If you've been doing lead generation long enough, you know that one of the best ways to get your audience's contact information is to offer them something in return.
This something is often called a lead magnet, content upgrade, giveaway, or opt-in incentive. Some marketers simply call it content.
They come in all shapes and forms. But are they as effective for lead generation? This is a question we kept asking ourselves, but we couldn't find any data that would help give us answers.
That's why we decided to conduct a study that would help us understand which types of lead magnets work best.
Below is our analysis of the results along with an additional section dedicated to another important question: how do you align your lead magnet with the needs of your target audience?
There, we've collected advice from 14 inspiring marketers who have cut their teeth generating leads through the use of lead magnets.
We would like to thank everyone who participated in this study and invite you all to familiarize yourself with our results.
Table Of Contents on Best Lead Magnets Study for Lead Generation
- About the 2020 Best Lead Magnets Study
- Key findings
- What type of lead magnets has the highest conversion rates
- Does the length of the lead magnet matter?
- Do businesses of different sizes choose different lead magnets?
- Does the choice of lead magnets vary if you’re targeting a specific audience (B2B, B2C, or both)?
- What lead magnets work best in Internet Marketing
- What lead magnets work best in Ecommerce
- What lead magnets work best in Arts & Entertainment
- What lead magnets work best in Health & Beauty
- What lead magnets work best in Financial Services
- What lead magnets work best in other industries
- Methodology and Data
- How to align your lead magnet with your target audience’s needs
- What lead magnets will you use in your next lead generation campaign?
Did you know? GetResponse have recently developed a solution called the Lead Magnet Funnel that can help you host, promote, and generate more leads with your lead magnets.
About the 2020 Best Lead Magnets Study
The analysis below is based on responses from 790 marketers we surveyed during March and May 2020.
60% of study participants were independent contractors and 17.6% worked for companies with between two and nine employees.
44.1% targeted both B2B and B2C audiences, and 26.6% focused only on B2B. B2C was the key audience for 18.1% of respondents.
The most represented industries among our participants were internet marketing (22.6%), e-commerce (10.3%) and arts and entertainment (7.8%).
Main findings
47% of marketers who participated in our study said that video and text-based lead magnets performed best as an uptake incentive.
Within these two types, abbreviated content works best. Only 27% of respondents said they saw higher conversion rates with longer videos. 41.4% said the same about long-form written content.
Video content is the preferred primary magnet type for solopreneurs, who make up 60% of our study participants. Companies with 10 to 49 employees, which represent 8.2% of our respondents, obtained the same results.
For all other groups, companies with 2-9 (17.6%), 50-249 (6.7%), and 250+ employees (7.5%), text-based lead magnets had the highest rates of highest conversions.
In internet marketing, the industry most represented among our audience, written and video lead magnets achieved very similar results. 27.5% of marketers in this vertical performed better with written lead magnets, and 26.2% saw higher conversion rates with video incentives.
Editor’s note: If you’re looking for inspiration, this post shows 25 lead magnet examples from different industries.
What type of lead magnets has the highest conversion rates
We began our study with a single-response question about our respondents' experience with different types of lead magnets.
Specifically, we wanted to know what types of lead magnets they used had the highest conversion rates.
It turned out that there were two most popular formats, chosen by 47% of respondents: video (24.2%) and written (22.8%).
The next three types were: visual (11.8%), tool or access to something (11.8%), and monetary value (10.5%). The three least popular types were Interactive (7.9%), Audio (6.1%) and Other (5.2%).
Observation:
These results are consistent with what we have seen in our own lead generation campaigns. Webinars and Guides, two main types of magnets we've had the most success with, both fall into the categories that nearly half of respondents voted for.
Does the length of the lead magnet matter?
Next, we wanted to know if marketers tended to do better with short or long content when it came to generating leads.
Keep in mind that we only used this distinction for video and written lead magnets, where we thought it made the most sense.
When it comes to video content, the majority of respondents (73%) said they saw the highest conversion rates with short content, like video clips, quick tutorials, or video samples.
Only 27% said they had better results with long-form video content, such as webinars, recordings, or online lectures.
