Growing your email list can be a bit like playing snakes and ladders. One minute you get a few subscribers and feel you’re climbing the ladder, but then soon find yourself sliding down the snake as half of them unsubscribe.

Gaining the right blend of irresistible lead magnet ideas to get someone to sign up in the first place AND then to get them to stick around because the value in the lead magnet was so good IS achievable.

But the thing many forget when they’re creating the first draft of their lead magnet is we’re not carving it in stone. You get to keep modifying it until you find just the right ingredients for your free offer.

Admittedly, there are some things you can do up front to ensure you increase your chances of success on lead generation’s first public appearance. Or, if you already have one set up, discover why your newsletter opt in ideas aren’t working and how you can fix it. That’s what I want to share today. This is from many years of research, testing within my own business and what I’ve witnessed and helped develop within clients’ businesses for their lead magnet funnel.

Before we start, you need to answer a few questions:

• What is your end goal (that is, what are you trying to sell them – your product or service offering)?
• What is the gap between where they currently are and where they want to be (what is the transformation you, your product or your service provides)?
• What do you need to demonstrate in your free gift that will lead them to making a purchase (this can range from earning their trust, to positioning yourself as an expert and authority in your field or show them how you can get them a result)?
• What is preventing them from making a purchase RIGHT NOW? (what are the objections you could possibly overcome through your lead magnet?)

Admittedly, you’re not going to be able to achieve everything in your free opt in offer and, often, the simpler the lead magnet the better.

However, it’s good to have these things in mind as you go about creating your gift. If you can’t address it within the lead magnet, there’s always opportunities through your landing page and through the nurturing email sequence.

Now let’s look at

7 great lead magnet ideas for coaching and service-based businesses

Here’s a handy menu to allow you to skip through to the lead magnet that most interests you:

1. PDF Checklist, Template or Swipe File
2. Webinar
3. Video Training
4. Audio Interview or Track
5. Email challenge – 5-Day Challenge
6. Tool or Software
7. Quizzes or Surveys

Let’s dive in a little deeper…

1. PDF Checklist, Template or Swipe File

The beauty of using a PDF-based lead magnet is that often you can look at documents you already use with clients. This makes the creation of lead magnet ideas for coaches, copywriters, authors, accountants, photographers and more a quicker process, but also results in creating something that’s meaningful to what you do. It allows people to experience a little of what’s in store if they work with you.

There are two ways you can look at lead magnets:

1. An entree that zones in on one key step and aims to provide a specific outcome.
2. A smorgasboard which gives them a tiny bit of everything and shows them the bigger picture.

One of many lead magnet PDF Examples

Here’s an example of a PDF-based opt-in I’ve created – my Soulful Sales Funnel Map.

ACCESS THE SOULFUL SALES FUNNEL MAP

This PDF isn’t one step, but rather a map of my entire system. With this, many people identify they can’t do this by themselves – they either lack the tech skill, the copywriting skill or the strategy needed to get it working.

This is where they either come in and join the Soulful Client Pathway Kit, or they work with me in my 1:1 coaching or mastermind program.

So it’s important to think about WHERE you’re leading them.

Tips for PDF opt ins

Keep it simple. A one-page PDF works well because people can consume it quickly and get a quick result – which means a quicker time frame to turn someone into a customer.

Webinar or Live Training

Many lament the webinar now as part of their lead magnet ideas because

• it can often be more expensive to generate leads via Facebook ads and
• the show up rate isn’t always high for the live webinar.

However, it’s still proven to work well for many service-based and coaching businesses, because it’s much easier to sell higher ticketed items.

For example, I have one webinar in particular that is a little more expensive for me when running leads for sign ups, but the value of the content generally converts viewers at 10% into my coaching package. That means I only need to get 10 people to show up live or watch the replay to attract a new client.

Compare that to 1-3% for many PDF-based opt-ins.

It’s true that a live webinar will always convert higher than an automated webinar. However, if you follow in the footsteps of businesses like LeadPages who for a time ran the exact same webinar every Friday LIVE, then you can see that a lot of what you’re doing is simply duplicating the system that attracts and nurtures towards showing up to the webinar and then investing in your offer.

Here’s an example of a live webinar I run regularly that DOES generate leads inexpensively via Facebook ads:

Tips for doing webinars well

You need to keep experimenting with different types of webinar content and show up strategies to find the right blend. However, remember that if your lead cost is a little more expensive than via other opt-ins, often your webinar will convert to sale at a higher rate and, therefore, be far more powerful for your business.

