How To (Not) Create A Lead Magnet: 3 Reasons Why Mine Failed

If you are thinking about creating an email list, read this

Photo by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash

Sometimes we fail. We spill coffee, we throw spaghetti on our new white shirts or we fail miserably at creating lead magnets. All three have happened to me in one day.

Let me tell you how to avoid ending up tired, dirty, and without a single download of your magnet ;).

If you're reading this, you may have the same things in common as me. You're trying to build an online audience. After reaching a small milestone of 500 followers, I thought I was ready to try a lead magnet strategy.

But boy, did I make some mistakes along the way.

I have followed all those great authors, content creators, and solopreneurs and wanted to follow in their footsteps.

When I reached my small milestone of having 500 followers, I thought it was time to try a lead magnet strategy.

A lead magnet is a nice and shiny free product, like a download or email course, in return for the people’s email.

It can work. If you do it right. So not like me, hah.

For fairness’ sake, I have no idea about marketing. I am a total newbie. Which makes the learning journey even greater.

Let’s jump into my failure procedure.

Photo by Toshi on Unsplash

1. Create a Universal Lead Magnet

My first mistake was that I wanted to create a lead magnet about designing one’s life — as this is what I am trained in and give workshops about.

The problem is that it’s a process that has multiple steps.

I created the lead magnet (a free e-mail course over 5 days) about the first step, finding out what you want in your life. But my call to action (CTA) was rather about solopreneurship and achieving online success. There was a mismatch.

I adapted my lead magnet to move it towards a freedom finder e-mail course, which helps people set up a strategy for their online businesses.

Again, I added the lead magnet and its CTA in most of my articles. Unfortunately, my CTA was still not good enough to gather interest from people who read my articles for writing advice.

Lesson Learned: Ideally you create a universal lead magnet that could be interesting for your audience from different angles. In my case, it is valuable information about achieving online success that includes writing and other online income sources. The CTA should fit your wider audience.

I am still working on that one and postponed my lead magnet until I have better clarity about my readers.

2. Make It a High-Quality Product (As If Someone Would Pay For It)

If you treat your lead magnet just as a little thing on the side, people will not be happy. If you don’t make it a great, valuable product, the email address will not help you as people won’t stick around.

Lesson Learned: Treat your lead magnet as a product that you would pay at least $10 for. If you achieve this, people will appreciate your lead magnet and want to stick around. It’s all about the organization of information, tips to implement, and giving real experienced advice. That’s what people appreciate.

3. Give it some time

Finally, I had my lead magnet up for 2 weeks and then decided to ditch it.

Not the best idea — those things take time and they will build over time. However as I have not mastered the first two steps, I decided to reach more followers first and then create a better lead magnet.

Lesson Learned: Be patient. Don’t expect your readers to come running, but know that this is a step-by-step process and you can learn something from every single reader that signs up.

Let me know if you have had similar experiences.

We can all learn from each other.