only effective if your prospect is willing to hand over their contact information to get it.

There’s a certain amount of pain involved for the prospect to do this. They’ve got to usually click or tap somewhere, type in their information, click the button, hope everything works okay… and take time away from everything else they might be doing.

But none of this is a problem if the prospect perceives the value of what they’re getting in return to be high enough.

In fact, what would otherwise be painful will turn to pleasure as the prospect eagerly types in their information and excitedly anticipates what they’re about to get access to.

The real value is unimportant. It’s what the prospect perceives the value to be for them.

So a video might have a higher perceived value than the same information presented in a different way.

3. Easy to Describe

If it’s hard to describe the value of what your lead magnet provides, it’s not going to make a good lead magnet.

Your prospect needs to quickly and easily understand the value you’re offering. It needs to make sense to them immediately.

So if you can’t describe the offer easily, prospects won’t waste their time trying to make sense of it.

Try describing it in just a few words. If it gets the value across and sounds desirable and even exciting to your prospect, you’ve likely got a lead magnet.

If not, scrap it and come up with a different idea. Take a look at these 11 examples to help inspire you:

4. Builds the Relationship with Your Prospect

A key aspect of what makes a good lead magnet is in helping to build the relationship with the prospect.

For example, if the lead magnet provides the prospect with information they find valuable and can take advantage of, it helps to build your credibility and authority.

But a stronger lead magnet would involve you presenting the information on video to your prospect, giving them a sense of personal connection with you and a more memorable experience that would likely help keep your business front of mind.

5. Gives the Prospect Just One Thing

Don’t over-complicate or over-think what your lead magnet provides your prospect with.

Don’t try to help them with everything—that would just be overwhelming.

Help them with just one thing.

Keep your lead magnet simple and keep it focused so that your prospect can get quick and easy value.

6. Evergreen

Ideally, once you’ve created a lead magnet and set up the corresponding offer—including adding it to your autoresponder, enabling people to opt in to it from your website, and so on—you want it to last for as long as possible.

Otherwise you’ll need to repeatedly refresh and update it, which for most businesses will end up being just a little problematic!

So part of what makes a good lead magnet is longevity.

Your lead magnet should be an asset created for your business that continues to attract leads for at least several months, but preferably years.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally return to it, freshen it up, improve it and test out different ideas for your lead magnet to try and improve conversions.

But as a rule, the more evergreen you can make it, the better!

7. Easy to Consume

Your lead magnet must be easy to consume.

If your newly-acquired lead can’t easily and quickly get value out of the lead magnet, it serves little purpose, and may even deter your lead off from deepening their relationship with you.

So make it quick and easy to download, watch or otherwise take advantage of.

Don’t make them jump through hoops to get it, such as needing to click several links, register for an account, go back and forth with email, or otherwise follow a complicated process.

Give it to them straight away, either on the thank you page, or as quickly as possible via email.

And for the lead magnet itself, give your lead a positive experience.

If it’s written content, ensure it’s easy to understand and free of errors.

For video content, have good lighting, add captions for those watching it with audio turned off (which is increasingly common) and make it engaging.

If it’s a discount code, ensure it actually works and that it’s clear how to take advantage of it.

To Conclude

Hopefully you now have a clear idea about what makes a good lead magnet.

Keep the 7 factors above in mind when creating yours, and you’ll likely have a good lead magnet that appeals to your ideal customers, brings them into your world, and enables you to effectively build a positive relationship with them.