In this episode, I’m talking about why having a growing email list doesn’t necessarily mean you’re attracting the right people. You might have a lead magnet that gets lots of downloads and new subscribers, but if those people never go on to buy from you, it’s worth asking whether your lead magnet is attracting potential buyers—or simply freebie hunters.
I explain the difference between a “hunter magnet” and a “buyer magnet,” and why information-based lead magnets are becoming less effective now that AI can provide almost any information in seconds. Instead, I share why your lead magnet should help your ideal customer take action, prove they have a specific problem, and naturally lead them towards your paid offer.
I also walk through five checks you can use to review your existing lead magnets, including whether they encourage implementation, speak to a specific person, connect naturally to your offer, and provide something that AI can’t easily create in 30 seconds. I use the example of a “50 Content Ideas” freebie and show how turning it into a specific, actionable pre-launch content plan can make it much more likely to attract buyers. Ultimately, the goal isn’t to build the biggest email list possible—it’s to build a list filled with people who are genuinely interested in buying what you offer.
3 Key Takeaways
- Focus on Buyers, Not Just Downloads
A lead magnet isn’t supposed to simply grow your audience or email list. Its job is to attract potential leads who are likely to become customers. A smaller list of people who genuinely want your offer can be far more valuable than a huge list of people who only signed up for a freebie.
- Create Lead Magnets That Encourage Implementation
With AI making information easier than ever to access, simply giving people more information isn’t enough. Stronger lead magnets help people take action, solve part of a specific problem, and move closer to the result they want. The more implementation your lead magnet provides, the more likely it is to attract someone who is serious about getting results.
- Make Your Lead Magnet a Natural Step Towards Your Offer
Your lead magnet should be specific to the person you want to work with and connected to the problem your paid offer solves. When the lead magnet naturally prepares someone for your paid program, the next step becomes much clearer. Instead of asking how many people downloaded your freebie, look at how many went on to buy.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
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Transcript
You've got a lead magnet, people are downloading it, they're getting on your list, but yet your list isn't buying. Maybe the lead magnet you've got is attracting the wrong people, and in today's episode, we are gonna be looking at how to create a lead magnet that actually attracts buyers
If we've not met, my name is Teresa Heath-Wareing, and I work with course creators, membership owners, and coaches, and I help them run effective launches that they love, that feels good to them and their audience, and is tailored to them. I've been in this space for a really long time. So I've been in the online space about 10 years now, and lead magnets was something I learned about really, really early on And it's been something I've been talking about for a very long time.
hat are downloading our lead [:Not a list magnet or an audience magnet, this is a lead magnet. The whole point of the lead magnet is to bring people in that are potential leads. And I think sometimes we get so preoccupied with audience size, with email list size, that the vanity metric is really making us not think, are we bringing the right people in?
And not only maybe we've forgotten that, but also what used to work, and I know we say this a lot and I say this a lot, but honestly the world has changed, and AI has changed so much, and as far as I can see, it's going to keep changing. And one of the beauties of being a small business owner is that we can shift and move and learn.
ner is that we can be agile. [:It would be so difficult. And as a small business owner, luckily we are much more agile than that. So we do have to make these tweaks and changes as the industry is changing. Now, I'm not saying we throw everything in the bin, but what I've put together in this episode is some rules around things I want you to consider when setting up a lead magnet, and how you can review some of the ones you've already got.
just wanna get your freebie, [:Or have you set up your lead magnet to be a buyer magnet so that it addresses certain things, and it leads them into the offer of your program that is paid? And the hunter magnet tends to fall into what I also call an information lead magnet, whereas a buyer magnet is more like an implementation lead magnet.
So we have hunter, which tends to be information on the one side, then we have buyer, that tends to be implementation. Because what we want are those implementation lead magnets, and what your ideal customer wants are implementation lead magnets. They know that in this world of AI, information is everywhere, and where lead magnets have predominantly been in the past information.
hem, they're going to think, [:So we need to tweak what we're putting out there, and we need to be looking at how we hone that particular lead magnet for a buyer rather than someone who is just after a freebie and just after information. Because your buyer wants to take action, and they want to implement things. So I've put together a quick checklist.
These are five check things to look at when you are creating or promoting a lead magnet to see if they're going to attract those buyers or if they're just going to attract freebie hunters. So check number one Is this lead magnet helping them implement or is it just information? We want it to help them implement and get a step closer to the thing they're trying to achieve.
Check [:Check number three, is it specific enough to that particular person? So this is slightly different from does it prove the problem because multiple people might have the same problem, so is this specific enough to the people you're talking to? Check number four, is it a natural prerequisite to your offer, and therefore is your offer a natural next step?
seconds? Would it be a [:So let's say you have a current lead magnet and you've been through the checks and you know that this doesn't quite add up. So these three questions will now help you rebuild this current lead magnet. And I want to give you an example to help you see how this might work. So let's say you have a current lead magnet called 50 Content Ideas.
Okay, so this would be a textbook hunter information lead magnet, not a buyer implementation lead magnet. And you could throw, "Give me 50 content ideas," into AI and it could give it you in a heartbeat. So the three questions I want you to ask yourself while you're rebuilding this is think about the person.
. The second question I want [:It doesn't actually lead them to an offer or to your paid program. And the last question is the implementation. Are they actually implementing anything or is it just giving them information? What this lead magnet currently gives is just a list of content ideas. It doesn't give them the plan, it doesn't give them the strategy, it is just giving them information.
So instead of doing, "Here are 50 content ideas," why not consider something like, "30 pieces of pre-launch content mapped to the week you post each one." It's the same topic, but it's completely different in terms of who it's targeting. So someone has gotta be launching. The job of it is to warm them up into my main offer and there is implementation.
e of the reasons I wanted to [:So if you go to teresaheathwareing.com/toolkit, you can download my launch planning toolkit. And when I was planning out this episode, alongside the work I'm doing for my own business, I realized that this is really probably not the best lead magnet I could have. So I am actually gonna take my own lead magnet through my own process, and I'm going to look at it and see how I can make it more specific, target more of the right people, and focus more on the implementation than just providing information.
ead magnet is truly working, [:What we want to be looking at is how many of those people go on to buy. I would much rather have a smaller email list and a smaller audience, but of perfect buyers than have a massive audience and a massive list and they're just not interested in ever buying anything from me. So if you want to see my lead magnet that needs some improving, then go to teresaheathwareing.com/toolkit.
And let me know if you run your lead magnet through this framework, through those five checks and through those three questions, and let me know what decision you made in terms of changing your lead magnet. Also, if you are not subscribed, you would do me a massive favor by hitting subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, or if you're watching on YouTube, hit that subscribe button and the bell so that you get notified every time I put a video out.
k in two weeks. I'll see you [:
