8 Effective Lead Magnet Ideas for Coaches & Consultants

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is any valuable free offer you give to prospects in exchange for their contact information.

In a previous post, I discussed how you could use a lead magnet to get the keys to a prospects’ inbox.

There is a good chance you have submitted your email to get a lead magnet before.

If you have ever given your email to get trial subscriptions, ebooks, product samples, white papers, e-newsletters, and free consultations, those are all lead magnets.

Lead magnets are valuable customer acquisition materials and they have lots of benefits.

Benefits of Lead Magnets

A lead magnet is a great client acquisition tool. Some of its benefits are:

1. Reduced cost of paid ads

I highly recommend that coaches and consultants do paid ads. However, there is a more comfortable route for saving lots of money – email marketing.

Email marketing will give you a great ROI. For every $1 spend, you can get returns of up to $44.

On the other hand, according to Google, you can expect up to $2 for every $1 you spend on an ad.

After creating a lead magnet, relying on only organic traffic means you are leaving lots of money on the table.

Paid ads are a quicker route to get your customers to your landing page. This is where they submit their emails and grab your lead magnet. Afterward, you can launch your email marketing campaign and reduce your ad cost.

2. Build rapport and establish authority instantly

A lead magnet helps you build rapport with your prospect. You can use your lead magnet to demonstrate your expertise and authority in your niche.

Your lead magnet can help your audience to build a fabulous mental image of you. This way, they see you as the ‘go-to’ person for solutions. Also, they will be eager to receive your emails.

A useful reference is how Megan at theLyonsshare does it. The website is packed full of avenues to get leads. She provides a free ebook resource, free consultations, and quizzes.

Source: thelyonsshare.org

By providing a free resource or information, you’re doing a few beneficial things:

• You prove you know what you are preaching
• You prove your prospects can rely on you to help them
• You prove you are an expert
  
  

3. Grow your email list

Aside from sending emails to nurture your prospects, emails also prove valuable for Facebook advertising. You can upload your list and tell Facebook to help you target the people in your email list.

Customers are tough to get. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy’s 2018 Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business, 21.4% of new establishments do not make it past one year.

A plausible reason for this trend is due to reduced client acquisition. Having several lead magnets could help you escape the 21.4% bracket. Also, the email list you get from the lead magnet will help you stay in constant touch with your audience.

How to Choose the Most Effective Lead Magnet Idea for Your Coaching & Consulting Business

Let’s assume you are a fitness coach.

The following lead magnet approaches could be perfect for your ideal client avatar.

• Designed ebooks
• Webinars
• Hosting challenges
• Creating a quiz
• Offering a free discovery call
• Showcasing your customer success with a case study

If you have loads of customer success stories, you could create a written and designed case study. If you can get video reviews, that’s even better. Video testimonials convert more.

A free discovery call might not convert much, but it is worth it because few persons might go for it immediately.

You could create quizzes with tools like survey monkey, tryinteract, classmarker, etc. Before doing so, you should know your ideal clients to ensure that the quiz suits them. Also, try to make it fun 😍.

Regardless of the type of lead magnet, they need to answer “YES” to the following questions.

• Does the lead magnet have a high perceived value?
• Does the lead magnet have a high actual value?
• Does the lead magnet deliver a quick win?
• Will the prospect gain a lot from the lead magnet?
• Is the lead magnet related to what I do?
• Is the lead magnet brief?

You can grab this checklist and fill in the blanks.

8 Effective Lead Magnet Ideas for Coaches & Consultants

1. Challenges

Challenges serve as a valuable tool to build your email list fast.

Business and health coaches tap into this opportunity to have a great list. However, they could be helpful for a consultant, relationship coach, life coach, leadership coach, etc.

Source: WendyMaynard.com

When creating a challenge, keep the following in mind for your landing page content:

• Include a simple headshot of the host. And remember to smile. If you smile, you’ll win me over.

• State what the prospect should expect with benefit-driven bullet points.

• Put some testimonials on the page. The testimony should be from the prospects of your previous challenge.

• Include an attention-grabbing headline.

• Depending on your service, you could create a sense of urgency. You could use an animated countdown or state that the next challenge could take a while. This will prick prospects to take action immediately.

• Tell the prospect why you are qualified to host the challenge. Clear every doubt by telling the prospect that you have succeeded with what the challenge promises.

• Lastly, the design of the landing page should be excellent.

