Educational Lead Magnet Ideas
Educational lead magnets teach users about a specific topic that is highly relevant to your offerings. These lead magnets help users to understand why they need your product or service, so they’ll be more likely to purchase.
The best part about educational lead magnets is that they position you as the expert or authority in your industry.
Let’s take a look at some educational lead magnet examples…
Gated Content
Gated content is simply a blog post or part of a blog post, that is hidden behind your lightbox popup. This is one of the easiest lead magnets to create because it uses your existing content!
Tutorial
A tutorial is any piece of content that teaches how to do one specific thing. It could be a video, or simply a PDF with a numbered list of steps.
David Siteman Garland’s 7 Proven Steps to Creating, Promoting & Profiting from Online Courses is a great example – he’s been using it for quite some time now, although it likely didn’t take him a lot of time and effort to create.
Quick Tip: Whether your tutorial takes the form of a video, a PDF download, or a piece of content on your site, use a list-style headline (“X Steps to XYZ”). so that people know exactly how many steps your tutorial is going to take, so this headline style helps it to convert much better.
eBook
I don’t generally recommend using eBooks as a lead magnet. eBooks don’t convert as well as checklists or cheat sheets since they tend to be lengthy and difficult to consume.
However, sometimes an eBook can work. For it to work, what you need is a really strong benefit. Why should someone take the time to read your eBook?
Derek Halpern’s eBook Get 5,000 Subscribers features a benefit that is irresistible to his target market.
Still, if someone can achieve the same result from a simple checklist, then, by all means, give them a checklist instead. It’s really not worth spending weeks to write an entire eBook when you can get better conversions from a PDF that took you 20 minutes to put together.
Guide
Similar to the e-book, a guide is also a lengthier lead magnet to create. However, guides can work really well when you use them as content in your sales funnel to educate prospects on why they should buy from you.
Here’s an example of a guide from HubSpot: The Definitive Blueprint for Lead Management. This works because it educates their users on why they need a lead management product like HubSpot.
Report
Reports are particularly good lead magnets for B2B businesses, but they can also work in any industry that relies on data, statistics or research.
You can either do the research and collect the data yourself, or you can pull together data from various sources into one, comprehensive report.
Here are a couple of examples of report lead magnets…
2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Lead Management– the great thing about this report is that it has been updated, to keep it fresh and new.
The YouTube Traffic Report– this report pulls together the statistics on YouTube traffic, so it didn’t require any in-house data collection to create.
Infographic
Infographics are usually the type of content you’d think to use for driving traffic to your site since they do so well on social media. However, they also work very well as educational lead magnets.
Many people need to visualize a concept before they can fully understand it. So instead of giving users a bunch of boring text to sift through, why not illustrate your point with an infographic? This extra level of detail will make your lead magnet stand out so much more.
Here’s an example of an infographic that explains the habits of successful people vs. unsuccessful people.
This infographic makes the concept that much more memorable and easy to digest than a plain text PDF would.
Educational Video or Mini Course
Creating a Video can take something like an infographic one step further.
Videos encompass a visual component while adding an audio component for even more impact.
What’s great about videos is they have a higher perceived value making them that much more irresistible.
Educational Audio
A downloadable audio can make a great lead magnet for the right audience. If your ideal customer doesn’t typically have time to read or watch a video, they might prefer to have an audio to listen to in their car or while they exercise.
TIP: You can repurpose a video by stripping out the audio to use on its own.
Webinar
Like video and audio lead magnets, webinars also have high perceived value. In fact, they are even more irresistible because they have another component: urgency.
Since live webinars only occur at specific times and may have only a limited run, they play on the “fear of missing out”.
Webinars work so well for lead generation that some people turned their entire homepage into a webinar registration page!
Event Tickets
Often people are willing to share their email address in exchange for tickets to a Live Event!
The best way to do this is to use social media ads to push targeted traffic to your opt-in form. Your target audience would be local to you and have interests related to your offer.
Facebook ads are highly recommended for this type of lead magnet as they have very powerful targetting features.
Email Course
Email courses are simply a series of email autoresponders that teaches customers how to accomplish something specific. The best part is that they can turn prospects into actual paying customers.
Here’s a great example of an email course called 4 Facebook Ad Mistakes that are Losing You Money.
FREE Book + Shipping
Physical books have a very high perceived value…higher than ebooks.
If you have physical books that you’ve written available, offer them as a lead magnet and just charge for the shipping. This makes the lead a high quality lead b/c they’re actually willing to part with some money to acquire it.
Sample Chapter
If you don’t want to give away the whole book, consider giving away a sample chapter to give customers a taste of what you have to offer.
Make sure the chapter is digital and instantly downloadable so they can get the instant gratification that they want.
Sample Video/Clip
If your product takes the form of a video or videos, pull out a sample video or a sample clip and exchange that for an email address.
Sample Audio Clip
A sample audio clip works well as a lead magnet too (even if your product is actually a video).
Free Coaching Session
If you are a coach or you offer a service, you could offer a free coaching session in exchange for an email address.
The great thing about coaching sessions is that they get your prospects on the phone with you, and those people are usually expecting to hear your pitch at the end. This can be a really effective way of acquiring high-end clients.
PDF Version
This is one of those lead magnets that is so underutilized, and yet it is really easy to create.
All you have to do is find your most popular blog posts, save a PDF version of the blog post, and then offer it as a content upgrade.
You’d be surprised how many people will opt-in to receive the exact same thing they just read in PDF form! The value-add here is that they get to own your blog post.
Transcript
While we’re on the subject of repurposing content, why not repurpose a video by offering a transcript?
Although many people prefer video for learning, many other people prefer to read. Making sure you have both learners covered is a great way to provide more value with the content you’ve already created.
Audio Version
Similarly, you could offer an audio version of a written piece of content.
Summary/”Cliff Notes” Version
Do you have a really long, in-depth guide that your users love? Package a summarized version of that into a lead magnet.
You can also share what you’re learning from other influencers in your industry by offering your “cliff notes” version of their presentation, or their book.
Predictions
If you want to be regarded as a leader in your industry, make some predictions about your industry and publish them as a downloadable lead magnet.
People absolutely love to hear predictions about what to expect so they can get a jump on upcoming trends.
Mind Map
Mind maps explain a complex subject in a very digestible way. And because they don’t require too much detail (they’re essentially an outline), these types of lead magnets are really quick to put together.
When creating mind maps, I like to use a free tool called MindMeister. Their drag-and-drop builder makes mind maps super easy to create, and they always come out looking clean and professional.
Recording/Replay
Are you presenting any live webinars? You can repurpose those webinars by saving the recording and using that as a lead magnet.
Audio Book
Have an eBook that your audience loves? Repurpose it by recording an audio book.
Turn your eBook into a traffic generating mega guide by transferring it to one, big long page on your site. Then, generate leads by adding a call to action to download your audio book version.
Newsletter
Sometimes your email newsletter itself is so irresistible that it is the lead magnet.
The best part about this lead magnet is that the subscriber is already expecting the emails.
Vault/Library
Do you have lots of different educational lead magnets? Give your users the option to access them all at once by putting them together into a “vault”, or a virtual library on your site.
All you need is one big page on your site with the links to download each of your lead magnets and put that page behind an optin form. It’s a simple way to give more value to your users with the lead magnets that you’ve already created.
