How to Create Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are basically bribes.

You are saying to audience members:

• I know what problems you are facing

• I’ve made something kick-ass that will solve your problem

• I know you want it

• Give me your email address and I’ll send it to you

We are attracting leads, hence the “magnet” part of the name lead magnet. And we are doing so basically by exchanging something valuable for their email address.

And we’ll be using AI to generate lots of lead magnets - about different topics, in different formats - so that we can land one (or more) that absolutely kill it for our business.

This week we’ll cover:

• Part 1: Why you need lead magnets

• Part 2: Funnel based lead magnet ideas

• Part 3: Best lead magnet formats

• Part 4: Mass producing lead magnets

• Part 5: Getting the word out about your lead magnets

Let’s get started:

Audience First

Why do we want emails?

Might seem obvious but it’s actually a great question: Why do we care about email addresses?

Having someone’s email address means that we can now contact them whenever we want. We are no longer at the whims of social media or advertising for when and where we’ll be able to talk to them.

We can now get straight into their inbox. And this is where we can continue our conversation and (eventually) get a sale.

Think of it as meeting someone you fancy. You start chatting in a cafe, hit it off. Do you just leave? And hope maybe you’ll bump into them again by chance at a later date?

No - you ask for their number. Or Snapchat. Or whatever the hell young people use these days. (yah, I’m a granddad!).

By having that contact information you now have a way to continue the conversation.

As an aside: does this mean once you have a lead’s email you immediately try to sell to them? No! Nor would you immediately (I hope) try to get the person from the cafe into your boudoir.

If you’ve taken any of my courses you’ll know I teach the BATON framework for building a business.

Business, Audience, Tribe, Offer, Network. 

Lead magnets sit specifically between Audience and Tribe. It’s a way of capturing info, getting a prospect to raise their hand and say “tell me more”.

Why does your business need a lead magnet?

It’s much easier if I just show you.

I’ll show you a lead magnet I launched today and show you the sort of impact it can have.

Here’s a post from 3 hours ago:

This is a Twitter/X lead magnet.

In the last Part I’ll show you how to push lead magnets on ALL the different platforms. It’s done differently on each and it’s taken me a long time to work out the best practice for each so that’ll be very valuable!

This particular post was published 3 hours ago and requires people to say “digital” in the comments in order to be sent the lead magnet.

So far 81 people have done so.

They’ll be sent a link to claim their lead magnet.

It looks like this:

Once they give their email they are automatically sent the lead magnet which is one of Prompt Playbooks.

That’s a Notion document of the Playbook that looks like this:

They’ll have something very valuable.

And you’ll have their email.

Two bonuses for your business can also be added here if you are smart:

• I also pop up a widget which allows them to subscribe to other newsletters. For each newsletter they subscribe to I get $1.20.

• They are also shown a thank you page which as a $20 buy now offer on it.

Each time I put out a lead magnet on Twitter I will generally get:

• 100-200 new email addresses of leads

• 50+ subscribing to other people’s newsletters ($50+ revenue)

• 5 purchasing the $20 offer ($100)

I do this daily.

So over the month we’re talking:

• 3000-6000 emails monthly

• 1500+ people subscribing to others’ newsletters ($1500+ revenue)

• 150 purchasing the $20 offer ($3000 revenue).

And that’s just Twitter. The same lead magnets can be deployed on Instagram, Tiktok etc. to expand reach.

And primarily the leads are now in my sales funnel and they will (one hopes) make a purchase from me later. If they value what I’m offering. This is the main value of a lead!

Integrating lead magnets into your business

I use lead magnets to drive my business.

It’s how I move people from being passive audience members to becoming leads and then customers.

It’s a key linchpin in engaging and deepening your relationship with future customers.

And yet so many businesses instead just post about what they have to sell! Big mistake! No-one cares.

Lead with value. Something irresistibly valuable that is free. It just requires an email to obtain.

Then we continue the conversation and make the sale.

