How to Create a Lead Magnet PDF in 5 Steps (+ Templates) (2024)

Lead generation is a crucial part of any marketing strategy. It involves building a list of contacts who have shown interest in your business and may potentially buy from you.

One of the best ways to generate leads is by using a lead magnet. Statistics show lead magnets can increase the conversion rates of your opt-in forms to as much as 60%.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create a lead magnet PDF easily—without hiring a designer. We’ve also included lead magnet templates to get you started quickly.

Before you dive in, watch this 10-minute video tutorial to learn how to create a lead magnet along with templates you can use.

Here’s a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit lead magnet templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

Table of Contents

• What Is a Lead Magnet?
• Step 1: Plan Your Lead Magnet
• Step 2: Write the Content
• Step 3: Design Your Lead Magnet
• Step 4: Download in PDF Format
• Lead Magnet PDF FAQs

What Is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is a freebie you offer to potential customers in return for their email addresses. Businesses offer lead magnets as high-value incentives to drive more conversions on their website opt-in forms.

Lead magnets that can be used for B2C and B2B lead generation, include

• Ebooks
• Whitepapers
• Industry reports
• Cheatsheets
• Checklists
• Templates
• Workbooks
• Pre-recorded webinars
• Video tutorials

For example, if you sell home decor items, you can offer a free ebook on interior design ideas in return for email addresses. This would also be a great way to get new prospects' attention, build trust in your brand and introduce them to your products.

Read our in-depth article to get a clear understanding what a lead magnet is and how it can help supercharge your lead generation efforts.

Lead magnets are typically shared as downloadable resources in PDF format. PDFs are versatile, easy to share, interactive and supported by a variety of devices.

Creating a PDF lead magnet is no longer a professional designer’s job. Anyone can easily make one using online software like Visme. There are dozens of ready-made templates you can use to speed up the process.

All you need to do is plan and write your content, insert it into a template, add finishing touches, and download or share your lead magnet.

Let’s walk you through the step-by-step process below.

Step 1: Plan Your Lead Magnet

Without proper planning, your lead magnet might not be that effective. Preparing in advance helps you set clear objectives, create targeted content and also track its impact.

Here’s what to keep in mind when planning for your lead magnet:

Identify Goals and Audience

Before you start writing or designing, you need to know why you’re making a lead magnet and who you’re creating it for.

The primary goal of a lead magnet is to drive leads, of course. But you could have other objectives like:

• Building trust and authority
• Educating potential buyers
• Increasing brand awareness
• Acquiring backlinks
• Driving sales

Setting clear goals helps you stay focused, craft the right content, add appropriate CTAs and even create an effective distribution and promotion strategy for your resource.

Similarly, it’s important to identify your lead magnet’s target audience. Who are these leads? What are their demographic and psychographic characteristics? What are their habits and frustrations? Why would they download your resource? What problems are they trying to solve?

Collect all of this information by conducting research, running surveys, interviewing customers and studying the market. Then, visualize it in an audience persona like the one below.

Decide on the Topic and Format

This will ultimately depend on your business, industry, objective and audience. Finalize a topic that helps you achieve your goals and also delivers optimal value to potential customers.

For instance, if you’re a marketing agency, you can publish an original research report on marketing trends to gather leads interested in learning more about the subject. Or, create an ebook guide on how to create a marketing plan.

When people see you as an industry expert, you’ll be in a better position to reach out to them and pitch your services.

You can also offer beautiful PDF templates, cheat sheets, checklists and workbooks to help customers solve a problem on their own. If they need professional help, they’ll be more likely to think of your brand.

Step 2: Write the Content

Now that you’ve decided the what, why and who of creating a lead magnet, it’s time to get to work. Here’s what you need to do:

Create an Outline

Writing the content for your lead magnet can easily get complicated if you lose focus. You might end up with a hundred pages or too many irrelevant chapters.

That’s why it’s best to start with an outline and structure. Write down a table of contents and create bullet points for each chapter based on your research. Organize content into sections and subheadings to make it easier to read.

Craft a Compelling Headline

The title or headline of your lead magnet can make or break its success. It’s the first thing visitors see before they decide to explore your lead magnet further or download it.

Here are some tips to optimize your lead magnet’s title:

• Use numbers to quantify your offer. It helps increase perceived value. Examples: “7 ideas to decorate your office” or “11 best tools for influencer marketing.”
• Highlight the key benefit. What will your resource help potential customers achieve? Examples: “A freelancer’s guide to making $100k a year” or “How to make your website rank on the first page of Google.”

Your headline should be eye-catching, clear and relevant. More importantly, it should reflect the value your resource offers at first glance.

