A lead magnet is a trade: something useful, for an email address. The reason so many of them fail is that people optimise the wrong side of the trade. They work on getting more addresses, when the problem is that the addresses they already collect are worthless.
A list of 5,000 people who downloaded “The Ultimate Guide to Marketing” is worth less than 200 people who downloaded “How to price a rebrand for a client who has never bought one”. The second list contains people with a specific problem you can solve for money.
The four properties that matter
1. It is embarrassingly specific
The test: could a competitor use the same title? If yes, it is too broad. “A guide to freelancing” could be anybody’s. “What to say when a client asks for a discount” could only be written by somebody who has been in that conversation, and it attracts only people who have been in it too.
Specificity costs you downloads and buys you buyers. That is the trade, and it is a good one.
2. It is finished in one sitting
A 90-page guide is not more generous than a 20-page one. It is more work for the reader, and work is what they were avoiding. Five to eight short chapters, 5,000 to 8,000 words, readable in half an hour. Anything longer converts a download into a file in a folder.
The reader who finishes is the reader who replies to your first email. The one who did not open it unsubscribes from it.
3. It solves the problem completely, then names the next one
The instinct is to hold back the good part so people have to pay for it. This does not work — it produces a guide that obviously withholds, and readers can feel the shape of the missing chapter.
What works is to solve the stated problem entirely, and then be honest about what comes after it. Somebody who has just successfully set their day rate now has a new problem: defending it in a negotiation. You did not withhold anything. You earned the right to sell the next thing.
4. It looks like something
A Word document exported to PDF with default margins signals how much you valued the exchange. It does not need to be designed by a studio — a cover, a title page, consistent headings and a readable measure is most of the way there. See front matter for the four pages that do this work.
What goes at the back
The last page of a lead magnet is the most valuable page you will ever publish, and it is almost always blank. The reader has just finished, they liked it, and they are — for about ninety seconds — more willing to hear from you than they will ever be again.
- One line saying what problem they now have.
- One offer that solves it — a call, a course, a service, the paid book.
- One link. Not five.
See back matter for the rest of what belongs there.
Formats that work, by who you are
| If you are a… | The lead magnet that works |
|---|---|
| Consultant | The diagnostic. A framework for working out which version of the problem the reader has — because that is exactly what you get paid to do in the first meeting. |
| Coach | The first two weeks. Give away the beginning of the programme in full. People who complete it have already started. |
| Course creator | The prerequisite. Teach the thing your course assumes people already know. Everyone who reads it is now qualified to buy. |
| Author | The companion. A workbook, checklist or expanded appendix for a book you have already published, offered in the back of it. |
Actually writing the thing
This is where most of them die. The idea takes an afternoon; the writing takes six weeks that never arrive, and the plan quietly becomes a blog post.
BookArc’s Lead Magnet format is shaped for exactly this: five to seven chapters, around 900 words each, each one solving a single problem and ending in an action — and no throat-clearing introduction chapter, which is the thing that makes most giveaway guides feel like padding. You get the chapter plan first and change it before anything is written.
One sentence in, a finished lead magnet out — cover included.
Write one free