A highly effective lead nurturing tool, lead magnets are exclusive pieces of content that offer an incentive for people to sign up to your mailing list or exchange their contact information. Lead magnets take on many forms, from ebooks all the way to whitepapers, guides and other downloadable resources.

Often, they are exchanged at the point of conversion where website visitors turn into leads. As such, lead magnets are closely tied in with email marketing. Some of the ways that website and email marketing could be linked include calls to action (CTAs) that are displayed on a blog post or website page, a dedicated landing page that captures information about leads before giving them an exclusive resource, a thank you page where the download can be accessed, and a kick-back email in which the download link is sent again.

As marketing automation tools, magnets are a great way to gain crucial contact information while giving leads something of value. On the downside, it can take a fair bit of time to plan and produce magnets that are genuinely enjoyed by those who download them online. A large magnet such as a podcast, online course, video series or similar would take a lot of time to produce. Luckily, you can create simpler magnets that still offer a great deal of benefit.

The good news is that every single blog post on your website has the potential to generate leads. When you create content upgrades that turn regular blog content into lead magnets, you don't have to spend as much time creating magnets. Keep reading to get our ideas on how to create enticing magnets that add plenty of value to your lead nurturing efforts.

Kick Start Your Lead Nurturing Campaigns With These Lead Magnet Ideas

Some of the simplest ways to upgrade your current content to offer lead nurturing magnets include the following ideas:

‍Mini Ebooks

‍Unlike full ebooks that would take months to write, design and publish, you can create shortened variations. If you have a series of related blog posts on a specific subject, you could use these posts to create an ebook. To give you an example, let's say that you have a healthy eating service that offers wholesome home cooked meals delivered to customers' doorsteps.

You may have a number of posts on the importance of proper nutrition, the danger of skipping meals, the rise of healthy eating, and the concept of clean eating. You could take all of those posts and create a mini ebook focusing on healthy eating in today's age. This magnet would add great value because the people who visit your website are actively looking for advice that you are able to offer. Instead of having to read separate posts, your readers can access all of the content in one place, in an easy to read ebook format.

‍Ultimate Guides

‍If you are in a field that is established or even saturated, it can be hard to find unique content that has not been done before already. You can use this to your advantage by creating an ultimate guide or a round-up of information that has already been published on your given topic. Using our example above, you may find a number of articles and blog posts from experienced health experts, diet specialists, nutritionists and other experts in the overall industry. You could then compile all of their top tips into a single document that can be downloaded as a magnet. Be sure to link to the original sources rather than copying and pasting content into your guide. You can add a short description for each source, however, to act as an introduction of sorts.

‍Resource Guides

‍Something that is similar to the ultimate guide is the resource guide. Using our healthy eating food delivery service, you could make a list of resources relating to nutrition. You could include healthy eating apps, books on proper diet, YouTube videos on healthy food hacks or a combination of resources. This can be as simple or complex as you choose. The great thing is that it also helps you establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

‍Checklists

‍Everyone loves checklists. These work well with instructional type posts. All you need to do is take your post and turn it into a list comprising a series of bullet points. You can remove any points that do not have real or easy to action advice. You can split steps into smaller steps to make it easier to follow. This works especially well with longer, more detailed blog posts. Make sure that you create and save this in an easy to print format, with checkboxes added alongside each point.

‍Workbooks

‍Workbooks are a very popular and highly effective magnet for service-based businesses. Essentially, this is a downloadable resource that helps people apply your advice in an actionable way that is practical and simple. The design is kept simple, with lots of space for writing down their own answers. The aim of this magnet is to encourage active participation. Readers need to learn as they go. Using our food delivery example, you could create a workbook on meal preparation, with a checklist along with detailed steps and exercises on how many servings of each food to include, how to cook foods, how to freeze foods, how to plan out a week's worth of meals, how to store food, and how to calculate nutrients or calories.

‍Case Studies

‍Case studies are fairly unique in that they rely on a certain type of content. These work well on B2B websites and service related fields in marketing, software and various other results-driven industries. You could create or use a blog post on a project that your company successfully completed, and add videos, statistics, insights, steps, processes and other relevant information to show how you solved a specific problem for that client. Make sure that you have permission to name the company, or rather keep names out of it if you are not able to gain permission to feature your client.

‍Industry Secrets

‍If you have any behind-the-scenes tips that only people in your industry may know, you could even consider using this as a lead nurturing magnet. You could offer a list of things that your nutritionist wishes people knew, or the number one food every doctor eats or anything that is a) accurate and b) not widely known by most people outside of your industry. Make sure that this content is compelling enough to avoid let-down when people download the guide.

‍Webinars

‍You could also plan a short, to the point webinar that is exclusive to subscribers. If you have a blog post that only touches the surface of a topic you feel passionately about, you could use the post to offer an exclusive webinar that goes further into detail. When you create a sense of exclusivity and urgency, you will be able to increase the hype for this magnet. Be sure to set clear dates to make it easier for people to attend.

‍Cheat Sheets

‍Finally, you could also try a cheat sheet, which breaks things down into a short, simple one-page sheet. This works well for long, complex blog posts and topics. It could include a glossary of terms, a list of must-have foods, a quick tip or two and anything else you'd want your followers to be able to find in a hurry without reading through a blog post.

Once you start to get creative and think out of the box, you will see how much magnets can add to your strategies.

For help getting started with lead nurturing, get in touch with Grapevine and let us show you how much value our digital marketing platform has to offer.