How many lead magnets do I need for my small business?

Lead magnets are a great way to attract leads and build know, like and trust but you’re not alone in wondering how many you need to create to keep a steady flow of leads and clients coming to your business.

Most business owners I work with want to discover how to nail their lead magnet activity, but they aren’t sure how many lead magnets to create and offer.

If you’re fed-up guessing this blog is for you.

In this blog, I’m going to explain:

• What is a lead magnet?
• What to do before you create your irresistible lead magnets.
• Why the number of lead magnets depend on how many products or services you offer.
• The different lead magnets you’ll need for each part of the awareness stages.
• Lead magnet ideas for each stage of the awareness stages
• And soooo much more.  

Ready? Let’s dive in.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is content that’s useful and helpful to your audience and for them to get access to it they give you their email address.

Once they’ve done that you then add them onto your email list.

You then send them the lead magnet to their inbox and you follow up with useful and helpful emails.  

Over time, when the time is right, you make an offer to them of your products or your services.

They may buy from you or they may not.

If they don’t buy keep them on your email list, keep sending them useful and helpful emails and offering your product or service.  

What is another name for a lead magnet?

A lead magnet can be known by many other names.

Some examples are:

• Content upgrades
• Ethical bribe
• Freebie
• List builder
• Sign-up offers

What to do before you create your lead magnets 

You don’t want to spend your valuable time creating a lead magnet no-one wants so before you get creating here’s some ideas on what you can do.

• Identify who you’re creating the lead magnet for
• Identify what problem that lead magnet is going to help them solve
• What it is your ideal client wants?

It might be your business has more than one persona or ideal client.

If you have more than one it pays to really understand what their problems are before you put together any lead magnet.

Ideas to help you identify the problems your audience wants solved

A great way checking that you really do understand what your ideal client wants from your lead magnets is to look in your inbox.

What are they telling you that they’re struggling with?

Think about content you’ve shared on social media, which content resonated the most with them?

These insights can give you a good indication of what they’re struggling with.

What lead magnets are you offering and what problems are they solving?

It can be so easy to forget what lead magnets we offer, so do a lead magnet audit.

This will help you to identify what lead magnets you have, gaps in your lead magnet offering and will save you from creating lead magnets that are too similar.

What lead magnets are your competition offering? 

You can learn so much by checking what lead magnets your completion is offering.

• What lead magnets are they offering?
• Can you identify any gaps in what they are offering?
• What lead magnets can you create to fill these gaps?

Why is it important to create different lead magnets?

You may have clients that want the same product or service from you but the reasons for them wanting your product or your service might be for completely different reasons.

It might be that they have different goals, different aims and objectives and that’s why it pays to create different lead magnets specifically for your ideal audience.

They may also be at different parts of their awareness stages and the right lead magnet can help them with their decision making process and build their trust with you.

When you know what’s going on for your potential clients at each stage you can map out, plan and create your lead magnets to help your audience with their buying decision which is to buy from you, or not.

What are the 5 stages of awareness and what does that mean for your potential client and the lead magnets you’ll create?

The five awareness stages are:

• Unaware
• Problem Aware
• Solution Aware
• Product Aware
• Most Aware

Let’s take a look a closer look at each stage and what’s going on for your potential client.

Unaware

When your potential client is in the unaware stage they aren’t aware or have no knowledge they have a problem, but you know that at some point they’re going to come face to face with a problem.

Problem Aware

At this stage of awareness they know they have a problem. It’s happening.

What they don’t yet know is what solutions are out there to help them fix it so they’ll be looking for a lead magnet that will give them some answers to getting past this stumbling block and give them hope that there are solutions out there for them.

Solution Aware

At this stage you potential client now knows solutions exist for them and you can sense their relief.

But what they’re struggling with is they might not know about you or what products or services you offer that will help with their niggle.

Product Aware

They know what you offer now.

But here’s the thing.

They’ve found your competitors too.

This is the time to help them decide if you’re the right fit for them or not.

Most Aware

They’re so close to signing on the dotted line, whipping out their credit cards and making their decision.  

These folks are honing in on the nitty-gritty to help them make their choice and this is when they’ll still be asking questions about your product or service but also raising their worries, doubts and objections.

You want a lead magnet that helps to get them off the fence.

Remove any doubt you’re the one for them because after a while those splinters are going to hurt aren’t they?

What information does your potential buyer want from a lead magnet at each awareness stage?

At each stage your potential client will want to know different things from you so let’s look at each stage and consider the type of information to include in your lead magnet.

Unaware: What kind of lead magnet can you create for this stage?

The first stage is unaware now this is really difficult to create a lead magnet for because your ideal client is currently tootling along unaware that they have any problems, or if they do have any niggles they’re not big enough that they actually want to do anything about it.

But all is not lost you can still get their eyeballs on you. 

As they’re not yet aware of any problems they’re not likely to sign-up for a lead magnet, but you can start sowing the seed and bring awareness of potential problems that may be on the horizon for them in your content you share on social media.

For example:

• Did you know not having [x] in place is the biggest reason people struggle with [y]?
• These are the 5 most common mistakes made by [your target audience]
• What would you do if [x] happened? Would you be prepared?

Problem aware: What kind of lead magnet can you create for this stage?

After the unaware stage comes problem aware and this is where you can provide a lead magnet with basic information to help them with a problem that they are experiencing.Your lead magnet could be an eBook, a worksheet or it could be a short email course.  

Nothing too overwhelming.

You want to offer just enough to help them identify what their problem is and lead them to recognise potential solutions.

Solution aware: What lead magnets can you offer at the solution aware stage?

For the solution aware stage the lead magnets you can offer can be focussed on helping your audience learn more about their problem and leading them to the solution you offer.

Types of lead magnets can you share with them are can be checklists, cheat sheets, how-to videos, step-by-step guides or webinars.

Product aware: What type of lead magnets can you offer at the product aware stage?

For the product aware stage the lead magnets you can offer are for those people who know what product or service you offer that may be for them. 

At this stage it also means that they’re aware of others solutions available to them from other businesses because they’ve been looking at, researching and filtering out information to help them make their final buying decision.

What you can offer them as a lead magnet is a buyer’s guide.

What’s a buyer’s guide?

A buyer’s guide a piece of content to educate your buyer, answers their likely questions and overcomes some or all of their objections. The aim is to help them choose the right solution for them.

Ideas for your buyer’s guide

Let’s say, for example, you offer under-floor heating.

What you can do in your buyer’s guide is talk about different home heating options that are available on the market and how they all compare to each other.

What could you call your buyer’s guide?

Your ultimate under-floor heating buyer’s guide

Are you a social media coach?

You could offer:

Your ultimate buyers guide to social media coaches

Are you a website designer for estate agents?

Your buyer’s guide could be:

Your ultimate guide to website design for estate agents

Your lead magnet at this stage gives them all that extra information to help them go that one step forward to helping them decide to buy or not.

Most aware: What type of lead magnets can you offer at the most aware stage?

The most aware stage is where they really are sitting on the fence.

What do they need from you to get them off the fence and decide?

Are they deciding between you and another business?

There are quite a few examples of lead magnets you can offer.

Some ideas are:

• A free trial for a limited time – you’ve maybe seen this yourself if you’ve signed up for a tool or a software to help you with your business  
• A free demonstration
• A discovery call

Back to your original question

How many lead magnets do you need?

As you can see it depends, so unfortunately I can’t give you a definitive answer as to how many lead  magnets you and your business need to have.

Hopefully this blog will give you some idea of how many you need to consider and given you some ideas for what lead magnets to create so you can help your potential buyer decide who is the best fit for them.

Want to know more about creating your irresistible lead magnets?

Here’s some more blogs for you:

Beginners guide to creating irresistible lead magnets

How to create your 12 months marketing plan to support your business objectives and goals

How many lead magnets do I need for my small business?