Another advanced tip is to run ads to a PDF-based opt-in and invite them to the webinar on the thank you page – therefore, getting email subscribers AND webinar registrants at a cheaper cost.

Video Training or Series

The traditional 3-part video series we see so often online isn’t the easiest to pull off. So if you’re starting out, don’t start with this one. However, if you’re looking for something a little more advanced and know that people need to connect with you via video to make a purchase, then this one works particularly well at converting higher priced coaching and services.

Another strategy if you’re not into wanting to create a 3-part series and the complexity that goes with getting the system right, is to simply automate your webinar.

We just spoke about running live webinars, but if you’ve run it enough times and can see the conversion is good on the webinar, why not make it evergreen.

The key is to ensure you don’t try and promote it as “live”, but rather rename it something like “online training” or “on demand training” to remove any confusion people might have.

As mentioned, your conversion rate will often drop from a live to an automated webinar, but it may be something you’re willing to trade in lieu of getting your time back.

Video Training Tips

The key is to develop some core content that you deliver and perfect via easier lead magnet types, before crafting it into a video series. Alternatively, run a live webinar a few times to hone the presentation before making it an automated training.

One of my client’s lead magnet ideas was to run a successful webinar for a lower ticketed item and has now automated it as a “free training” opt-in that converts at 5%. Not bad.

Audio Track or Interview

Many people just don’t feel comfortable getting on camera and doing video, but they love public speaking. In turn, there are also many ideal clients who don’t have time to sit and watch a video, but they can easily listen to an audio while they’re going about other tasks like running, doing admin tasks…. or folding the washing!

I’ve seen a few things work in this space. They include:

• Meditation tracks. This has worked really well for one of my clients who is a light worker and another who is a Theta healer. Both these ladies have used a meditation track as their opt-in and the conversion rate for these are always high. Even looking at my own habits, I want to trial a meditation track before I invest in a whole album OR even invest in the healer. It’s a chance to get to know their voice, tone and whether you feel you resonate with them. This one DOES require more nurturing through the email sequence to ensure you’re not just attracting freebie seekers looking for another meditation to add to their list.
• Interviews. Another client, a business coach for women going through a transition in their life, ran a summit live and decided to sell the recordings. So we created a taster of that fully paid summit by giving away one of the audio interviews. This is a great chance for someone to listen in to an audio to see if it resonates and whether they want to buy. It’s another case of having a product already created and taking one element of it and using it as your opt-in – as we spoke about with the PDFs. There’s also something called the Oprah Effect, where you as the interviewer take on some of the status and authority from the interviewee. One of the opt-ins I’ve used for this was interviewing a high profile Australian journalist about getting media coverage for the PR side of my business.

Audio lead magnet tips

Find the pieces you already have in your business – even if it’s video you can strip out the audio – to create an opt-in that’s high value and allows people to connect with you through your voice. Put your best vocal forward!

Go through any Zoom calls or presentations you may have done that didn’t require you to share slides and, therefore, are easy for people to listen to.

Free 5-Day Challenge

This was a staple of my list building efforts for quite a while there, until every man and his dog was running a challenge and it became too saturated and too expensive. It’s quietened down again now as I write this, so it’s a good time to step back into challenges.

These can be a ridiculous amount of fun and delivered in all sorts of ways. You may have been part of my 5-day challenges for Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram. Although, I wasn’t selling anything off the back of these, it was purely for list building and community engagement! I’ve also just updated my Lead Magnet Strategy Guide, delivered over 5 days.

ACCESS THE 5-DAY LEAD MAGNET STRATEGY GUIDE + CHALLENGE

The downside is that getting people to stay with you for the entire duration can be a challenge (pardon the pun!), especially if your challenge is a longer one. This is why I’m constantly suggesting 5 or 7 days only. I’ve been part of 21-day challenges where people drop off and never get to see the sales message at the end launch.

You can deliver challenges simply via drip email sequences, or even within Facebook groups. However, you have to think about how people are going to be able to “connect” with you if it’s all written content. Some add an additional layer of a Facebook Live video that enables them to provide a fuller experience.

Tips for running challenges as lead magnet ideas

The key is to think about:

• what your goal is with your challenge,
• what length of time is going to achieve a result but sustain attendance, and
• how you’re going to connect with challengers?

