Imagine if you could be generating super hot leads in your coaching business 7 days a week, without having to have sleazy sales conversations and without having to spend thousands of pounds on ads.

That is all entirely possible for you with a lead magnet and email funnel sequence for your coaching business, and this post will talk you through exactly why you need a lead magnet and some creative ideas to get you started in creating one.

What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet, sometimes called a freebie, is a free resource you share with your audience in exchange for their email address, in order to add them to your email list.

Lead magnets can come in all sorts of formats, from PDFs through to quizzes, courses or email challenges, but they all have one thing in common - they provide potential clients with value and identify them as potential leads that are interested in your services.

Here is an example of my own lead magnet ‘Website Project Planner’ if you’d like an example.

Why do you need a lead magnet as a coach?

As a business owner, naturally you need a consistent flow of leads into your business and a lead magnet is the easiest way to achieve this. When someone downloads your lead magnet, it is literally them raising their hand to say “I am interested in you and what you do”.

As a coach, you need a lead magnet because it is an effective way of delivering value to potential clients and showcasing your expertise. By providing downloaders with a really great quality freebie, it helps to build trust and helps your clients to get started on their journey, whether that is in life, business or with their health.

Lastly, you need a lead magnet because it once it is set up, it is an entirely automated way of capturing and nurturing leads. It doesn’t require showing up on social media 24/7 and it doesn’t require ads. This allows you to take your audience and build a list of hot-leads, away from the noise of social media and meet them where they are most active - their inboxes.

What makes an effective lead magnet?

To be effective your lead magnet needs to be three things:

1. QUALITY

PLEASE don’t just create anything, stick it up and think that it’s going to bring you sales. Your lead magnet needs to be genuinely high quality and deliver value to potential clients. Your freebie should set the tone of what it’s like to work with you. So you want to create a lead magnet that showcases your expertise, goes beyond expectations and really delivers actionable results.
Don’t just create another free PDF someone will download and forget about.

2. DESIRABLE

The point of your lead magnet is to get people to give you their email address in exchange - you therefore need to make it a no-brainer to download it. What do your dream clients ACTUALLY want? Make sure it has a catchy title, is visually appealing and helps solve a problem your potential clients have.

3.RELEVANT

Like with everything in business, the end goal is to make sales. You therefore need to create a lead magnet that will benefit your bottom line by being RELEVANT to your offers and services.

There is no point creating a freebie about Instagram tips if you’re a business coach that doesn’t help with Instagram. And there is no point creating the quiz ‘find out your celebrity lookalike’ if you’re a life coach that speaks about careers.

Ask yourself - does this freebie naturally lead into my offers? Is it relevant to what I help clients with? Does downloading this freebie qualify people as people potentially interested in my services?

11 creative ideas for coaching lead magnets

Quiz

A quiz is a fun and interactive way of getting people to part ways with their email address. You can create a quiz (relevant to your services, of course) where people share their email address with you at the end to find their results. If someone has gone to the effort of completing the quiz, they’re very likely to share there email address when the time comes.

TOP TIP: You can then use the results page/email to promote some of your services, digital products or online resources e.g. blog posts which may be relevant to them based on their results.

Mini Course

A mini-course is one the ultimate freebies you can create as a coach to deliver value to your clients and showcase your expertise. The important thing with a mini-course is to make sure it is bingeable and high-quality. Don’t create a slow, drawn out course. You want to create something that packs a punch and gets straight to the juicy content.

This is an especially powerful if you have any kind of membership, course or framework as you can use the mini course to introduce these services/products which users should purchase if they want to go even more in depth.

E.g. A mini course about the 5 ways to turn your life around after a divorce, which promotes your 1:1 life coaching or group programme about getting your mojo back.

Coaching Taster Session

This lead magnet is a lot less scalable than the other freebies on this list, but it is one of the best lead magnets you can provide to identify people who are interested in your services.

Coaching is a particularly difficult service to sell as it is hard to explain what it is like to coached. With social media, you are mostly talking AT people. With actual 1:1 coaching, you’re mostly listening and giving personal advice. Therefore offering a free coaching session could be a great way of showcasing what it is like to be coach and what it is like to work with you specifically.

Webinar

A webinar is tried and true way of delivering value to your audience with an expectation of a sales pitch at the end. Your webinar could cover any topic you’re an expert in, and should be really value-packed and engaging.

However, be aware that as webinars are becoming ever more popular, people are less likely to put up with fluff and a lengthy sales pitch at the end. You need to deliver genuine value, make it worth their time and keep the sales pitch relevant and punchy.

