How to Build a Lead Magnet Funnel

Imagine having a steady stream of leads coming in every week without cold calling, without relying on referrals, and without running expensive ads. Sounds amazing, right? 

This is the power of a strategic lead magnet funnel.

Instead of spinning your wheels every month looking for clients, a lead magnet funnel does the heavy lifting of attracting, engaging, and converting prospects into paying clients. This article will walk you through how to build your own lead magnet funnel. Let’s get started! 

What’s a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is an offer businesses put out to collect leads. You might also hear lead magnets referred to as freebies or opt-ins, but essentially a lead magnet is a tool used to encourage your customers to give your business their contact information, whether that’s their email, phone number, or actual address.

Lead magnets are a great tool to generate potential business, but it’s definitely not a “build it and they will come” type of scenario. This is where the lead magnet funnel comes into play. Lead magnet funnels are a specific campaign created with the intention of promoting your lead magnet and building trust with your audience so that they will actually hand over their contact information. 


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What’s a Lead Magnet Funnel?

So, what is a lead magnet funnel, and why do you need one? Put simply, a lead magnet funnel is a set of multiple pieces of content that are intentionally designed to attract, engage, and convert prospects into leads on your website. 

How a lead generation funnel works

An example of this kind of funnel might look like a post (or series of posts) on social media that link to blog posts that dive deeper into the topic. Then from those blog posts, your reader/prospect would be encouraged to download your lead magnet (whether that’s an ebook, whitepaper, or other downloadable asset). 

There are a few different benefits of creating and using a lead magnet funnel, for both you and your customers.

For you as a business owner, the lead magnet funnel sets a path for you to develop intentional content where each piece serves a distinct purpose. This makes it easier for you to set goals and track success, but it also ensures you’re not creating too much content without a plan for how to use it. 

For your prospects, a lead magnet funnel helps them learn more about your business without being overtly sold to. Each stage of the lead magnet funnel offers value to your readers and creates a sense of trust with them—so by the time they reach the lead magnet and need to give you their email in order to read it, they’re more likely to do so, because you’ve already demonstrated value to them. 

5 Steps to Creating a Lead Magnet Funnel

Now that you know what a lead magnet funnel is and why it’s helpful to have one, let’s dive into how you actually go about creating one. 

Step 1: Start with your big topic

Intention is the name of the game with lead magnet funnels, so your first step should be thinking critically about what the topic of a particular funnel is going to be. This should be tied to your overall content strategy, audience research, and sales goals. If you don’t have information on any of those areas, go back and iron those out before starting your lead magnet funnel.

Without a strong central topic that’s tied to your overall content goals, not only will it be difficult to get your audience engaged in your lead magnet, it’ll also be difficult to gauge whether or not it’s successful. Taking the time upfront to make sure your topic is solid and interesting to your audience will save you trouble down the road. 

Step 2: Create your primary asset

This is your actual lead magnet in the lead magnet funnel. It may be a guide, an ebook, a checklist, a workbook, a course—you get the idea. Regardless of the form it takes, this asset should be robust, high-value, and informative to your audience. Focus here on adding value for your customers and educating them on whatever your chosen topic is here; save your business plug for the very end. 

Step 3: Create a form to capture your leads

Although a huge focus of a lead magnet is simply adding value for customers, you do want to make sure you get some return from it. This is where a lead capture form comes in, and it’s a critical part of the process. 

The landing page where your form will live can make or break whether a prospect actually enters their information, so keep this form simple. Don’t overwhelm your audience right at the very end, and don’t ask for too much information; create a form that asks for only the information you need and is easy to navigate. 

To save yourself manual work later on, make sure your form integrates with your email marketing software for easy implementation. Once your prospect fills out the form, they can easily be added to whatever leads email flows you already have set up. 

And lastly, make sure you actually deliver the asset you’ve promised. The easiest way to do this is to set up an automatic email that delivers as soon as the form is filled out. Test this workflow once it’s live on your website to make sure it’s working! 

Step 4: Create your supporting assets

The actual process of building your lead magnet funnel works backwards; create your main asset first (even though people will receive it last) and work back from there to create your supporting assets (that people will engage with first). 

These assets are your social media posts, your blog posts, and any other smaller content pieces you use to funnel towards the lead magnet. Pull interesting tidbits or teasers from your larger lead magnet and create fun, engaging, and valuable assets from that.

Don’t be afraid of giving away the store for free—if you choose the right tidbits, they should be enough to pique people’s interest, but not enough to make them an expert on the topic. This will encourage them to download the full asset while still proving that it’s worth their time and their contact information. 

Step 5: Add everything to your calendar and launch! 

Once you have all your assets created and ready to go, you’re all set to schedule all your posts and launch your lead magnet funnel. Keep track at each stage of how much engagement each asset is getting, and see if there’s a drop-off point where people stop engaging. 

If you notice, for instance, that people are making it to the blog posts but aren’t progressing to download the lead magnet, you can focus your energy there and see what you can change or tweak to successfully get people to the end of the funnel. 

Tips for a Successful Lead Magnet Funnel

To create a lead magnet funnel that actually gets you some leads, here are a few tips to keep in mind: 

Keep the calls to action (CTAs) relatively consistent across all your supporting assets. Don’t ask your audience to take lots of different actions, as it’ll get overwhelming and people may take no action at all. You can vary your wording, but stick to asking them to complete one action. 

  • Monitor which supporting assets are performing well and which need to be optimized. As mentioned above, this helps you focus your energy on areas that need extra help rather than spending time fixing things that aren’t broken. 

  • Have a plan for what to do with your leads! Don’t collect everyone’s email and then never contact them again. Create an email series and continue to nurture those leads so they eventually convert into customers. 

For more hands-on help building your business’s lead magnet funnels, Trail Mix Marketing is here to help! Schedule a free content strategy session today.

Lauren Diethelm

Lauren Diethelm is a writer and strategist living in Santa Monica. She has worked as a content marketer in a variety of industries including ecommerce, healthcare, education, and is currently leading content efforts around AI. When not working, Lauren enjoys reading, crafting, and spending time outside.   

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