Over the rest of this Playbook we’ll be looking at:

• designing a lead magnet to fit your funnel like a glove

• lead magnet topics that will be irresistible to prospects

• the different forms and formats of lead magnets and what I recommending

• how many lead magnets you need and why we can never know the right one

• bulk producing lead magnets for coverage

• distributing and promotion your lead magnets

• making lead magnets go viral with DM giveaways

• getting paid to give away your lead magnet

If you are a premium subscriber you have all that to look forward to.

I’ll see you tomorrow!

If not then there are details below on how to join us for this full guide and all future guides.

Keep prompting,

Kyle

The key here is to know how the lead magnets fit in your overall funnel. Nail this and the rest becomes easy.

Let’s get started:

Funnel Based Lead Magnet Ideas

The sole purpose of a lead magnet is to get the email address of an audience member so that we can continue the conversation.

If you don’t do this then the rest is unimportant - the quality of your lead magnet, what you do with leads, how you bring them to the sale. All unimportant if you fail to capture the lead in the first place.

In the business framework I teach lead magnets are a crucial linchpin between Audience and Tribe.

My framework again is BATON (Business, Audience, Tribe, Offer, Network).

Having an audience is amazing - it lets you talk en masse to many people about the value you offer. But crucially we aren’t in full control of our audience - the social media platforms or ad platorms are. If they change the rules we’re done for.

So we need to get someone into our tribe (newsletter, email list, community, Whatsapp group - it takes many forms!) so we can keep talking to them.

The lead magnet is what we use to transition people from Audience into Tribe. That’s its core purpose.

Key to transition

The key to transitioning someone from Audience to Tribe using a lead magnet is congruency. That’s a fancy word for consistency really.

We need our lead magnet to make sense to our audience. It should talk about the same things as our content. It should be a natural next step for them.

I’m going to pull in an example that isn’t me for a change to show I’m not a narcissist! I’ll use vegantechnomad Jennifer Chou:

Her brand is unhinged productivity. And she nails it. Here’s a link to follow her: https://www.instagram.com/vegantechnomad/ and here are her recent videos:

She talks about her systems for productivity. For people who are interested in “unhinged” levels of productivity. A lot of her content is ru

nning through the Notion documents she has made to track areas of her life.

What do you think her leads magnets are?

Yup! Templates of her systems that people can use themselves to build an unhinged productivity system.

Your lead magnets should have a similar pathway:

• someone follows and consumes your content

• your lead magnet gives them an entry point to DIY what you do

• your paid offer is helping them to get it done

This is where so many lead magnets collapse - they fail to connect to what is before (content marketing) and what is after (your sale). Nail this and you’ll have a constant stream of profitable leads.

Brainstorming lead magnet ideas

We know the lead magnet should sit between our audience’s interests and our offer. So we can now us a prompt:

Act as a digital marketing strategist

Brainstorm 20 potential lead magnet ideas for my business

My business is [provide description]

My audience (social media) most enjoy content about [add top content topics]

My first paid offer is [add first paid offer]

The lead magnet ideas should be consistent between audience through to my paid offer. There should be a logical through-line so that when an audience member becomes a lead my first offer makes sense. 

For each lead magnet provide the topic, the problem it solves and why it is consistent

Do not give me the format - just the idea 

When I plug in details about my business ChatGPT gives me the following ideas (3 out of 10):

All honestly great ideas for lead magnets.

Notice that the prompt specifically does not ask for formats. We’ll cover those in the next Part. Right now we only want the ideas themselves.

Use the prompt to generate lots of ideas and review them all.

We want multiple lead magnet ideas. We are not looking for one or two.

The reason for this is that we need lots of lead magnets for our business.

We need a stable that we rotate through. Lots of businesses create one and hope for the best. Mistake.

The absolute worst lead magnet is to write a whole ebook! My god that’s a terrible idea. But I see people do it again and again.

No one wants to read a whole book. Especially not as the first thing they get from you. And it takes a huge amount of time to write a book!