We saw similar results for text-based lead magnets, although the difference was not as significant.
58.6% of marketers said their short written content – like newsletters, checklists, or sample eBooks – had the highest conversion rates.
Long written content, such as guides or reports, generated the best results for 41.4% of respondents who chose this type of lead magnets.
Observation:
This time we were a little surprised. Most of the content updates we notice tend to be comprehensive guides, reports, white papers, webinars, online events - things we would categorize as long.
At the same time, there are two aspects of long-form content that can work against it: you need more resources to develop it and more time to consume it. And most marketers we know often lack both.
We'll dig into that a bit more in a bit, but here's what we think is worth testing in the future:
- Is it better to create a long lead magnet and then spend time promoting it across all of our marketing channels?
- Or maybe it's better to create several short-form lead magnets that would be easier to link to the different topics we cover on our blog and in our campaigns?
Here's the full breakdown of the long-form and short-form content marketers they've had the most success with. Please note that these were multiple-choice questions, so respondents could choose more than one answer.
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| Which Long-Form Video Content Has the Highest Conversion Rate |
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| Which Short-Form Video Content Has the Highest Conversion Rate |
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| Which Long-Form Written Content Has the Highest Conversion Rate |
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| Which Short-Form Written Content Has the Highest Conversion Rate |
Do businesses of different sizes choose different lead magnets?
Encouraged by the results we saw in the previous section, we wanted to know if companies with more employees choose different types of incentives for their lead generation campaigns.
The assumption here is that larger companies tend to have more resources, allowing them to create lead magnets that smaller organizations cannot.
Here's what we found.
Let's start with solopreneurs and use them as a reference throughout this analysis. They make up 60% of our survey respondents, which means their choices have the potential to affect what we see in this study.
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| Best Lead Magnets by Business-Size – Solopreneurs |
This seems to be partly the case, as the number one type of magnet they chose is video content – selected by 28.4% of solopreneurs who answered this question.
Video plummets rank first for only one other group: companies with 10 to 49 employees. For large organizations, companies with 50 to 249 and more than 250 employees, it only ranks fourth.
Written lead magnets took second place – chosen by 20.7% of solopreneurs as their most converting type of incentive. This type ranked first for all other groups – companies with 2 to 9, 50 to 249 and 250+ employees – except for the one we have already mentioned (10 to 49 employees).
Interestingly, across all groups there seems to be a fairly strong preference for one type of main magnet or the other - the difference between positions one and two is between 7.3 and 13.3 percentage points.
The only group where the differences are less pronounced are companies with more than 250 employees. The difference between the first and third best performing lead magnet type is only 4 percentage points.
Also, their second most successful primary magnet type is not video or text, but monetary incentives (e.g. offers, coupon codes, free shipping). And it's the same with another category - companies with 50 to 249 employees.
Here are the graphs divided by company size.
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| Best Lead Magnets by Business-Size – 2-9 employees |
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| Best Lead Magnets by Business-Size – 10-49 employees |
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| Best Lead Magnets by Business-Size – 50-249 employees |
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| Best Lead Magnets by Business-Size – 250+ employees |
Observation:
For small and medium-sized businesses with limited resources, this is good news. It seems that you don't need to offer monetary incentives – which affect your profit margin – to be able to generate leads effectively.
Solopreneurs seem to favor video and written lead magnets. Both are types of incentives that don't require a lot of resources to develop. Often you can even create them yourself. They're also not tied to your profit margin, and they don't need scale to generate revenue.
Large organizations with more than 50 employees seem to favor written and monetary incentives. Also, for both of these groups, the preferred type of written lead magnet is the long-shaped one.
One of the reasons for this may be that they take advantage of their size. They prefer to use lead magnets which are not as easy to replicate by small businesses that don't have the scale or resources.
Another reason for this could be the perceived quality of different types of lead magnets and the approval process which is often longer in larger companies. Getting buy-in for a short video clip can be more difficult in an organization that typically deals with larger customers and has multiple stakeholders to report to.
Finally, large organizations often prefer to deal with fewer but more qualified prospects. So the opt-in incentives they create can be designed to attract only the type of leads that can be quickly passed on to their sales team.
