Lead magnets

What a lead magnet is

A lead magnet is a single piece of work you give away in exchange for a name and an email address. There is one test it has to pass: would a buyer have paid for this if you had put a price on it? Not “is it quite useful”. Would somebody have opened a wallet. Everything else in the definition follows from that.

It is not a newsletter signup with a nicer button. It is not a chapter of your guide with the rest withheld. It is not a “free consultation”, which is a sales meeting with a friendly name on it. And it is not a format, either; a lead magnet can be a spreadsheet, a template, a short document or a recorded walkthrough. What makes it one is the trade, and whether the trade is fair.

When you need one, and the honest warning

You need one when you have a list worth building and a reason for somebody to be on it: a considered purchase, a long decision, a buyer who is researching months before they spend. It is also the right move when your traffic is reasonable and almost none of it identifies itself.

Most lead magnets fail the test, and it is worth saying plainly why that matters. A weak one does not simply underperform. It teaches the people who took it that your material is not worth reading, so the next email goes unopened, the address quality drops, and a list that does not respond is worse than a smaller list that does. You then pay to keep those addresses and pay again in reputation when the sending platform notices nobody is opening them.

You do not need one at all if there is nothing behind it. If no sequence of emails follows the download and nobody will write one, collecting addresses achieves nothing and I will say so on the first call. Publish the thing openly instead and let it earn recommendations.

What passes the test, and what does not

The formats that pass share one quality: they save the reader work they would otherwise have to do themselves.

• A tool. A calculator, a costing spreadsheet, a comparison grid with the options already filled in. Somebody would pay rather than build it.
• A real template. The contract clause, the scope document, the inspection form you actually use, cleaned up and made general. This one frightens people, which is usually the sign it is valuable.
• A checklist or workbook. Short, specific to a job, used at the point the job is done.
• A sample of the real work. One page of your site reviewed, one drawing marked up, one quote broken down. Expensive to give away, and the reason it converts.
• A short course by email. Five lessons that teach one skill properly, which also solves the sequence problem in the same stroke.

The ones that fail are familiar: a round-up of old blog posts with a cover, an infographic, a recorded webinar nobody would have attended live, a four-page document calling itself a white paper, a discount code, and anything whose title begins with the word ultimate. None of these is worth an address, and buyers have learned to tell.

What you get

The concept, tested against the question. Two or three candidates, with my honest view on which would survive a price tag and which would not. This happens before any writing, because the wrong idea executed well is still the wrong idea.

The asset itself. Written and built: the document, the spreadsheet, the template or the email course, in editable form and in whatever format the reader needs it.

The form and the delivery. The words on the signup form, the thank-you screen, and the first email that delivers the file and sets up what comes next. These three are short and they decide how much of the work is wasted.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Calgary firm that fits out dental surgeries gets enquiries from dentists eighteen months before anything is built, and loses most of them because the dentist gets a quote, panics at the total, and stops answering. The firm already offers a downloadable brochure, which nobody takes.

The replacement is a budget planner: a spreadsheet with every line item in a surgery fit-out, from cabinetry to compressed air, with realistic CAD ranges for each and notes on what drives a line up or down. It is the same sheet the firm uses internally, tidied and generalised. The download asks for a name, an email address and the planned opening date, which is the only question that matters. Dentists take it because they cannot get that information anywhere else, they fill it in, and many of them send it back with questions. Enquiries arrive with a budget already sketched, and the conversation that used to end in panic now starts from a number. The old brochure is deleted.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What you sell, what the buyer is trying to work out, and what you already have that they would pay for. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. One magnet, or a set, agreed before anything starts.
3. Concepts. Three to five working days. Two or three ideas on a page, each with the test applied openly, and you choose.
4. Building it. Five to fifteen working days depending on format. A spreadsheet tool takes longer than a document and is usually worth it.
5. The wrapper. Form copy, thank-you page and delivery email written and handed to whoever runs your email platform, or wired up if that is part of the job.
6. Delivery. Everything editable, with a note on what to change when your prices or your process move.

Two to four weeks from first call to something live is typical.

What it costs

Lead magnets are not one of the published bands on the pricing page, so each is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. Format drives it: a checklist is at the cheap end, a working calculator with real figures in it at the other. The number is fixed in writing before anything starts, and the concept stage is included rather than billed separately.

What happens next

An address is only worth having if something follows it, so the usual next step is the first five emails a new subscriber receives. After that, firms tend to add a second magnet aimed at a different stage of the same decision, and to put the same material to work on the site as a page built around one action. None of that is assumed. The magnet is a finished piece of work on its own and it can sit there doing its job unchanged.