We now have some basic ideas for lead magnets. But what form do they take?

There are so many formats that it all gets quite overwhelming. So we’ll narrow it down a bit in this Part by talking about what makes a good lead magnet format.

Let’s get started:

Keep is short, keep it sweet

Lead magnets come in many shapes and sizes. But they aren’t all built equally. Some will be much more effective at moving audience members towards becoming customers.

There’s a weird balance here.

We want to give away something truly valuable to our prospects. That’s what gets them to act. They have to think “ok wow I need this”.

But we also don’t want to go too heavy with the lead magnet.

It’s tempting to massively overdeliver. Hence why people tend to write whole eBooks as their lead magnets (again: don’t!)

There are a few problems with this:

• long, highly produced lead magnets take you - the business owner - a long time to make

• which means you can test less with your audience

• and, more importantly, the people who receive overly long lead magnets will not consume them!

Think of the last time you signed up for something and were sent a 200 page ebook or a 1 hour webinar.

Did you consume it? Like hell you did!

Long and complex is bad for both you (the creator) and for your audience members.

Instead we want something that easily consumable and immediately valuable.

Next steps

Equally: this is your first date. You want to make a great impression and leave them wanting more.

The lead magnet need to be immediately valuable yes. But it shouldn’t solve all their problems.

In part this is because it can’t - we’re designing it to be short and consumable. Not an all singing all dancing solve-all-your-problems product or service.

But it’s also because we are (remember!) bringing people into our email list so that we can later sell. We’re business owners.

We want the lead magnet to solve their first, immediate problem. But at the same time expose them to the next steps. The next problem.

For instance imagine we sell a weight loss product. Our audience content is about weight loss methods, inspirational, lots of case studies and methods.

Your lead magnet is a nutrition tracker. A way for people to keep an eye on their calories over time using a dashboard you’ve made.

Your sale could then be a daily checkin to keep people on track with the plan.

You give away the information. And sell the implementation.

Generating formats

Let’s pull this together and generate some potential formats.

Use this below the prompt from the last Part than created topics.

For each of the lead magnet ideas match up with these 10 formats. 

Suggest a title and brief description of each lead magnet

Formats follow: 

Checklists: Simple step-by-step guides or to-do lists related to your niche.
Templates: Ready-to-use formats for emails, social media posts, or documents.
Cheat Sheets: Condensed information or shortcuts on a specific topic.
Resource Lists: Curated lists of tools, websites, or books relevant to your audience.
Guides: Short how-to guides on a specific problem or task.
Webinars: Recorded or live webinars on a relevant subject.
Email Courses: Short email series that deliver lessons over a few days.
Case Studies: Real-life examples showcasing success stories or solutions.
Swipe Files: Collections of tested and proven examples of emails, ads, or headlines.
Short Video Courses: Brief, focused video lessons on a specific topic.

Provide output in tabular format

This will combine the topic with a format for you like so:

Doing do will basically give you limitless lead magnets. We have 10 formats and 20 ideas above for a total potential of 200 lead magnets. More than a business will ever need.

In the next Part we’ll begin to generate the content of the actual lead magnets.

For now let’s quickly overview the formats we’ve highlighted.

Suggested formats

Here they are again:

Checklists: Simple step-by-step guides or to-do lists related to your niche.

Templates: Ready-to-use formats for emails, social media posts, or documents.

Cheat Sheets: Condensed information or shortcuts on a specific topic.

Resource Lists: Curated lists of tools, websites, or books relevant to your audience.

Guides: Short how-to guides on a specific problem or task.

Webinars: Recorded or live webinars on a relevant subject.

Email Courses: Short email series that deliver lessons over a few days.

Case Studies: Real-life examples showcasing success stories or solutions.

Swipe Files: Collections of tested and proven examples of emails, ads, or headlines.

Short Video Courses: Brief, focused video lessons on a specific topic.

All have been chosen because they are fast to produce and fast to consume.

Some are a little more complex - ie a short video course - because they’ll rely on your skills and platforms. Feel free to drop any that add complexity to your workflow. It’s dependent on you honestly - for me making a video course is much easier than writing case studies. But it’ll depend on you.

Of all of these some surefire winners are:

• checklists

• cheat sheets

• resource lists

• swipe files

These are all about condensation. Taking your expertise and knowledge and crushing it down into one page or so.

A high quality checklist is worth its absolute weight in gold to your audience members.

Ultimately though you do not know what will work best. Which is why we’ll produce lots of lead magnets and test them all out to see which our audience react to.

In the next Part we’ll begin creation.