Your Lead Magnet
Isn’t Your Funnel

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.

Brad Hauck 00:14

Most experts think that once they've created a lead magnet, they've built a funnel. But a free checklist guide or quiz is only the entry point. There's no clear journey after the download. You haven't created a funnel. You've simply collected an email address. In this episode of The Expert's Journey, we explore how to turn the ideas in your book into a valuable next step that deepens trust, builds engagement, and naturally leads towards paid offers. Because the real question isn't whether people download your free magnet, it's whether it helps them take the next step with you. Good morning, Dixie.

Dixie Carlton 00:49

Good morning, Brad. Great questions. I'm looking forward to this. I love lead magnets. Lead magnets have been my new favorite thing in the last 12 months. Let me tell you why. The lead magnets that we used to see, which were just a checklist or just a quick white paper report or something, have evolved over the last few years now to be far more sophisticated and therefore far more practical and useful for people, which in a lead magnet funnel kind of context means that they work so much better when you get the basics right.

Brad Hauck 01:25

Yeah, absolutely. You've always got to remember it's the first step that draws people down a series of steps. And I think honestly, a lot of people, when they do a lead magnet, it's like a whole thing, when in fact it should be like the first step of 10 steps that you can teach them, rather than giving them the whole 10 steps. The whole point of a lead magnet is to give them a little bit more to help them take another step on their journey, but in the end to come back to you for more information or support or whatever it is that you're offering.

And too many people make the mistake of giving away everything. And often the lead magnet's so big that the person never reads it, it just gets sits on the desktop. I mean, how many PDFs do you have on your desktop? And it just sounds like a good idea at the time, but people are busy. So you've got to be really thinking when you get into this sort of stuff.

Dixie Carlton 02:17

One of the things that my research has shown me in the last couple of years with lead magnets is that if you are doing something that looks like a very heavily colored, fancily designed PDF, maybe you've created it on a slideshow, for example, and it's got a lot of information, but it's bullet point style, then people read that in a completely different way than what they will do, than the way their brain works when they are reading something that is really well constructed, full sentences, information that's written in a book format. And the reason why it's important to make this distinction is that I still see a lot of people giving away lead magnets where it's like a 12-page, heavily condensed series of information, like a big brochure for a company.

And you've got to sit down and read that and look through it and you'll glance at this box of colour and this pieces of information. But you don't sit down and read it in the same way that you might curl up with something that you actually read through multiple sentences that are well constructed in a book style format. And if you've already gone through the trouble of writing a book and you have good edited quality information, then using some parts of that or even a whole chapter or two of a book makes a really powerful lead magnet because you're getting involved more with the way the reader wants to absorb the information.

That's not to say that you can't still do shorter, full, colourful, wonderful reports and things. But you've got to be thinking again about how is the reader going to take this information and what do they want to do when they've received it, and how do you lead them through the process of taking action?

Brad Hauck 04:03

Yeah, I was just thinking, I'd like to come at this from a little bit of a different angle to give people something different to think about. So often in business, people have merch, and you go to a show and there's lots of businesses there, and they give you things. And I'd like you to think about it this way. When people give you that stuff, most of it ends up in the bag and then it ends up in the bin. Because it's not actually all that useful. So around my place, we have a lot of water bottles because my children being sports people, every time Tom wins a race, he gets a water bottle.

And so I call them cockroaches because there's so many of them. And but you know, they carry no value because just every time someone gives you another water bottle. And I'd like people to think about that in their life. What is it that you've been given that really cut through? For example, many years ago I did a special promotion and I had those 3M stick it notepads done with my branding at the top, and I did them in pink and I gave them to everybody. And it was funny, for years afterwards, I'd go to people's places and I'd see them on their desks, right there in front of them all the time.

And it was really effective. Whereas I know they had thousands of other things given to them in that time. So when we're talking about lead magnets, it's no different to merch in the thinking that you want something that people are going to like, people are going to use, they're going to take time to actually open it up and do something with the information inside of it. And a lot of that is about understanding your audience that you're targeting. We talk about being specific about an audience, and I mean, I know it's your favorite topic in the whole world, but it's really important that you do think about that.

You're not targeting everyone, you're targeting specific people with a specific need. And that will ultimately change the lead magnet in many ways.

Dixie Carlton 05:52

You're completely right. And like I came from a background before I got into publishing and coaching and marketing and all that, of having a promotional products company. And one of the things that I did was win an award for a mouse pad. Now, this is when mouse pads were relatively new and it was customized and it was leather and it was beautiful. And I won a really great award for that as a promotional product idea. The thing that I want to point out is that it's easy for people like me to get into the heads of the people who you are trying to target because that's the background I came from.

How do you make sure that something has got longevity, stickability, and like the mouse, the the post-it notes, which were very popular in my day in that industry, you really want to think about something that's going to stick around for a long time and be on someone's desk constantly. It's the same with the the lead magnets. You have to think about how is this going to serve the most use? How is it going to be kept in a visible place or made sure that have not just got it going to someone for a minute, they look at it and then they put it down or it gets lost in with all of the other things.

