Gone are the days when the tagline “Subscribe to my newsletter for free tips” was an effective incentive. Now, if you want to get quality subscribers, you’ll have to create a lead magnet that your audience will love.

A lead magnet is a valuable item that you give to your target audience for free in exchange for their email address. No, it’s not bribery; you’re providing them with a high-value asset and they’re paying for it with their contact information.

Look at it this way: You want to sell an online course to somebody that doesn’t know you. Now, people are naturally hesitant to part with their money, especially if they’re not sure that the course will help them or that you can provide them with a meaningful transformation. To get them to trust you, you’ll have to prove yourself to them. Giving them something that is helpful and relevant for free confirms that you know your stuff and that your paid course will definitely be packed with value.

To help them make this connection, ensure that your lead magnet is directly related to your course. This helps you get subscribers that are likely to enroll in your course when you promote it to them.

For example, if you create a course on content marketing, your lead magnet can be a list of free platforms where people can distribute their content.

Some of the most common types of lead magnets include:

Free courses
Checklists/cheat sheets
eBooks or PDF guides
Industry reports
Case studies

A common misconception is that you only need one lead magnet to get email subscribers. While technically true, this approach is very limiting.

Let’s use a content marketing course as a case in point. Since SEO is a part of content marketing, you could offer an introduction to SEO email course as a lead magnet. This way, someone who already knows about content distribution but not much about SEO will subscribe to your list. But not everyone knows about content distribution. Or video marketing. Or blogging. Creating multiple lead magnets increases your odds of providing value to your entire audience and in turn generating a high number of email submissions.

Play around. Create multiple magnets using different formats to see which ones work best for your target audience.

M4:S7 - Create a lead magnet

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