Now we get our lead magnets out into the world and begin to collect email addresses.

Let’s get started:

How to host your lead magnets

We have a raw Notion link that we can give people when they ask for the lead magnet.

The problem here is that if we just send them the link then we don’t get their email. No good! That’s the purpose of the lead magnet remember.

So we need a way to “lock” it somehow.

There are lots of ways to do this, especially if you have a website.

A nice easy, free, low technical requirement method is to use Gumroad.

Basically you will set up:

• a digital product

• price = $0

• the contents of the product is the link to the lead magnet

That’s it.

This very basic setup will allow you to lock off your lead magnet and require someone to provide their email to access it. Without you needing to set up complex eCommerce.

This is how I host my lead magnets, in Gumroad:

Getting the word out

Once we’ve packaged the lead magnet and protected it so an email is needed we start to tell people about it.

For clarity we’ll have:

• a post (or advert) that audience members see

• a Gumroad page where they provide their email

• the lead magnet link, inside the Gumroad “product”

My posts/adverts tend to look like this:

We’re now experimenting with this format more:

What you use will depend on your niche and your lead magnet.

In general though lo-fi production works really well. Going overly polished makes it look like you are trying to sell something. Authentic and “basic” is more trustworthy. It also allows you to make more creative and test it out.

It’s impossible to say what’ll work for you specifically so just test! Look for competitors and what they are using - adapt that as best practices to start. Then go from there.

Advertising

The fastest way to get your lead magnet out in front of your audience is paid advertising on your platform of choice (ie. where your customers hang out).

This obviously requires budget. And expertise or the hiring of expertise.

But when it works it works very well. Definitely don’t sleep on advertising your lead magnets because this is how you can really scale fast.

The key here is keeping tracking of your figures - if you know you can acquire a lead for $5 and your average lead is worth $10 then you are good to go. Spend more on advertising and push more leads. Ads allow you to scale like this far easier than organic (free) methods.

However, as you may not be in a place to run ads at the moment let’s cover organic methods.

These differ depending on the platform so I’ll quickly cover the main platforms.

Organic reach

Twitter/X

DM giveaways work really well on Twitter right now.

That’s how I drive 100-200 subs a day to my newsletter through DM giveaways of a lead magnet.

Part 3 of this Prompt Playbook goes into details.

For the DM giveaways you can use Hypefury, Tweethunter or Typefully.

I currently use Typefully because it has the highest DM capacity. It’s also the cheapest which is a nice bonus!

Each Typefully DM giveaway can send up to 500 DMs per day which should be sufficient for most needs.

I personally rotate my giveaways, one a day, so that there is always a new one in play.

Basically the tool will watch for a certain comment from audience members that you ask them to add.

For example if I’m giving away a lead magnet about growing on LinkedIn I’ll say “to get this guide comment LinkedIn and I’ll send you a copy”.

As soon as they do the tool (Typefully) will send them a DM with a short thank you from me and the Gumroad link. They’ll go there, fill in their email and get their lead magnet.

Facebook and Instagram

DM giveaways also work on Meta’s platforms.

You can use ManyChat to automate giveaways on both Instagram and Meta. The basic idea is the same as on Twitter.

ManyChat isn’t cheap but it’s very powerful.

If you are only interested in Instagram then Link In Chat is a good alternative.

It’s a much more streamlined, no frills tool. The basic version is also free.

Tiktok and others

Where DM giveaways don’t work (because there’s no API generally) you have to rely on your link in bio.

I personally use and recommend Linktree. It’s free and simple to use.

Here’s mine to give you an idea of what it looks like : https://linktr.ee/iamkylebalmer

On that page you are going to add the Gumroad link for your lead magnet.

You are then going to place your Linktree as you main link on Tiktok or whatever platform you are reaching your audience on.

That’s now your Call to Action (CTA) in your posts.

You’ll do a text, image or video post about the lead magnet as above but instead of the CTA being “comment this word” your CTA becomes “get your free copy from the link in my bio”.

Why not just have the lead magnet link as your main link? Great question.

If we do that we can only have one lead magnet in play at a time. If we have a Linktree we can point people there and all your lead magnets are available. This allows us to have multiple lead magnets live at a one time.

Rotation

Your job now is to publish your lead magnets daily.

This means making and testing new creative. And making and testing new lead magnets.

Continuously - until one pops off.

Do not rely on one lead magnet. And one creative. And just hope for the best.

It won’t work.

Instead you’re now in experimentation mode, trying out different approaches and combinations until you find something that brings you a steady flow of leads.

For me personally it’s primarily Twitter/X and DM giveaways. For you it’ll be something else. Depending entirely on what your audience values most.

The good news though - once you find a lead magnet that people go mad for you’ve made a huge discovery. This tells you that very likely they’ll also be interested in a related product/service. That’s extremely powerful intel.

Tripwire

Before we wrap up here’s a very powerful bonus.

Once you’ve found a lead magnet that works create a more “premium” version of it.

Then offer it as an upgrade in Gumroad.

This allows someone to claim the free version or the paid better version.

For instance if it’s a text lead magnet maybe the premium has additional videos that you add to beef up the offer.

This upgrade shouldn’t be expensive. Think $10-20. Because it’s the first encounter you are having with this audience member as they enter your tribe.

This works particularly well if you are running paid advertising because you can use the tripwire offer to liquidate your advertising costs.

For example let’s say you pay $20 to get 100 people to download your lead magnet. And one out of those 100 people buys your $20 tripwire offer. That’s the advertising budget immediately eliminated and you’ve secured 100 leads basically for free.

Don’t try to add a tripwire onto every lead magnet. Instead wait and see which are the most popular and then build a premium version.