You've got to be very strategic to make your lead magnets the most powerful they can be. And you don't have to give a background in marketing, even. You just have to think, well, what do I want? What would I respond to? How would I get excited about this?

Brad Hauck 07:20

Yeah. So when someone finishes your book, you need to be thinking about what the next most useful thing is that you could offer them. Sample that I saw once that someone had on their wall was a blueprint. So it was literally blueprint as in drawn up like a building, but it was actually a marketing blueprint. So it had little circles and squares and flow charts and all that. And I just saw it at someone's place and I thought, oh, that is really cool. And so when I put one of my first products out, which was like how to use Twitter, so social media products, I actually did a blueprint.

And it came as like an A3 printed thing that we gave as part of that package. And that led to the next product. But it was extremely popular because people would just pin it up to their wall. So they'd read the thing. And then anytime they wanted to do something on Twitter, they could just look at that blueprint. Now it's a bit out of left field, but it's a great example of a lead magnet that people are going to put up and they're going to look at it every day because they need the information to follow the process that you teach them in your book.

Yes.

Dixie Carlton 08:24

I love that. I love the idea of a blueprint. And even things like infographics, things that you make look pretty, obviously then they get in front of other people, which is even more powerful. So yeah, you can make it.

Brad Hauck 08:38

You can brand them up.

Dixie Carlton 08:40

Branding is really important. The other thing with League Magnets is that you want to be thinking about how long is it? Is it going to take someone a long time to work through it? And if it's something like a like a chapter of a book, you don't want to make that necessarily 50 pages long. You want to make it a good quick read through a cup of coffee time. Or if it's an infographic, you want to make sure that it's something that you can scan it for the important bits, but then want to go back and look for the more details.

You can also then say at the end of it, if you want more of this, then keep following or look out for the next email I'm going to send you, which will have an additional piece to this. You can set it up so that your lead magnet doesn't just hit once, that it actually has a journey of its own towards the next point. If we go back to the concept of I think it was used to be seven, now it's eleven, maybe it's twenty five now. I don't know. However many contact points it takes to get someone to do business with you, a lead magnet will shorten that dramatically if it's a good quality lead magnet that's been well thought out.

A book will also shorten that journey. But again, you have to be thinking strategically, not just once, two or three times. And you can nail that relationship very quickly if you are strategically clever about how you do your lead magnet.

Brad Hauck 10:09

Yeah. It's really important. We keep coming back to that journey that it's a step, it's a push in a direction or a pull, realistically. But and that's important because so many people I talk to them about lead magnets, and they're like, Oh great, I've got this thing I can give away. And it's like, well, don't just give away something random. Like, there's no point to that. Okay, yes, it gets your name out there. I get that. It's a bit like the water bottle. It's a cockroach, but you're not after that. What you're really after has to be strategic.

It has to take time. Don't just sit down and go, right, I'm going to write a lead magnet. That's not how it works. You really got to sit down and think about your avatar of the person you're trying to get to take the next step. Think about what the step after that is. How does this lead to that? How does it lead them to my bigger product or to my coaching or whatever it is? It's very important that you sit down and you plan this out. You actually look at it. You can draw up a flowchart or just a series of steps on a piece of paper, but be specific about what you're doing.

Don't just randomly do something and go, oh, this will get my name out there because it won't.

Dixie Carlton 11:21

No. And for listeners that really want some help with this, we've developed a worksheet that will help anyone to go through some of these steps of thinking. Master this. And it's available on the link that'll be at the end of the podcast. But we've got your backs on this. We've we know how hard it is to get this right. So we've created some resources, which, hey, you could refer to these as our own form of lead magnet, obviously. But you'll see that it's useful. You'll see that it's helpful. And so I encourage anyone to go and download that that worksheet.

The other thing is there are so many different kinds of lead magnets. So I've seen things like checklists, quizzes, book chapters, samples out of books, resource products like worksheets, for example. What are some of the interesting ones that you've seen that we may not even necessarily think about on a momentary basis, Brad?

Brad Hauck 12:17

Evaluations. So you go and answer 10 questions and then the results are evaluated and you get a report back. That's always a good one. Because it's kind of giving you some new information. And you can do really good ones using AI and part of the back end of that sort of stuff now, of course. Mini courses, of course. Great one. Microcourses. You know, I write books about that stuff. But microcourses are a great one. They're the next seven days and it's seven two-minute videos. They don't have to be huge. Yeah, they're just so many options, but it really comes down to your audience.

For example, if you're a mechanic, giving someone a book is not necessarily the best way to reach a mechanic's audience. Whereas 10 short videos on how to tune a carburetor might be really useful if you teach people how to work on hot rods. So you've really got to think about how do they consume it as well. And that's important because some people are not sitting in front of a computer all day. For example, Gen Z are going to be on their phone. So making something that sits on a computer is a waste of time because they live on their phones.