Instead remember that the key to a good lead magnet is the ability to transition an audience member to your email list. We need the bare minimum to get that done!

Instead of making one really big and time consuming lead magnet therefore we’ll make many smaller lead magnets.

We’re going to make a handful and feature them one at a time to our audience so that our audience doesn’t get bored. It’ll be possible to create lots because we’ll leverage AI. Don’t worry though they’ll still slap.

Right now what I want you to do is start to compile a list of ideas. We’ll then combine with formats (in the next Part) and then mass produce the lead magnets.

Keep prompting,

Kyle

There are so many formats that it all gets quite overwhelming. So we’ll narrow it down a bit in this Part by talking about what makes a good lead magnet format.

Let’s get started:

Best lead magnet formats

Keep is short, keep it sweet

Lead magnets come in many shapes and sizes. But they aren’t all built equally. Some will be much more effective at moving audience members towards becoming customers.

There’s a weird balance here.

We want to give away something truly valuable to our prospects. That’s what gets them to act. They have to think “ok wow I need this”.

But we also don’t want to go too heavy with the lead magnet.

It’s tempting to massively overdeliver. Hence why people tend to write whole eBooks as their lead magnets (again: don’t!)

There are a few problems with this:

• long, highly produced lead magnets take you - the business owner - a long time to make

• which means you can test less with your audience

• and, more importantly, the people who receive overly long lead magnets will not consume them!

Think of the last time you signed up for something and were sent a 200 page ebook or a 1 hour webinar.

Did you consume it? Like hell you did!

Long and complex is bad for both you (the creator) and for your audience members.

Instead we want something that easily consumable and immediately valuable.

Next steps

Equally: this is your first date. You want to make a great impression and leave them wanting more.

The lead magnet need to be immediately valuable yes. But it shouldn’t solve all their problems.

In part this is because it can’t - we’re designing it to be short and consumable. Not an all singing all dancing solve-all-your-problems product or service.

But it’s also because we are (remember!) bringing people into our email list so that we can later sell. We’re business owners.

We want the lead magnet to solve their first, immediate problem. But at the same time expose them to the next steps. The next problem.

For instance imagine we sell a weight loss product. Our audience content is about weight loss methods, inspirational, lots of case studies and methods.

Your lead magnet is a nutrition tracker. A way for people to keep an eye on their calories over time using a dashboard you’ve made.

Your sale could then be a daily checkin to keep people on track with the plan.

You give away the information. And sell the implementation.

Generating formats

Let’s pull this together and generate some potential formats.

Use this below the prompt from the last Part than created topics.

For each of the lead magnet ideas match up with these 10 formats. 

Suggest a title and brief description of each lead magnet

Formats follow: 

Checklists: Simple step-by-step guides or to-do lists related to your niche.
Templates: Ready-to-use formats for emails, social media posts, or documents.
Cheat Sheets: Condensed information or shortcuts on a specific topic.
Resource Lists: Curated lists of tools, websites, or books relevant to your audience.
Guides: Short how-to guides on a specific problem or task.
Webinars: Recorded or live webinars on a relevant subject.
Email Courses: Short email series that deliver lessons over a few days.
Case Studies: Real-life examples showcasing success stories or solutions.
Swipe Files: Collections of tested and proven examples of emails, ads, or headlines.
Short Video Courses: Brief, focused video lessons on a specific topic.

Provide output in tabular format

This will combine the topic with a format for you like so:

Doing do will basically give you limitless lead magnets. We have 10 formats and 20 ideas above for a total potential of 200 lead magnets. More than a business will ever need.

In the next Part we’ll begin to generate the content of the actual lead magnets.

For now let’s quickly overview the formats we’ve highlighted.

Suggested formats

Here they are again:

Checklists: Simple step-by-step guides or to-do lists related to your niche.

Templates: Ready-to-use formats for emails, social media posts, or documents.

Cheat Sheets: Condensed information or shortcuts on a specific topic.

Resource Lists: Curated lists of tools, websites, or books relevant to your audience.