The following tips are vital for creating a winning challenge or contest:

• Keep the challenge short: Five to fourteen days should be enough. You shouldn’t give away too much. Just give your prospects a little win, and they will be happy to get into your full program.

• Build a community: Create a Facebook group of like-minds where your prospects and customers can interact. You could also tell prospects on your landing page that they could get immediate access to your private Facebook group. This enables them to see the testimonies of your current students firsthand.

• Engage your community with live videos: A group with very little interaction quickly become stale. Use Facebook live videos to consistently communicate with your community.

• Schedule Facebook posts: Facebook has a publishing feature that enables you to schedule posts. Scheduling your posts will save you a ton of time.

• Engage your prospects with emails: You don’t want to always be in the faces of your audience. However, try to consistently send emails to your prospects during the period of your challenge.
  
  

2. Quiz

According to lead quizzes, the average quiz has a 33.6% lead capture rate. Quizzes are super-effective for capturing leads. They can blow your email list off the roof, and you could consider using them as a part of your lead magnet strategy.

People always like to find out who they are or something interesting about themselves. For instance, a freelance professional who is struggling to get clients will be happy to partake in a quiz with this headline, “Getting LITTLE to ZERO clients?”… Find out why.

Quizzes are easy to create, and there are many quiz makers you can use.

Here’s a list of some quiz makers:

Quiz maker	Price
Survey Anyplace	Free | Plan starts at $39 monthly
Survey Monkey	Free | Plan starts at $34 monthly
Qzzr	Free | Plan starts at $24.99 monthly
Riddle’s Quizmaker	Free | Plan starts at $29 monthly
Survey Gizmo	Free | Plan starts at $25 monthly
Involve Me	Free | Plan starts at $19 monthly
Forms Craft	Free | Plan starts at $15 monthly
Classmarker	Free | Plan starts at $39.95 monthly
Lead Quizzes	Free | Plan starts at $37 monthly

The following tips will help you create a winning quiz:

• Quiz title: Your quiz title should answer the questions of your ideal clients. They should read the title and instantly say, “That’s me. I should take this quiz.”

• Quiz content: When creating your quiz, it helps if your questions lead the prospect to the next step of your funnel. Also, you will gain valuable insight based on the answers to your questions. These answers will guide your approach in creating the type of content that will interest your audience.

• Quiz test: Test your quiz on mobile and desktop devices. Many people use their phones. Hence, the quiz should be mobile responsive.

• Quiz results: Create more than one result for an answer. People like to share quizzes. The quiz could appear uninteresting with the same kind of results. Spice it up with up to 2 results for an answer to a question.

• Quiz bounce: I coined the term ‘Quiz bounce.’ Quiz bounce occurs when a prospect fails to complete the quiz due to a feeling of negative energy from the questions. If this happens, you won’t get their contact information. Filling the quiz content with loads of positivity will encourage prospects to finish the quiz and input their emails to get the results. Adopt creative solutions that make the quiz taker feel positive even when their situation is on the other end.
  
  

3. Case study

Putting case studies behind an opt-in form is still a debate. I also strongly oppose that you should gate a case study.

Case studies demonstrate how you got results for others. Gating such information isn’t ideal and doesn’t show a great first impression.

So, how do you use case studies to get emails from prospects?

Answer – You won’t use it. At least, not directly.

Allow prospects to download the case study without opting into your email list. When writing your case study, you should fill it with enough call-to-action.

The calls-to-action could include a link to your challenge, a link to take a quiz, a link to opt-in to your email list, etc. This way, you don’t appear pushy because the individual is now aware of what they can gain from you.

And if the person doesn’t take action, then there is a good chance that that individual isn’t your client.

4. Webinars

Doing webinars can solidify the trust of your prospects in your coaching or consulting program.

Hosting a webinar that solves a burning problem for your ideal audience can make your list soar quickly.

According to Neil Patel, 51% of people who visit your webinar’s landing page will convert on the initial signup.

Also, you can expect an average webinar conversion rate of up to 19%.

Source: NeilPatel.com

You can maximize your profits from webinars with these tips:

• Keep it brief: This is common for all lead magnets. You shouldn’t give out lots of information. Provide just a little information that delights your prospects and increases their appetite to get more. Typically, webinar training can last from 15 to 90 minutes.

• Answer lots of questions: Your audience will likely have questions. Use this as an opportunity to prove your expertise more. Remember that your audience is building a mental image of you from the moment they connect with you. Answering as many questions that they have will make them know that you will always be there for them.