The interactive element of challenges and the bite-sized tasks someone is able to do to move them towards a bigger goal can make this a really engaging and fun way to deliver your message and what you have to offer.

Tools or Software As Lead Magnets

When I struggled to get email sign ups for a three-part video series, I decided to put a “tool” at the front of it. That tool was a simple digital marketing conversion calculator, that allowed people to see the conversion rate and how much they could afford to invest in advertising.

ACCESS THE DIGITAL MARKETING CONVERSION CALCULATOR

This turned what was an ordinary sequence into a much better performing one. And, in fact, there’s some advanced funnelling within the sequence based on people’s actions.

What software or tools do you already have access to?

The calculator I created was through a free program online that allowed me to build my own calculator and embed it on a page on my website. It’s not fancy, but it does the job. You don’t have to fork out hundreds or thousands of dollars to have a piece of software developed. It’s about the value you can provide through the tool. So see what’s already out there.

This is also a tool that I wanted built for myself because I was constantly Googling to plot what I needed to achieve to reach my goals.

How to get the most from tools and software

The key is to look for things you can already use for yourself or for clients, before you invest time and/or money into creating a tool. However, as a general rule these will perform well if they’re unique because “tools” stand out above the usual PDFs, videos and audios.

Quizzes or Surveys

Setting a quiz as an opt-in has been one of those campaigns that has generated an amazing result for my business. It’s easy to market and attract people and, probably the real highlight for me, is the ability to segment people based on their answers. This means I can provide value and an invitation to work with me based on where their highest need is.

It completely changes your messaging so it’s highly tailored to the person going through the sequence – rather than one generic sequence.

There are some fabulous widgets out there now that you can link to your WordPress site and set up really quickly. You can find what tools I use here.

I’ve created a couple of quizzes, but one that has worked beautifully helps people identify the gap they have in their accountability – Your Motivational Style Quiz. You get a tailored explanation on what you need to do to help you achieve your goals, based on your type of accountability needed.

ACCESS THE YOUR MOTIVATIONAL STYLE QUIZ

I’ve also used this to great effect in the PR space, where I have PR professionals and business owners I want to segment, because they each want different things when it comes to guidance and support. So I can segment them by using the What’s Your PR Gate quiz.

The more the offer fits what the person needs right now (and we know that based on their answers), the more likely they are to invest because we can tailor our language.

Example of a survey opt in

The book Ask by Ryan Levesque is an important tool in my business. It’s based on building sales funnels using surveys. While I won’t go into the whole system, even just using the first survey suggested can give you some incredible insights into your business.

In my case, it allowed me to see I was spending 80% of my time marketing to 20% of my market.

So here’s a look at one of the questions from the survey I ran.

What this super simple survey allowed me to identify was:

1. I needed to be doing content on how to create your own PR campaign and how to prevent failed pitches
2. The majority of people who responded were PR people – not businesses.

Most of my marketing for the PR arm of my business has been to businesses wanting to know how to do their own PR. But it’s PR professionals who want to know how to do PR better for their clients.

I encourage you to get a copy of the book and set up a survey to find out exactly what it is your followers WANT and WHO they are. The double benefit is the list building growth you’ll see off the back of collecting that data.

Developing surveys and quizzes

The key is to start with a simple survey FIRST to find out who it is you’re talking to and what they want. THEN turn it into a deeper quiz that allows your ideal client to gain some benefit from the process, you get to tailor your messaging to suit their answers and you can place a more relevant offer in front of them.

Which Offer Do You Think Will Get The Most Sign Ups For You?

First, I want to encourage you to choose lead magnet ideas you can easily achieve today. It may not end up being your main opt-in. It may be something you have at the end of a blog post for example. The thing is, choose something you can finish today.

• Give them what they need and then highlight the new gap you can help with.
• Don’t over complicate the creation of your free gift. The truth is, the simplest of lead magnets are often the most effective. You often create them in 10-15 minutes. The sooner it’s done, the sooner your list starts to grow.
• If you know your topic well, you can create this without much research. You may also have a paid program you can dip into and take a piece of content out of that.

My question is: How can you make this easy for yourself?

Look at the examples and see which fits what you need to achieve best.

If you’d like to set up a lead magnet and full marketing system to support it to attract, nurture and convert your most aligned clients, I’d love to invite you to a Social Sales Funnel Half Day Workshop.