Guides: Short how-to guides on a specific problem or task.

Webinars: Recorded or live webinars on a relevant subject.

Email Courses: Short email series that deliver lessons over a few days.

Case Studies: Real-life examples showcasing success stories or solutions.

Swipe Files: Collections of tested and proven examples of emails, ads, or headlines.

Short Video Courses: Brief, focused video lessons on a specific topic.

All have been chosen because they are fast to produce and fast to consume.

Some are a little more complex - ie a short video course - because they’ll rely on your skills and platforms. Feel free to drop any that add complexity to your workflow. It’s dependent on you honestly - for me making a video course is much easier than writing case studies. But it’ll depend on you.

Of all of these some surefire winners are:

• checklists

• cheat sheets

• resource lists

• swipe files

These are all about condensation. Taking your expertise and knowledge and crushing it down into one page or so.

A high quality checklist is worth its absolute weight in gold to your audience members.

Ultimately though you do not know what will work best. Which is why we’ll produce lots of lead magnets and test them all out to see which our audience react to.

In the next Part we’ll begin creation.

Keep prompting,

Kyle

Well…ChatGPT will!

Let’s get started:

Mass producing lead magnets

In the last Part we combined ideas and formats and created a table like this:

We have done the preproduction and now move to mass production.

We don’t need much context this time. Just a worker prompt:

Act as a lead magnet creator. 

From the list above I wish to create [lead magnet idea]

My customers are [provide details]
The purpose of the lead magnet is to provide massive value to them to build my authority, trust and move them toward their first purchase. 

The immediate first purchase after the lead magnet is [provide details]

First provide an outline of what the lead magnet will include. Generate a framework with acronym within the lead magnet. Request my feedback on the outline.

Once feedback has been given carry out the lead magnet creation process

Abide by these rules:
- the lead magnet much be short and easily consumable by the end user in <10 minutes
-the lead magnet must be simple and fast for me to produce. Do not suggest anything that requires high levels of design, money or production skills to make. 
-look up lead magnet best practices for the particular format and apply them

Generate a full first draft (not outline) and present it to me for feedback
 

For my particular example I plugged in:

From the list above I wish to create a AI Business Idea Generator

My customers are first time entrepreneurs who want to escape the 9-5.

...

The immediate first purchase after the lead magnet is a short course that helps customers to build their own online audience, a key component and first step in starting an online business

ChatGPT will generate an outline for you. Like so:

Notice I’ve asked it to put your lead magnet into an acronym. This is optional. I’ve added this because people love frameworks and it’ll be a lot easier for you to market. It gives you content more identity.

Obviously if you already have your own learning frameworks give them to ChatGPT to include! That’ll really up the quality and uniqueness of your lead magnets.

ChatGPT will ask for feedback on the outline before it pushes ahead with the draft:

This is your chance to provide your thoughts. We do this because ChatGPT’s first ideas will likely be quite generic. So I’ve added a human step for you to personalise and make it more yours.

After reviewing the output I tell the ChatGPT the following:

1. For each step in the checklist break down into substeps - I want it to be foolproof and easy for anyone to follow. Don't give a wide instruction but instead the exact how-to steps

2. specific tool: chatGPT

3. feedback: focus it in on online businesses, started by first time entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping. 

This will sharpen ChatGPT’s outline. Here’s the new first step of my checklist:

Much better! ChatGPT will ask for any more revisions to the outline. Keep giving feedback and changes as required.

When ready you can ask for the first draft. Say “proceed”, “go ahead” or “create the first draft” when you are ready. ChatGPT will take the outline and your feedback and go ahead with creation.

It’s long so here’s a video rather than me copy pasting all 1000+ words!

ChatGPT will ask for amendments and changes. Continue to provide them as required until you are happy. And/or give it a manual rewrite depending on the level of quality you personally require.

Getting the lead magnet out of ChatGPT

Once you have the text of the lead magnet you need it in a downloadable and accessible format.

If you have the design skills by all means prepare the lead magnet using Illustrator or Canva.