Does the choice of lead magnets vary if you are targeting a specific audience (B2B, B2C or both)?
Another thing we were interested in was whether marketers targeting different audiences preferred other types of opt-in incentives.
We hypothesized here that, perhaps, marketers targeting B2C customers would have the most success with specific types of incentives, like monetary incentives.
44.1% of our respondents said they target both B2B and B2C audiences. 26.6% chose B2B as their primary audience and 18.1% said the same about B2C.
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| Best Lead Magnets by Audience-Type – B2B & B2C |
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| Best Lead Magnets by Audience-Type – B2B |
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| Best Lead Magnets by Audience-Type – B2C |
Interestingly, there is no significant difference between these groups, at least when it comes to the two main types of lead magnets.
All groups said video or written incentive types had the highest conversion rates. However, those targeting only B2C did not view the “tool or access to” as effective lead magnets.
Observation:
It doesn't matter if you're targeting B2B, B2C, or both, you can always find value in proven types of lead magnets.
Naturally, the best approach for any lead generation campaign is to use data as a starting point and test what will resonate best with your audience.
Let's now briefly review the industry breakdown and see which types of lead magnets work best in each.
Please keep in mind that some of the industries below were only represented by a handful of our respondents. That said, the data below should serve as inspiration or a starting point for your own analysis and research.
What lead magnets work best in Internet Marketing
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| Best Lead Magnets by Industry – Internet Marketing |
Internet marketing was the most represented industry in our study. A total of 149 marketers identified with this vertical, representing 22.6% of the total 658 respondents who chose one of the options we provide.
75.7% of them identified themselves as solopreneurs and nearly half (48.3%) said they target both B2B and B2C.
As we can see from the graphs above, they are very similar to what we saw in our overall results.
Solopreneurs see the highest conversion rates from the written and video lead magnet types. They also prefer to produce short prompts, like checklists or video clips.
Which Lead Magnets Work Best in Ecommerce
E-commerce was the second most represented sector in our study. 68 merchants identified their business as e-commerce, which represents 10.3% of the entire group.
Among e-commerce respondents, 61.8% were individual entrepreneurs and 22.1% worked for smaller organizations with 2-9 employees. 41.3% said they targeted both B2B and B2C audiences, 28.6% were purely B2B, and 17.5% were aimed at B2C only.
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| Best Lead Magnets by Industry – Ecommerce |
Similar to our overall results, the top magnet types these respondents selected as the most converting were video (33.8%), print (17.6%), and tool or access to ( 13.2%).
Interestingly, the difference between the top two positions was quite large (16.2 percentage points), but this may be related to the fact that our sample was rather small.
Which Lead Magnets Work Best in Arts and Entertainment
50 of our study participants represented the arts and entertainment vertical.
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| Best Lead Magnets by Industry – Arts & Entertainment |
Similar to other industries, the primary magnet type was video. Second and third place were slightly different than what we've seen before. These were taken by Interactive and Tool or access to incentive types.
It's interesting to see, as these offers are often harder to create, but they also tend to be much more engaging. And that's what arts and entertainment brands tend to focus on.
37.5% of them addressed both B2B and B2C audiences. 29.2% targeted B2B only and 14.6% targeted B2C only.
The vast majority had the best results with short form lead magnets, both for video and written content.
Which lead magnets work best in health and beauty
Health & Beauty was represented by 44 respondents. 35% of them addressed both B2B and B2C, 25% only B2B and 20% B2C.
The breakdown between the most preferred lead magnet types was slightly different than what we've seen so far. The difference between position #1, written lead magnets, and #2, video, is 18.2 percentage points, showing a strong preference for written content.
Although we only had the chance to analyze a small sample, it would be useful to expand this study and focus more on individual industries to see if the trends we see here would still be accurate.
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| Best Lead Magnets by Industry – Health & Beauty |
Which Lead Magnets Work Best in Financial Services
Among the 39 respondents who worked in financial services, the top two top magnet types were video (20.5%) and visual (20.5%).
Interestingly, written lead magnets were only selected by 12.8%, showing a different preference than all the verticals we analyzed.
