Entice New Prospects & Boost Your Email List with these 5 Lead Magnets

By Cindy Schrauben

An essential – dare I say the most important – component of any financial professional’s marketing strategy should be email marketing. But, before you start an email program, you must have a list of qualified prospects to send them to.

How do you build this list?

One of the best ways is to offer a lead magnet on your website.

Lead magnets are freebies that include valuable information that your ideal clients want, and in exchange for the info, they will give you their contact information.

By offering valuable resources and insights in exchange for contact information, lead magnets help build an email list of qualified leads. Then, you’ll foster lasting relationships with your leads with your emails.

There are many types of lead magnets, but here we’ll focus on five types that work especially well for financial advisors and coaches. Lead magnets can be as simple or complicated as you’d like; the following examples can be simplified or expanded to achieve your goals. Just remember, the point is to provide valuable content that shows your expertise. The lead magnet, along with the emails you will then send to your prospective client, may convince them that they want to work with you.

5 Types of Effective Lead Magnets for Financial Advisors and Coaches:

1. Budgeting and Financial Templates

Budgeting and financial templates provide immediate value to people who want to take control of their finances. The beauty of template lead magnets is that they can be used repeatedly by your audience, which keeps your name in front of them.

Here are two ideas:

Comprehensive Monthly Budget Planner

With this planner as a lead magnet, you could go beyond helping prospective clients track income and expenses. You could include categories for savings goals, debt repayment, and investment contributions. The template could allow for customization according to personal needs and financial goals and automatically calculate percentages for different expense categories (to help users follow the 50/30/20 rule or other budgeting strategies).

To make this template even more valuable, you could include a short guide or video that explains how to use the planner effectively, common budgeting pitfalls to avoid, and tips for staying within a budget.

Financial Health Checkup Template

This lead magnet could be a spreadsheet or a fillable PDF that helps users assess their overall financial health. You might include sections on net worth calculation, debt-to-income ratio, and retirement savings progress. You could include benchmarks or indicators for each section to help users interpret their results and recommendations for improvements. This would give users a clear snapshot of their financial status and actionable steps to improve their financial health.

Pro tip: Customize templates to align with your target clients' financial goals and aspirations.

2. Checklists or Worksheets

Checklists and worksheets are practical yet powerful tools to help your ideal clients understand and manage their financial situation more effectively. By condensing complex financial tasks into clear, actionable steps, you make finances more approachable and manageable for your prospects.

Following are two ideas for checklists and worksheet lead magnets:

The New Parent's Guide to Financial Planning: Checklist & Worksheet

When you release this lead magnet, you’ll be helping new parents navigate the new financial reality of having a child. Your guide could advise how to adjust their budget to accommodate baby-related expenses and consider options like 529 plans for future education savings. It could also emphasize the importance of life insurance, updating or creating a will, appointing a legal guardian, and understanding healthcare costs and insurance coverage for the newborn. Consider providing room on the worksheet for parents to jot down their thoughts, questions, and plans. This will make it an interactive and practical tool. Encourage further contact with you by offering a free consultation to discuss the checklist in more depth.

Roadmap to Retirement: Comprehensive Pre-Retirement Checklist

With this checklist, you can guide people thinking about retirement through the essential steps they should take before calling the 9-to-5 life quits. It could cover an assessment of savings and potential income streams for retirement, such as 401k, IRA, Social Security, and pensions. The guide could also stress the importance of reviewing and adjusting investment strategies and planning for healthcare costs, as well as covering estate planning considerations like updating wills and creating a living will.

Pro tip: While the goal is to provide value upfront, your lead magnets should also lead naturally into the services you offer. Encourage further engagement by linking the actions on your checklist or worksheet to your services.

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3. Webinars

Webinars are video presentations where you share your financial expertise and tips with your audience. Webinars are versatile because you can do them live or prerecord them, depending on your comfort level. Live webinars are especially good for engaging your audience because you can answer their questions immediately. Also, if you present a webinar live, you can record it and continue to offer it to your ideal clients.

Here are two webinar ideas:

Retirement Readiness: Navigating Your 401(k) and IRA Options

In this webinar, you could look at retirement accounts in-depth, primarily focusing on 401(k) and IRAs. You could explain these concepts in a simple and engaging way, offering scenarios and actionable tips to manage and maximize retirement funds. To enhance the webinar's appeal, include a brief personal consultation or a personalized retirement roadmap as a follow-up.

Debt Demystified: Proven Strategies to Pay Down Debt Faster

This webinar could explore strategies to help people tackle their debt more effectively. Topics could include repayment strategies, dealing with student loans, debt consolidation, and understanding the impact of interest rates. You could continue your interaction with your audience by offering a "Debt Reduction Planner" to help webinar attendees apply the strategies discussed during the webinar. ?

Pro tip: Ensure your webinars and videos are engaging, visually appealing, and provide actionable insights.

4. eBooks

eBooks covering essential financial topics can appeal to your target audience by addressing common issues your clients ask you about (if your current clients are interested in the topics, your ideal clients will be, too). eBooks showcase your expertise and go a long way toward convincing your audience that you are the person they should work with.

Here are a couple of eBook ideas:

Financial Planning 101: A Comprehensive Guide to Building Wealth

In this eBook, you could provide an overview of the key principles and strategies involved in financial planning. It could cover budgeting, saving, investing, retirement planning, and risk management. You could include actionable tips and real-life examples to help readers understand and implement the concepts. Additionally, you could highlight the importance of seeking professional advice from financial professionals throughout the planning process.

Mastering Personal Finance: A Step-by-Step Guide

This eBook could focus on practical strategies for mastering personal finance. It could provide step-by-step guidance on managing debt, improving credit scores, creating a realistic budget, and setting financial goals. You could also include tax planning, insurance coverage, and estate planning chapters. You could incorporate interactive exercises, worksheets, and checklists to encourage readers to act and track their progress. Remember to emphasize the role of financial professionals in helping individuals achieve their financial goals.

Pro tip: Tailor the content to address your ideal clients’ common pain points and provide practical solutions.

5. Quizzes

Quizzes are highly engaging lead magnets because they offer personalized results to help users better understand their situation.

Here are two quiz ideas:

What's Your Money Personality?

This quiz can help users understand their attitudes and behaviors toward money. Questions could cover saving, spending, investing, and risk tolerance. Each result could correspond to a different "money personality" type, such as the "Saver," "Spender," "Investor," "Risk-Taker," etc. Based on the results, you could offer tips and strategies for managing money better, depending on their money personality.

Are You Ready for Retirement?

This quiz could evaluate a user's preparedness for retirement, covering areas like savings, debt levels, investment strategies, and understanding of retirement income sources. It could also consider subjective factors like their anticipated lifestyle in retirement. Once the quiz is completed, the result could offer an assessment of their retirement readiness and suggestions for improvement.

Pro tip: Make quizzes interactive and share results to enhance engagement.

Creating Effective Lead Magnets

As you can see, a lot goes into creating effective lead magnets. The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone.

Financial copywriters like me can help you:

• determine what lead magnets your ideal clients will respond to
• write the important landing page where your prospects will enter their contact information
• create a promotional strategy, so your ideal clients find your lead magnet?
• plan the visual aspects of the lead magnet

If you’re ready to build your email list and would like assistance creating a lead magnet, contact me; I’d love to help.

I’m a copywriter & strategic marketer for financial professionals and co-host of the Calling All Communicators podcast.

Follow me for thoughts about marketing success, copywriting, my dog (he’s adorable), and whatever else is on my mind.