Personally I use Notion. It’s basically a word processor / note taking system but importantly you can share the links.

Whenever you access the archived Playbooks those are Notion documents.

All I do is bring the text over into Notion, apply some basic formatting and then publish to web. That gives me a link that can be shared when people ask for the lead magnet.

You can also export from Notion into a nice looking PDF, which is another good format to give away.

In the next Part we’ll talk specifically about distribution. For now just get the content into Notion or a PDF document ready for distribution.

A note on video courses

The majority of lead formats I’ve given the prompts are text based. This allows ChatGPT to fully produce the end product.

For video there’s (at least for now) some additional steps.

The prompt will generate an outline and first draft just as with the other formats:

You could go ahead and film based on those bullet points.

Or use this prompt to flesh out:

Prepare a full script for Video [number]
No stage directions or b-roll
After the script give me bullet points for presenting with

This will give you a full script to give you a good grasp of the content:

As well as bullet points for presenting:

Don’t just read the script - it’ll be stilted. Instead use the script to grasp the content and then use bullet points to record.

For packaging you can keep it simple.

Upload the videos to Youtube as unlisted.

And then embed them into a Notion document. Voila - a nicely designed mini course.

Get fancy later if you need to but this will do for now. No need to spend weeks sorting out course infrastructure. Not until you know this is something leads and customers value.

Get to work!

Now you (or, more appropriately ChatGPT!) can begin to mass produce our lead magnets for us.

Why do we want so many? For rotating them so that there’s always something new and exciting for your audiences.

We’ll cover that in the final Part where we talk distribution.

Keep prompting,

Kyle

Let’s get started:

Getting the word out about your lead magnets

How to host your lead magnets

We have a raw Notion link that we can give people when they ask for the lead magnet.

The problem here is that if we just send them the link then we don’t get their email. No good! That’s the purpose of the lead magnet remember.

So we need a way to “lock” it somehow.

There are lots of ways to do this, especially if you have a website.

A nice easy, free, low technical requirement method is to use Gumroad.

Basically you will set up:

• a digital product

• price = $0

• the contents of the product is the link to the lead magnet

That’s it.

This very basic setup will allow you to lock off your lead magnet and require someone to provide their email to access it. Without you needing to set up complex eCommerce.

This is how I host my lead magnets, in Gumroad:

Getting the word out

Once we’ve packaged the lead magnet and protected it so an email is needed we start to tell people about it.

For clarity we’ll have:

• a post (or advert) that audience members see

• a Gumroad page where they provide their email

• the lead magnet link, inside the Gumroad “product”

My posts/adverts tend to look like this:

We’re now experimenting with this format more:

What you use will depend on your niche and your lead magnet.

In general though lo-fi production works really well. Going overly polished makes it look like you are trying to sell something. Authentic and “basic” is more trustworthy. It also allows you to make more creative and test it out.

It’s impossible to say what’ll work for you specifically so just test! Look for competitors and what they are using - adapt that as best practices to start. Then go from there.

Advertising

The fastest way to get your lead magnet out in front of your audience is paid advertising on your platform of choice (ie. where your customers hang out).

This obviously requires budget. And expertise or the hiring of expertise.

But when it works it works very well. Definitely don’t sleep on advertising your lead magnets because this is how you can really scale fast.

The key here is keeping tracking of your figures - if you know you can acquire a lead for $5 and your average lead is worth $10 then you are good to go. Spend more on advertising and push more leads. Ads allow you to scale like this far easier than organic (free) methods.

However, as you may not be in a place to run ads at the moment let’s cover organic methods.

These differ depending on the platform so I’ll quickly cover the main platforms.

Organic reach

Twitter/X

DM giveaways work really well on Twitter right now.

That’s how I drive 100-200 subs a day to my newsletter through DM giveaways of a lead magnet.

Part 3 of this Prompt Playbook goes into details.

For the DM giveaways you can use Hypefury, Tweethunter or Typefully.

I currently use Typefully because it has the highest DM capacity. It’s also the cheapest which is a nice bonus!

Each Typefully DM giveaway can send up to 500 DMs per day which should be sufficient for most needs.

I personally rotate my giveaways, one a day, so that there is always a new one in play.

Basically the tool will watch for a certain comment from audience members that you ask them to add.

For example if I’m giving away a lead magnet about growing on LinkedIn I’ll say “to get this guide comment LinkedIn and I’ll send you a copy”.

As soon as they do the tool (Typefully) will send them a DM with a short thank you from me and the Gumroad link. They’ll go there, fill in their email and get their lead magnet.

Facebook and Instagram

DM giveaways also work on Meta’s platforms.

You can use ManyChat to automate giveaways on both Instagram and Meta. The basic idea is the same as on Twitter.

ManyChat isn’t cheap but it’s very powerful.

If you are only interested in Instagram then Link In Chat is a good alternative.

It’s a much more streamlined, no frills tool. The basic version is also free.

Tiktok and others

Where DM giveaways don’t work (because there’s no API generally) you have to rely on your link in bio.

I personally use and recommend Linktree. It’s free and simple to use.

Here’s mine to give you an idea of what it looks like : https://linktr.ee/iamkylebalmer

On that page you are going to add the Gumroad link for your lead magnet.

You are then going to place your Linktree as you main link on Tiktok or whatever platform you are reaching your audience on.

That’s now your Call to Action (CTA) in your posts.

You’ll do a text, image or video post about the lead magnet as above but instead of the CTA being “comment this word” your CTA becomes “get your free copy from the link in my bio”.

Why not just have the lead magnet link as your main link? Great question.

If we do that we can only have one lead magnet in play at a time. If we have a Linktree we can point people there and all your lead magnets are available. This allows us to have multiple lead magnets live at a one time.

Rotation

Your job now is to publish your lead magnets daily.

This means making and testing new creative. And making and testing new lead magnets.

Continuously - until one pops off.

Do not rely on one lead magnet. And one creative. And just hope for the best.

It won’t work.

Instead you’re now in experimentation mode, trying out different approaches and combinations until you find something that brings you a steady flow of leads.

For me personally it’s primarily Twitter/X and DM giveaways. For you it’ll be something else. Depending entirely on what your audience values most.

The good news though - once you find a lead magnet that people go mad for you’ve made a huge discovery. This tells you that very likely they’ll also be interested in a related product/service. That’s extremely powerful intel.

Tripwire

Before we wrap up here’s a very powerful bonus.

Once you’ve found a lead magnet that works create a more “premium” version of it.

Then offer it as an upgrade in Gumroad.

This allows someone to claim the free version or the paid better version.

For instance if it’s a text lead magnet maybe the premium has additional videos that you add to beef up the offer.

This upgrade shouldn’t be expensive. Think $10-20. Because it’s the first encounter you are having with this audience member as they enter your tribe.

This works particularly well if you are running paid advertising because you can use the tripwire offer to liquidate your advertising costs.

For example let’s say you pay $20 to get 100 people to download your lead magnet. And one out of those 100 people buys your $20 tripwire offer. That’s the advertising budget immediately eliminated and you’ve secured 100 leads basically for free.

Don’t try to add a tripwire onto every lead magnet. Instead wait and see which are the most popular and then build a premium version.

Wrapping up

In the last five Parts we’ve:

• looked at why lead magnets are so powerful and why your business needs one

• come up with lots of idea for lead magnets

• combined these ideas with formats

• mass produced lead magnets using AI

• packaged them up and put them behind an email gate

• distributed them online to convert audience members into leads

Now it’s time for you to start producing lots of lead magnets and begin rotating them out to your audience.

Experiment, tweak and make changes based on what seems to be popular. And keep going until you have a lead magnet that people are biting your hand of to get.

Once you’ve got that in place add a premium tripwire offer and experiment with advertising. Nail that and you’ll never worry about leads again.

Keep prompting,

Kyle