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| Financial Services |
Which lead magnets work best in other industries
And here are the charts for all the other industries we've identified. As we failed to collect a large enough sample for each of these segments, we decided to share only the graphs without further comment.
Schools and education
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| Schools and Education |
Marketing agencies and Advertising
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| Marketing agencies and Advertising |
SaaS, Software, and Web App
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| SaaS, Software, and Web App |
Automotive
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| Automotive |
Technology and High Tech
Health Care
Real Estate
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| Real Estate |
Travel
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| travel |
Events
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| events |
Publishing
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| publishing |
Restaurants and Food
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| Restaurants and Food |
Non-profits
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| non-profits |
Legal Services
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| Legal Services |
Sports and Fitness
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| Sports And Fitness |
Methodology and data
We conducted the study between March and May 2020.
We collected responses through an online survey that we distributed across various marketing channels including email, social media and partnerships.
The majority of responses came from users who visited the GetResponse resources and blog, where we also included the invitation to participate in the study.
To make sure everyone had the same understanding of the main magnet types, we added the following examples to our survey:
How to align your lead magnet with the needs of your target audience
We've already mentioned that this data should serve as a starting point for your own research, so you can choose the best lead magnet for your audience.
That said, we wanted to give you some extra help in choosing the best types of opt-in incentives. So we decided to contact some of the best marketers who work with lead magnets on a daily basis.
Here are some of their tips that you can apply to your business today.
Pay attention to what your audience is "saying" and what they mean by it
The easiest way is to align your lead magnet with the search intent behind the set of keywords your content is targeting. What would a reader find useful based on the problem they are trying to solve? If you can match a problem with an effective downloadable solution, you can set yourself and your reader up for success.
Ben Sailer, Director of Inbound Marketing, CoSchedule
First, find out what your audience really wants. Do they really want "Sixteen Facebook Marketing Secrets" or "The Best Digital Marketing Books For [Your Industry] To Read"? Probably not unless they have tons of free time. Do they want “8 promotional marketing email templates you can copy + paste and use today” – More likely. Ask your target audience what they want.
Darren Foong, Marketing, Candy Bar
I recommend creating in-depth personas with content mapping analysis to show your audience's specific interests based on their Google search behavior (using Ads Keyword Planner) and profiling captured leads against your target audience.
Dave Chaffey, author: Digital Marketing Excellence, co-founder: Smart Insights
The answer is simply to talk to your best customers. For our new product, Respona, people kept asking us what outreach strategies worked best for Visme, and if we had documented the strategies we used to grow the business to over 4 million users. , mostly through organic search. That's exactly what we did! Creation of an ebook entitled "Marketing Strategies We Used to Bootstrap Visme to 4 Million Users". What were the results you ask? 10,000 downloads and over a thousand sign-ups to Respona within 60 days of the ebook's launch, plus a ton of emails complimenting the material.
Farzad Rashidi, Marketing Director, Visme
I've found that one of the best ways to align a lead magnet with what my audience wants is to first write down all the phrases my audience uses to talk about their fears, hopes, and dreams. . And then look at the document with all these notification phrases and patterns. Frequently recurring fears, hopes and dreams are what a good lead magnet should focus on. As a bonus, having a document with the phrases your audience uses makes it much easier to write optin copy.
Benjamin Houy, Founder, Grow With Less
Whenever one of our articles ranks in Google's top 3 for one of our target keywords, we know we've produced the right content that meets the user's needs. Since what we have produced already meets the needs of our users well, we are converting the same content into a checklist because it is very much what readers are currently reading.
Shaurya Jain, Founder, Attentionalways
It's easy (conceptually) but hard (to execute). Be a craftsman rather than an assembly line worker! I got the best results by tailoring the message – both form and content – and timing not only the delivery time, but also the frequency of contact. And by all means, use 80/20! Basic probabilistic models or empirical decisions will take you a long way. The difficulty is finding the time for it consistently.
Angel Lorente Paramo, former global head of e-commerce marketing at Qatar Airways
Focus on what will help your audience progress
First, you need to answer one question: what is your audience's primary focus? What do they want to achieve? Start by asking your support team. Ask them what people are looking for in your product or service. This answer will help you choose the best lead magnet for them. For example, if they're looking for advice on writing an email, offer them downloadable templates.
