How to name a lead magnet: Ideas, titles, and examples
Struggling to create a lead magnet that attracts qualified contacts? We have the solution for you.
A name is a powerful thing.
Scientists continue to produce studies proving that for a lot of people, hearing the sound of their name is the sweetest thing... ever. It sets off a chemical reaction in your brain, releasing feel-good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin.
But it’s not just our names that hold power. In general, names are important. They help us effectively identify things and establish the image of them in our brains. One might even say that names add value to things.
In the same way, you care about your brand’s name; you need to also care about the titles and names of every little detail that comprises your brand identity. Lead magnets are no exception to this rule.
In this guide, we will talk about what lead magnets are, lead magnet ideas, why lead magnet titles are important, and how to create a lead magnet titles that convert.
What is a lead magnet, and why should you care about the title?
The lead magnet definition is simple. Lead magnets are one of the most effective ways of lead generation, regardless of their nature, size, or industry.
A lead magnet is any piece of content or service protected by a lead capture web form. There isn’t a set format for lead magnets. They can take any shape or form, starting with an exclusive blog post, ending with a discount, free shipping coupon, or a toolkit.
Website visitors need to need the content you’re offering to exchange their contact information, such as full name, email address, and phone number, for it. Your lead magnets must cater to the wants of your target audience to capture their attention.
All lead magnets consist of the same several elements...
- A cover featuring the lead magnet title.
- A lead capture web form.
- A thank you for downloading message.
- The lead magnet content it
We’ve talked plenty about developing a value proposition, crafting compelling and highly effective lead magnet content and using web forms for lead generation in previous blog posts. But the truth is… When it comes to lead magnets, people mostly judge the book by its cover.
Why? Because the book’s closed! Lead magnet visitors draw their decision based solely on the first impression a lead magnet makes. Many other marketing mediums are an open book for the target audience - they can examine it before making a judgement.
But the arsenal of things you can use to make that first impression is limited. You only have a landing page and the title of the lead magnet to tell website visitors what your offer is and why they would want to leave their contact information to get it.
The main reason you should bother putting effort into your lead magnet’s title is that it holds power to attract website visitors’ attention.
To that end, you need a strong beginning and ending to keep any reader engaged. That means you need not just grab their attention with a lead magnet title and convince them it’s worthy of their time, but do so within a maximum of six words.
That sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it? Here at NetHunt, we don’t shy away from challenges.
How to name a lead magnet
Depending on the nature of a lead magnet, you might want to use one tactic or combine several to produce an engaging, powerful lead magnet title; taking heed from these lead magnet ideas and lead magnet examples!
#1 - Be honest.
By definition, your lead magnets need to be valuable to website visitors if you want them to convert them to leads.
The most obvious approach is to state precisely what your lead magnet is about in the title. It needs to be straightforward, clearly explaining your offer. People who are interested in accessing it can easily find the lead magnet. Moreover, they’ll appreciate you not wasting their time with misleading titles and click bait.
Sticking to this formula, you should restrain yourself from being too witty or using elaborate wordplay in your title. You don’t want to confuse the potential leads. Less is more!
NetHunt’s Hot Tip
Make sure your titles sound natural. When you’re stating directly what your lead magnet is about, it can be tempting to stuff it with lots of SEO keywords. Don’t. Use one or two keywords in the title to make it discoverable, but leave the rest for the description, the landing page, and other marketing assets.
Lead magnet examples from NetHunt:
#2 - Leverage the pull-power of ‘how-to’.
The majority of content-marketing content is essentially one big Q&A session presented in different formats. People go online to look for answers and find instructions or guidance to something they don’t know how to do.
If you want to attract website visitors’ attention and promise value immediately, you should include a ‘how-to’ phrase into your lead magnet title. There are two main benefits to this strategy.
- How-to titles focus on specific solutions to specific problems
- How-to titles are trustworthy and actionable.
Coming up with a how-to title is easy. Simply think of something that you can teach with confidence and state it in the title. Be clear and concise; say no more or less than you need to say.
NetHunt’s Hot Tip
Make your how-to lead magnet title even more enjoyable by taking the two-part approach. Once you’ve come up with the question you’re going to answer, add a colon and a benefit statement. E.g. WFH: How to get more out of your day.
It’s not just how to do something that people are interested in. They’re also interested in how not to do something. Your target audience wants to get everything right, so they’re looking for information on what they need to avoid to succeed. These lead magnets have many variations and come in many flavours: mistakes, misconceptions, warnings, and dangers. Something like these lead magnet examples...
- [Number] “Mistakes” [Target Audience] Can’t Afford to Make.
- How [Target Audience] Gets [Specific Task] Wrong.
- [Command]—Avoid [Number] [Painful adjective] “Mistakes”
Lead magnet examples from NetHunt:
- CRM from A to Z. How to choose the right CRM for your business
- Email Marketing that Works: How to A/B Test Your Email Campaigns
- How to Increase Your Net Promoter Score
#3 - Go all out; promise the World
It’s okay sometimes to be a little cocky in your lead magnet titles. Go all out and openly compare your content to other bits of information available online. Use power words.
