In an age of increasingly crowded search results, AI overviews, and people using chatbots to answer every question that springs to mind, it’s more difficult than ever to get eyes on your content. Competition is fierce, and it isn’t going to get any easier. Enter the lead magnet…

Lead magnets are pieces of content designed to be so valuable that they encourage visitors to take the next stage in the customer journey (and hand over their contact details to get access!). But, with today’s short attention spans, creating that type of value is tricky.

In this post, we’ll look at exactly what a lead magnet is, how to create one that delivers value (along with some standout examples), and how you can use AI to up your lead magnet game without compromising on authenticity or originality. Let’s get started.

What is a lead magnet?

In the simplest terms, a lead magnet is a piece of content that generates leads by encouraging potential customers to provide contact information like a phone number or email address. 

If that sounds a little vague, that’s because lead magnets can come in all shapes and sizes: e-books, video courses, reports, free/beta access to a tool/product, and so on. They’re often—but not always—preceded by lead magnet landing pages that cover all the tangible benefits, and usually wrap up with a catchy and effective call to action and a sign-up form.

But they’re also very much part of what we here at Wordsmithie like to call a content loop—part of a wider lead gen strategy that prioritizes user engagement and content creation. When a lead magnet resonates, whether that means users sharing a cool new feature or quoting the piece on LinkedIn or X, it encourages others to interact.

As other users engage, you can both leverage those interactions as social proof (retweets, adding case studies to your website, etc.) and incorporate feedback to help refine your existing content as well as shape the direction of your next lead magnet. Give the people what they want!

Pro tip: Many of the concepts we wrote about in our piece on briefing your brand—well-defined messaging, consistent branding, compelling visual assets—are all relevant to lead magnets too.

How to create a lead magnet (+ examples)

One of the biggest considerations when creating a lead magnet is homing in on your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). There’s a lot of information out there on the web, and people are getting better at using tools to consolidate that information in a way that works for them. 

If people want copywriting tips and tricks, for example, there are thousands of them just a Google search or prompt on a gen AI tool away. That’s why it’s crucial to figure out what sets your lead magnet apart from competitors. 

What that looks like in practice can vary considerably depending on your chosen format. You might, for example, offer a step-by-step course that enables participants to create a tangible outcome by the end of it. A basic website, for example, or a custom resume template. Or you could create a custom tool that enables them to skip a lot of manual work or research. 

Whatever your approach, it all starts with identifying what your customers (and potential customers) will find valuable. What are their pain points? Is it a lack of time? Not knowing how to get started? Figure out how you can solve those problems, then build—and market—your lead magnet around that proposition. Let’s get into some examples of compelling lead magnets:

HubSpot’s Content Marketing Planning Kit is packed with useful information and templates. Note how they lean on their brand equity—“…including strategies HubSpot uses every day to reach millions of customers”—through their lead magnet landing page. In a similar vein, Intercom’s Conversational Support Guide talks about teaching readers “the latest strategies” and offers a “proven framework” they can adopt and deploy immediately.

CoSchedule’s Blog Title Analyzer, just one element of their suite of Headline Analyzer tools, is a standalone tool that essentially sits above its own landing page. Great for SEO, certainly, but also useful for convincing potential customers who aren’t swayed by the USP in the page’s subtitle—“Write Click-Worthy Blog Titles That Drive More Traffic.”

The way Notion promotes their library of templates, which make it much easier for newbies to get started, is actually a very savvy lead magnet. It demonstrates some of the cool things existing users are doing with the platform and allows them to make money by promoting their templates—hello, content loop!—but requires potential customers to sign up to try them out.

Neil Patel’s long blog post on SEO Templates, containing downloadable worksheets and spreadsheets, may not seem like a lead magnet at first glance. Although it doesn’t require readers to sign up in order to download many of them, it’s peppered with mentions of Patel’s Ubersuggest tool and his SEO agency’s services. In that respect, it feels very much like a classic lead magnet. (Remember that lead magnets can take many different forms!)

Is AI the future of lead magnet creation?

First things first, let’s cut right to the chase: we don’t recommend using AI to generate a lead magnet entirely from scratch. It’s unlikely to produce content that will differentiate you from your competitors because these tools, by their very nature, are pulling that content from elsewhere.

AI can, however, be a useful tool when it comes to repurposing content that you already have. You could, for example, ask your chosen gen AI tool to generate lead magnet ideas based on recurring themes in your blog posts. Or try uploading a number of pieces you’ve written that have common threads and let it take a run at stitching them together as a lead magnet.

Although that output (probably) won’t be ready to publish right off the bat, it will provide you with some interesting starting points for where you might take your next lead magnet. AI-created lead magnets might not be the future but, as in so many disciplines, artificial intelligence can be a useful tool for supplementing your lead generation efforts and marketing strategy.

It’s all about finding the right format AND the right angle. Whether you’re repurposing blog posts into actionable templates, creating a beta tool, or building courses, the following always applies: make it relevant, useful, and a no-brainer for users to share their email address to get access.

Creating compelling lead magnets can take some time, but they should be a part of every lead gen strategy. Because when you get them right, they’re an inexpensive way to build trust and brand authority, keep that content loop spinning, and entice new customers long after release.