And that's important to understand, the demographic of the person you're trying to reach.

Dixie Carlton 13:29

Yeah.

Brad Hauck 13:30

There's just so many limitless options these days that you can do.

Dixie Carlton 13:36

And if you were wanting to do something that was a specific three-step process, where would you start with that?

Brad Hauck 13:47

Uh well, it depends. If it's a three-step process, obviously think about how am I going to deliver it? So you've got video, audio, printed, those three main mediums. You could do a private podcast where you just record it, upload it as a podcast channel, but it's not a public fee. You just send them the link and then they can listen to it on their podcast. That's simple. That's a common one these days. I'm saying obviously YouTube, make it unlisted and just put the videos on a page and put a password on there. It's just again, understand how people consume it will really affect what you produce.

Of course, you can offer them the three mediums if you want to. You can take the audio from the video and turn it into a transcript. It's up to you.

Dixie Carlton 14:29

You've given us some great ideas. I love some of those, especially the use of video or private or password-protected pieces of information. What has been your most recent example of the worst kind of lead magnet?

Brad Hauck 14:50

Oh, I think the worst kind depends on whether it's actually what I need. It's really important. I mean, I don't know how many, as I said before, I've got PDFs sitting on my desktop because I've been interested in a topic and then I've gone, oh, that looks interesting. I've got it, and then I've moved on and I haven't ever opened it. Like that's a big one.

Dixie Carlton 15:11

I'll tell you my worst one, and I came across it quite recently, was a one-page document, which promised a lot, delivered very little. It was a one-page document. It was very poorly presented. It had lots of information in lots of boxes. The colour, if I wanted to print it out, was going to be very dense in a printing format. So you really only wanted to look at it online, but it was so bright and glary that was uncomfortable. You couldn't change anything. You couldn't, you couldn't just extract the information and saying, oh, that's really good, and ignore the fact that the colour behind the text was so bold that it was uncomfortable to read.

There was a lot of pretty design elements, but none of them worked together. So as a whole, the whole page, and it was all just on one page. If they had actually created it over three or four pages, it would have possibly been better as well. But whoever it was that designed us thought, let's put as much information as we possibly can, because we've only got one shot at making sure that the recipient feels that this is valuable, which of course actually worked in reverse because there was so much on the one page that it was overwhelming to look at for too long.

And that was a really sad thing to see. Because just a little bit of thought, even putting something in front of a designer and not just trying to do everything yourself on Canva can sometimes be a very valuable thing to do. We have all of these amazing tools at our disposal now. We have AI, we have Canva, we think we can do all of these things ourselves. Sometimes you really need to sit and talk to a professional, whether a designer or a coach or a specialist in this area, a content creator, talk to someone if you're not sure.

Because just like with most marketing, it's very easy to turn someone off without necessarily realizing that's what you're doing. And then you may not get a second chance.

Brad Hauck 17:05

There's a lot of things you can do that really simple that you don't need massive design skills to do. For example, I see someone say, Oh, get my secret formula that I use to get a thousand followers. And you click on the link and it's a Google Doc. You know, it is actually their back end information. And they put it in a Google Doc, and you can see it's just raw. And yet it's really interesting to read because it's raw. Or it might be a spreadsheet, a blank spreadsheet where you go through and you fill in your information.

It's just it's a way to tidy your mind. You can use their spreadsheet. And I'm often seeing these happen. I saw one which was a lead magnet, which was a letter. And you just sent the letter to people and it said, What do you think of this? And in the end, it actually sold them into the product. It was very effective. So remember, don't overdo design. I mean, there's no need for it in some cases. Sometimes raw is what people want, they want authenticity. So you can design nicely, or you can go entirely the other way.

Again, depends on how good the stuff is.

Dixie Carlton 18:13

It all comes back down to those three principles we keep talking about. Know your market, know what you're trying to achieve. So start with the end in mind and get professional help if and when you need it. Because that can sometimes make all the difference. What a fantastic conversation. Absolutely. Yeah.

Brad Hauck 18:32

Well, that brings us to the end of this episode, I think. Your lead magnet isn't the funnel, it's simply the doorway. What matters is where you lead people next and whether every step helps them to better understand your message, solve a problem, and build trust in you. So here's your task. Download your own lead magnet and experience the journey as if you're a new subscriber. Look at what happens next. Is there a clear follow-up? Does it connect naturally to your book or your expertise or whatever you're selling? Does it lead towards a useful paid offer?

Identify the weakest link and then fix each step this week. Thanks for listening to the Experts Journey podcast. Until next time, keep turning what you know into something people can use.

Dixie Carlton 19:17

And don't forget, we have a link that will take you straight to the page where you can get a worksheet to download and work through your own questions about how effective your lead magnet can be, who you're designing it for. And we look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks very much for listening.