The easiest way to convince your website visitors to exchange their contact information for your gated content is to make them believe they won’t need another checklist, e-book, guide or whatever else afterwards.
You’re providing the ultimate content.
That grabbed your attention, didn’t it? That’s because the very definition of the word ‘ultimate’ suggests that there’s nothing better than this; it’s the best or most extreme example of its kind.
One problem with this word is that not everyone feels comfortable with using it. This adjective is too intense and overpowering; too much responsibility to create something so complete and exhaustive. Luckily, there’s a solution to this problem.
You can still make a bold promise and imply the ‘ultimacy’ of your lead magnet without directly using the word ‘ultimate’ in its title. There are plenty of equally as powerful synonyms you can use...
- The Unrivalled Guide to Something
- Something: The Complete Guide
- A Really Good Guide for Something
- This is Something: The No Bulls**t Guide
- The Last Guide to Something You’ll Ever Need
Alternatively, you could make your lead magnet title statement bolder by offering shortcuts. People hate having their time wasted. If you promise the content you submit will enable them to achieve the desired outcome faster and more efficiently, they’ll be instantly interested.
Some of the essential elements of ‘shortcut’ lead magnet titles include...
- Shortcut buzzwords. ‘Secrets to’, ‘speedy’, ‘fast track’, ‘fast and easy’, ‘straightforward’.
- A specific measure of time. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years.
Lead magnet examples from NetHunt:
- The Ultimate Business Metrics Cheat Sheet
- A Complete Guide to LinkedIn for Sales
- The Only Guide to Gmail Productivity You Will Ever Need
#4 - Establish expertise and build trust straightaway
There’s a lot of crappy advice on the internet. The last thing a website visitor wants to do is part ways with their precious email address in exchange for yet another guide or checklist that has nothing to do with their problem. You need to use your lead magnet’s title to prove them wrong.
Firstly, you can try switching from the how-to formula to the reasons recipe. Instead of making bold promises, you should point out why things happen the way they happen; tell your readers why they experience a particular problem. Knowing the causes of something automatically implies you can offer actionable and practical solutions, too.
This approach is as simple as stating the main problem your lead magnet targets...
- Why Do Your Emails go Straight to SPAM?
- # Reasons Why You Need a CRM System
NetHunt’s Hot Tip
You can spice a title up by adding a number. There are a few benefits to doing so... Numbers are proven attention grabbers, a digit is more space-efficient than a spelt-out number, they promise specific, focused content; they improve the credibility of your lead magnet.
However, it’s not just adding a neat little number and the ‘reasons’ that can help you boost the credibility of your piece. Another thing that’s perfect for this purpose is featuring experts.
Include some bits of advice from trusted professionals into your lead magnet and reflect it in the title. Use words like pros, experts, and leaders and if your featured experts are recognisable, drop their name in the title.
Finally, you can make your expertise more noticeable by targeting a narrow segment. The title mentions that your guide is suitable for a particular audience - ‘small business owners’, ‘real-estate professionals’, or ‘beginners’, for example. This shows your readers you will detail the topic, and you have a lot to say.
Lead magnet examples from NetHunt:
- How to Use a CRM System as a Small Business Owner
- 10 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Email Templates
- How the Pros Turn Marketing Analytics Into Effective Marketing Strategies
#5 - Ask a thought-provoking question
Questions stimulate our brains.
That’s why adding one to your lead magnet title seems like a good idea - you’ll immediately grab your website visitors’ attention and set off their thinking processes. Out of sheer curiosity, they’ll download gated content and become a lead of yours. Profit!
This isn’t the only benefit of asking questions in the lead magnet title. In The Ultimate Guide to Creating Lead Magnets, we mention that one of the best ways to increase the number of leads you generate with your lead magnets is to throw social media marketing into the mix. Promote your gated content online, on dedicated platforms, forums and social media.
One foolproof way of going viral online is to spark discussion. The formula here is simple: ask your readers a thought-provoking question to double as a discussion question for social media.
Lead magnet examples from NetHunt:
- When Is It Time to Switch from a Spreadsheet CRM to a Real CRM?
- Why Do Your Email Campaigns Fail?
- When Do You Need to Automate the Sales Process?
#6 - A/B test your lead magnet titles
Last but not least, you need to remember that the lead magnet naming techniques laid out in this article are pretty generic. If you want them to work for your business, you need to adjust them accordingly. It’s essential to develop an interesting, engaging, and attractive title for your specific audience - then, and only then, will your lead magnet help you generate leads.
To see what works best for you, A/B test your lead magnet titles and find the best formula for your particular business.
You know what they say, give a dog a bad name and hang him. So make sure you give all your lead magnets the correct titles that convert!