Deliver Actionable Value

Your lead magnet should benefit both the readers and your business. Write clear, concise content that delivers on your lead magnet’s promise. This could be solving a problem, answering questions or making the customer’s job easier.

Avoid writing long paragraphs of content. Break up text into chunks and offer practical advice that can be replicated to achieve specific results.

More importantly, your lead magnet content should encourage readers to take action. This could be getting in touch with your business, buying a product or registering for a webinar. Whatever it is, make the next steps clear by adding CTAs, links and other relevant information.

Back Your Content With Data

Build trust in your business by writing reliable and authoritative content. When making statements, back them up with statistics or industry evidence.

Also, showing how your products or services can help is more effective than just talking about it. Illustrate your expertise with case studies, examples and tangible data.

Repurpose Blog Posts Intelligently

Already have lots of content on your site? It’s great to repurpose blog posts into lead magnets, but you need to go about it carefully.

If you just copy and paste the same information, you might not see too many conversions. Instead, offer something customers can’t already find on your website for free.

This additional value can take the form of exclusive and beautiful PDF templates, checklists, examples, case studies, recipes or how-to tutorials.

Step 3: Design Your Lead Magnet

Now that your content is ready, it’s time to make it look pretty!
A well-designed lead magnet can increase your resource’s perceived value. Align it with your company’s style guide to strengthen your brand.

Here’s how to design a high-value lead magnet:

Choose a Design Software

Before we get into the details, you need the right tool to design an eye-catching lead magnet. You could use lead magnet software like Adobe Photoshop or InDesign, but if you’re not a design professional, there might be a steep learning curve.

Thankfully, there are better alternatives (hint: Visme) for marketers who don’t have design experience. In fact, an online lead magnet software like Visme is even great for designers who want to speed up their creative process.

Access dozens of ready-made lead magnet templates and replace the placeholder content with your own in just a few clicks. Add built-in visuals like graphs, icons, photos and illustrations, or upload your own. Tap into a huge library of free fonts, download or share in multiple formats. You can even apply one-click branding to all your projects, from ebooks to checklists to presentations and beyond. The entire design process in Visme takes a fraction of the time it would take in heavy software like Photoshop and InDesign.

Select a Template (Or Start From Scratch)

Designing the perfect lead magnet PDF from scratch can be time-consuming, regardless of the tool you’re using. But that’s why we have templates!

In Visme, you can find dozens of templates across 40+ categories, from ebooks to infographics to plans to presentations to white papers and more. There’s even a specialized lead magnet templates category with tailor-made, original content you can use as is.

Starting with a template saves you hours you’d otherwise spend on designing a layout, choosing colors, placing images and making your PDF look good. We recommend you use a ready-made template made by professional designers to maximize your lead magnet’s impact.

Style the Text

Do you want your ebook to look like just another boring document with never-ending walls of text? Of course not! You want it to look engaging, colorful and visually attractive.

Since text is an important part of your lead magnet, you can’t get rid of it. You can, however, style it to fit your brand and look more engaging. Here are some tips to do that:

• Establish visual hierarchy with fonts
• Choose the right typefaces and font pairing
• Organize text into columns to break the monotony
• Use shapes behind text to add a visual element

Visme offers an exciting text animation feature that adds an extra layer of interactivity to your texts. With this feature, you can bring your content to life using eight different types of animations.

By incorporating these captivating text animations, you can swiftly grab the attention of your target audience and entice them to explore and access your lead magnet.

Add Attractive Visuals

Your lead magnet is incomplete without eye-catching images, icons, illustrations, charts and other graphics. Visuals help reinforce your message and also make reading through more engaging.
Here are the different types of built-in visuals you can access in Visme:

• Stock photos
• Backgrounds
• Icons and illustrations
• Charts, graphs and data widgets
• Characters and gestures

Simply drag and drop any visual you like from the left-hand sidebar onto your lead magnet design. Here’s a GIF showing how to do that.

Or, upload your own photos and graphics to add to your project. For example, you might want to add your logo, company photo or team member headshot.

As for data visualization, Visme’s graph maker lets you generate 15+ different types of charts, graphs and maps. You can also make radials, thermometers, progress bars and more.

This is helpful for bringing data and statistics to life, such as case studies or survey results. All you need to do is connect your Google sheet, upload an excel file or enter data manually.

If you’re using Visme, your lead magnet template will come with handpicked visuals that fit well with the design. You can use them as is, or replace them with other graphics. You can also edit, resize, crop and move them around.

Make It Interactive

Who says a PDF can’t be interactive? Boost the impact of your ebooks and lead magnets by adding interactive and animated effects.

If you’re planning to share downloadable PDF files, you can embed links into your content inside Visme. If you want to use Visme’s animations, pop-ups, hover effects, video embeds and other features, you can share your interactive PDF online with a link. Or, embed it on your website (e.g., in a gated, members-only area) using a snippet of code.

