Best Freebies to Generate Leads

By Mar-Loes Mantoua

Email marketing has always been one of the most effective types of digital marketing. In fact, according to Digital Marketing Association, 66% of customers convert as a result of an email marketing message. It’s not only crucial for client acquisition but for client engagement and retention as well.

Thus, growing your email list should be one of your key priorities and what better way to do that than to generate high-quality freebies and lead magnets?

In order to succeed at lead generation via lead magnets, you need to make sure that (a) you’re choosing the kind of lead magnet that could actually generate results and (b) give your 100% in creating and delivering amazing lead magnets that cream value.

So, how do you know what kind of freebie to offer? Here are the must-have qualities of an effective and powerful lead magnet:

Qualities of a Great Lead Magnet

Your target audience has specific pain points. They need to get their problems solved to get unstuck or make progress. Focusing on that overarching problem can make a tremendous difference.

Your audience wants their problems solved—and they want them solved fast. They aren’t looking at a 50-page report or 10-hour tutorial here. Even a 5-page report, a two-page checklist, or a 10-minute tutorial can already get the job done. Also, many of your visitors who are willing to subscribe to get the free lead magnet, are most likely novices in the space, so it’s important to make information easy to read and digestible for them.

After the user subscribes to access the freebie, make sure you do not keep them waiting and that the resource is available right away. This keeps the momentum going, and the sooner they discover the value that you bring to the table, the sooner they’ll convert and become your new brand advocate.

Now, this may seem like a no-brainer, but many websites actually end up missing the mark in terms of choosing the subject matter that is most consistent with their core message. Especially if you’re delegating this task to someone else, you should be at least hands-on in terms of selecting the topic as that can make or break the whole process.

Just because you’re giving it away for free, it doesn’t mean you should settle for average. Remember that this is a golden opportunity to present what you’ve got as an entity. You are building thought leadership, and you want to gain as many people’s trust as possible.

Top 3 Freebies to Generate Leads

Now, let’s talk about the best freebies to generate leads. We are going to focus on the top three most effective ones and show you some tips on how to do them right.

It’s one of the most common lead magnet options, and for good reason. It’s a more in-depth way of delivering value. An e-book gives readers insight into your background, knowledge, and products/services. While keeping it informative, it’s also a great way to showcase your offerings, especially if done in a thorough, compelling way.

You can actually repurpose popular blog posts or transcribe podcasts and turn them into more comprehensive, high-value e-books. Or you can also choose to write the full resource from scratch. Whatever you choose to do, just make certain that the quality and relevance are all intact.

A checklist could be 1-3 pages, showing actionable lists that are clear-cut and easy to scan. PDF checklists convert really well because they’re so easy to consume. Since they don’t contain a lot of text, focus strongly on the design and make it look attractive and on-point. You can use a platform like Canva for the design or hire a graphic designer to help you out.

Tutorials are a great way to teach your target audience how to do specific things. It can be a pdf download, a video file, or an audio format. One helpful tip when creating your tutorials is to add numbers to the headline. For example, you can say “7 Steps to Creating High-Converting Lead Magnets”. These numbers make the resource sound more concrete and authoritative. Plus, it gives the readers an idea of the lengths of the material and how much time they’d have to dedicate to go over it.

Freebies like the ones mentioned above can really help you compel more users to sign up for your email list. Lead magnets are a crucial part of your content marketing strategy, and you should invest time, effort, or resources in creating the best freebies to expand your contact database and generate conversions. If you don’t have the time to create these lead magnets, you can always delegate the work to your in-house content marketing team. If you don’t have such a team in place yet, the more practical route is to outsource the work to experienced contractors or agencies that can deliver high-quality, conversion-focused content.

The Right Mix is a branding and marketing agency that can help you come up with an awesome lead magnet—be it e-books, checklists, or tutorials. We can also be a full-time extension of your business to take care of your digital marketing needs.

Contact us to get the project started.