Rafal Kloc, Product Marketing Manager, HelpDesk
The key to over 20% traffic <> email conversion rate on blog posts is to use lead magnets that have USEFULNESS (i.e. something someone can download and daily use)
Chris Von Wilpert, Founder, ContentMavericks
Keep it simple. Identify a segment of your audience and help them solve a specific problem they are facing. Make it actionable - preferably with at least one thing they can do immediately that can provide a big win.
Jonas Sickler, SEO Manager, Terakeet
A great way to align your lead generation efforts with your target audience is to create reviews that add value to your audience.
An example: imagine you run an IT consulting business. You want to collect qualified data on your audience and generate highly qualified leads.
Solution: You can design a short maturity assessment where your website visitors can check their IT expertise maturity level. At the end of the assessment, you request an email address to send the results to.
This way, you received the contact details of someone genuinely interested in knowing their level of maturity, and gave them value in return by providing professional advice and recommendations (showing your expertise).
Iris De Geest, Content Marketing Specialist, SurveyAnyplace
When it comes to lead magnets, marketers tend to forget that there is a difference between a magnet that you consider valuable and one that your specific target market considers valuable. It's not the same thing. The question is, how can you design a lead magnet that truly attracts your target users based on their needs?
Here's my approach to creating lead magnets that really work - meaning they resonate with your audience by delivering what they need:
– Divide your content into categories based on the stages of the sales funnel that your target users go through on your site. Typically, users have different motivations and needs at each of these stages. For example, those in the interest stage will find value in in-depth how-to articles that expand their knowledge and interest. Similarly, those in the decision stage will benefit from content that details exactly how your agency works with clients.
– Once you have classifications for your content, you can start brainstorming lead magnet ideas that will perfectly satisfy your users' needs at every stage. To illustrate what I'm talking about, let's say you have a page that shares how you increased a client's organic traffic 10x. One of the best lead magnets at this point is a webinar invite for the user. During the webinar, you will share more details on how you help increase a client's web traffic and provide the targeted user with the opportunity to purchase your services.Vincent Bucciachio, Founder, SociallyInfused
While there are tons of tips on how to create an engaging and valuable lead magnet, I want to focus on one strategy which is to develop a free tool. Long story short, after much trial and error, we have found that this form of lead magnet brings us the best leads because they are genuinely interested in consuming our content and becoming our loyal audience.
The biggest benefit of this lead magnet strategy is that it helps you generate new leads – and improve your behavioral metrics as users spend more time on your site. (As you've heard, this is an important SEO ranking factor.)
The free tools are quite easy to set up because there are many digital marketing software that allow their data to be exploited via API. Remember that tools, compared to other forms of lead magnets, require additional resources, as you need to design at least a basic user interface to add visual appeal to the data you have acquired from them. 'a third.
Artem Minaev, Web Hosting Expert, FirstSiteGuide
If you run a service business, never underestimate the power of being accessible to potential new customers. A surefire way to generate a consistent lead magnet is to accept that giving away only a small portion of your time or experience will result in greater rewards. This time can range from a free quick consultation chat or a detailed quote, to the creation of a freebie, tool or content (such as videos or sticky posts) aimed at helping potential customers before they even know who you are. Before deciding which tactic might work best, think about your target audience; because the foundations of creating a winning magnet lie in its strategy.
Matt Janaway, Founder, Marketing Labs
Which lead magnets will you use in your next lead generation campaign?
We have already started applying the results of this study and experimenting with different types of lead magnets.
We've published a few shorter articles (e.g. email deliverability checklist, webinar setup checklist), and the results look very promising. Not only were we able to generate new leads with them, but we also educated our existing audience. Best of all, putting them together didn't take too long (especially compared to detailed reports like the Email Marketing Benchmarks).
And that's what I'd like you to invite yourself to do - experiment with your lead generation campaigns, try new types of lead magnets, and... share the results with us! 😊
And if you're looking for a solution that will help you generate more leads with your membership incentives, find out how GetResponse's sales funnel software can help you do just that.
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