• Promotion: To get quality results from your webinar conversions, you could run ads. For instance, if you want to do a webinar titled, “Rockstar approach to client acquisition through Facebook,” you could do this:
  • Create content related to your webinar. You could create a blog post titled, “10 Unknown Facebook Client Acquisition Methods.” Technically, this kind of blog post is called a presell article.
  • Within the article, add calls-to-action that leads the prospect to the landing page of your webinar.
  • Run engagement ads on Facebook.
  • Target the right audience.
  • You will get some signups from the post.
  • With this audience, you can create a custom audience in Facebook business manager, and retarget those who failed to sign up. You can also create a lookalike audience, which is similar to your custom audience.
    
    

5. Video Lead Magnet

You can use a professionally done pre-recorded video by editing it with a free online video editor and using it as a lead magnet.

To encourage your audience to opt into your list, you should allow free viewing of, at least, the first video.

To encourage your audience to opt into your list, you should allow free viewing of, at least, the first video.

Source: ej4.com

You could make videos on a topic your audience needs immediate answers to, or you could use content from a previous webinar.

Here are a couple of tips for creating an excellent video lead magnet:

• Email sequence: Building trust is key to having a happy subscriber. Having an email sequence can help. Your first email should be a subscription confirmation. Your next email should be a welcome email to thank the prospect for subscribing to your list. Also, you should let the prospects know that you reply to messages and welcome questions once they finish watching the videos.

• Video duration: There are conflicting conclusions about the ideal length of a video to keep user engagement. Keeping each video as short as possible is perfect. Just ensure that you are saying what needs to be said—nothing more, nothing less.
  
  

6. Email course

As I was researching to write this post, I stumbled on a blog. Of course, I got on the mailing list.

Who wouldn’t want to get information on how to get an extra $10,000? Most likely, no one. After I confirmed my subscription, I discovered that it was an email course.

Source: adamenfroy.com

Like other lead magnets, email courses are great if you have massive results from your coaching or consulting program.

You only need to create a series of emails and automate the sending process to your audience over a few days.

Email courses could be time-consuming to develop. Hence, they are a perfect fit for high-ticket coaching and consulting programs.

They allow you to prove your expertise and deliver lots of value to your audience daily.

Here are some tips for creating an excellent email course:

• Email whitelist: It isn’t uncommon for emails to end in the promotions and spam folder. To prevent this, ask your potential leads to whitelist your email.

• Email course duration: Try to keep the course within 4-7 days. An overly long course could bore your audience. The content should be rich so that your audience has a crucial takeaway they can implement immediately.

• Email subject line: Create an excellent subject line. This increases the open rate of emails.

• Email content: It helps to use short sentences and headings to break down blocks of text. Your audience should be able to skim through your email content and get your message.

• Don’t sell during the course: Inform your audience about more of your programs at the end of the course. Selling during the period of the course will be an apparent turn-off.
  
  

7. Free discovery call or consultation

Offering a free consultation won’t get you a massive list. However, it will get you leads that need a solution as quickly as possible. Also, a free discovery call will make your prospect know you and understand your process.

These consultations allow you to know if the prospect is in the ‘buy now’ stage or in the consideration stage.

They could also be a huge deciding factor for prospects to use your service. How you respond to the call is crucial.

A call outline can help.

Having a call outline will help you know that a prospect has the potential of becoming a client. Your outline should contain questions that help you identify your ideal clients.

8. PDF Checklist, Mini eBook, & Cheat Sheet

A professionally designed lead magnet PDF that outlines how your leads can get a quick win can help you build trust. Also, you will be showing to your audience that you understand how the procedure you outlined can bring massive results.

Many persons use a checklist, mini eBook, and cheat sheet as the first step in their sales funnels.

Branding your lead magnet PDF makes it catchy and increases its worth before your audience.

Humans love to feed their eyes on something colorful. Take your lead magnet a notch higher by designing it. If you prefer to do it yourself, you can use one of canva’s beautiful templates.

Conclusion

As a coach or consultant, you want to make a great first impression. So, you need to get the first and most important piece of your sales funnel right – your lead magnet.

Don’t rush the process.

The worst part of an underperforming lead magnet is to have prospects download or partake in it and opt-out of your email list. You don’t want that to happen because it is very discouraging. And it hurts too. So, take your time and get something solid.

And if you need help, you can schedule a meeting, and we’ll help you put together a high-end marketing funnel for your business.