TOP TIP: Don’t forget to share a recording as lots of people like to watch the replay in their own time.

List of Resources

A really powerful lead magnet you can create is a list of resources you use yourself. If you’re a business coach, this could be a list of tools/tech you use in your own business or service providers you recommend. If you’re a health coach, it could be a list of your favourite supplements, apps, or classes in your city. Give your audience the inside scoop on what you personally use in your life/business.

TOP TIP: You could even include some affiliate links to make a bit of passive income, with no extra work.

Introduce Your Framework

If you’re a coach that operates with a core framework or pillars, then you can create a freebie which introduces this to your audience. This could come in many forms such as a video, webinar, or a classic PDF workbook.

This will lead on naturally to your core service offering if people enjoy the framework and want more personalised support.

Free Module From Your Course

If you already have a course or membership then you could give away one of the modules for free to really showcase the value of what someone will be purchasing. No payment is required, simply in exchange of their email address where you can start to share client success stories and encourage them to purchase the full course if they found the module useful.

It’s also an amazing option for you as it doesn’t require any extra work to design or create.

Private Podcast

A private podcast could be the lead magnet for you if you already have a podcast or video content as part of your business. You could share an extra episode or two a month, an exclusive series/interviews or share your video content in podcast form so fans can listen on the go.

I don’t recommend this option if you’re not already podcasting in your business as it will require a lot of work and skill to create a high quality podcast. But if you’re already creating a podcast, this could be a great option with little extra set up required.

Free Challenge

Free challenges are becoming increasingly popular in the coaching indsutry and for good reason. They’re a great way to get your clients super engaged with you, coming back for more and most importantly - get your clients results.

Free challenges are the perfect way of getting your clients quick wins which build momentum and get them excited to work with you.

They can come in the form of a daily email for 5 days, a video shared on your social media every day for a week, or a Facebook live in your community.

Join Your Free Community

If you have a online community such a Facebook group or Slack channel, you can invite people to join your community as a form of lead magnet. When they sign up to join this community/group, they can give their email address in exchange.

This is the perfect way to nurture leads in two ways, both via email marketing AND through content in your community.

PDF or Spreadsheet Tracker

Trackers can come in the form of PDFs that the user prints out, or a spreadsheet they can copy and update themselves. This could be for anything that they need to track regularly such as meals, goals, social media, etc…

The great thing about a tracker, is it requires people to actually USE it regularly. This tangible interaction will act as a consistent reminder of you and hopefully become a truly useful resource to help them reach their goals.

What to do once you’ve created your lead magnet

So you’ve created an amazing lead magnet but now you actually need to get it out into the world, now what?

1. Set up your email marketing automation

The important thing to remember with every lead magnet is that the primary objective is to capture them email address. You can create an email automation which nurtures these leads by taking them through a really powerful email sequence.

Your 5-part email sequence could look something like this:

• Deliver the freebie

• Check in, ask how they’re finding it and introduce yourself

• Share your story of how you got started in coaching

• Share a client case study which they can relate to

• Share more details about your offers & ask them to book a consultation call with you

2. Create lead magnet landing page on your website

As a website designer, my recommendation will always be to create a landing page ON YOUR website. Don’t create a landing page on your email marketing software or using a software like click funnels. That’s because you want to be driving traffic to YOUR DOMAIN, not someone else’s!

This also means you have full creative control of what it looks like, and you can just embed the opt-in form on your website page.

This landing page is where you will directing your audience to in order to “sell” them on the freebie so they’re super excited to hand you their email address in exchange for the amazing resource you’ve created.

I also recommend creating a thank you page which the user is sent to once they have downloaded the freebie. That way you can continue to make the most of your super engaged audience. Here is a blog post all about what to include on your thank you page to make it really powerful.

3. Start promoting your freebie and generating traffic to your landing page

The final step is to start promoting your freebie to your audience, to other people’s audiences and get people clicking on the link to visit your landing page.

There are so many creative ways you can start to drive traffic to your freebie, including social media, Pinterest, promoting it on podcasts, sharing it in Facebook groups. Wherever you have an audience, start promoting your freebie!

You could even create blog posts similar to this one which promotes your freebie. Here is 17 blog post ideas for coaches to get inspired.

If you’ve found this blog post helpful and would like some support setting up your lead magnet, email automations and landing pages then you’re in the right place. That is exactly the kind of thing I help coaches like you to do in just ONE DAY! You can check out my design day services here.