Pro Tip: Use Visme’s Flipbook Effect to make your PDF look (and feel) like an actual book that readers can flip through. It’s great for increasing interactivity and engagement!

Furthermore, you can use Visme's AI image generator to make all kinds of visuals like images, icons, illustrations, abstracts and more.

Just share your ideas, and this powerful tool brings them to life. It's a simple way to create amazing visuals and express creativity, even if you're not a design expert.

So, if you want a unique design element to add to your template, the Visme AI image generator is the way to go.

Step 4: Download in PDF Format

When you’re happy with the design of your lead magnet, export it in PDF format. Visme lets you download your projects in multiple formats, including PDF and HTML5.

You can offer this file as a downloadable asset via an opt-in form on your website. Or, send it over in an email to new leads. Automate this process so the email is sent as soon as a visitor signs up.

You’re almost done! It’s time to share your beautiful creation with your audience. Thanks to Visme's versatile sharing and publishing capabilities, you have dozens of ways to distribute and promote your lead magnet.

• Offer as a downloadable asset: Use our PDF maker to export your ebook as a PDF file and enable leads to download it after signing up.
• Share online with a link: Generate a URL to your lead magnet so potential customers can view your resource in their browser with full interactivity and animation features.
• Embed on your website: Add your lead magnet on a web page using code. You can lock it behind a gated members-only area or enable new leads to access the link.

You should also promote your lead magnet to ensure it gets maximum exposure. If no one knows it exists, how will they sign up to access it?

Here are some ways to promote your ebook or PDF:

• Create a landing page: Design a compelling page dedicated to your PDF resource to show up on Google. List benefits, create a nice mockup and embed a signup form on the landing page to encourage conversions.
• Do email outreach: Reach out to partners and relevant websites, and ask if they’d be interested in adding a CTA or link to your lead magnet’s landing page in their articles.
• Share on social media: Spread the word about your lead magnet on your social profiles. Create posts and stories, and even run ads to promote your ebook. Also, design cover photos for Facebook and LinkedIn with lead magnet CTAs to draw attention.
• Promote on your website: Sprinkle CTAs throughout your website, such as on your homepage and as graphics within blog posts. You can also add a hello bar at the top of your page promoting your lead magnet or enable pop-ups to attract opt-ins.

In addition to creating compelling lead magnets, Visme offers a comprehensive range of forms to enhance your lead generation strategy.

With Visme's form templates, you can easily design and embed customizable forms within your lead magnets. These forms allow you to gather valuable data from your audience, such as email addresses, feedback or survey responses.

Integrate Visme's memorable forms into your lead magnets to enhance user engagement and optimize conversion rates.

10 Lead Magnet PDF Templates (Edit & Download)

To make your job easier, here’s a list of beautiful, ready-made lead magnet templates you can use right away and collect email addresses for your business.

However, it's crucial to understand the ideal lead magnet for your specific business and marketing objectives before selecting a template. To help you with this, we have a video that outlines the top five lead magnets you can create for your business.

1. Business Plan Workbook Lead Magnet

The business plan workbook lead magnet is a comprehensive template that guides entrepreneurs and business owners in creating a professional business plan. Its user-friendly format allows for easy customization and filling in of information.

This is one of the best lead magnets you’ll find with essential sections like executive summary, market analysis, products and services and financial projections.

Furthermore, the template includes an eye-catching color combination, legible fonts, attractive design elements and plenty of room for customization.

It benefits startups, existing businesses and those seeking funding or investment. Additionally, it serves as a valuable tool for strategic planning, enabling companies to chart a clear path for growth and development.

Save your ideal customer's time and effort with the business plan workbook lead magnet as their go-to resource for creating an effective business plan.

2. Job Preparation Checklist Lead Magnet

The Job Preparation Checklist Lead Magnet is a valuable resource that benefits job seekers in various stages of their career journey. This comprehensive checklist provides step-by-step guidance for tasks such as resume updates, company research, interview preparation, and networking strategies.

While the template is tailored for programmers, you can customize it to suit various other professions and industries.

Whether your ideal customer is a recent graduate, a career changer, or working with a job placement agency or career coach, this lead magnet checklist will guide them throughout their job search journey.

Use Visme's dynamic fields feature to take lead magnet customization to the next level. With dynamic fields, you can create personalized lead magnets by dynamically inserting user-specific data into your templates.

This means you can automatically populate fields such as names, email addresses or any other relevant information from your audience. By leveraging this feature, you can create a tailored experience for each user, enhancing engagement and making your lead magnets even more impactful.

With Visme's dynamic fields, you can effortlessly create personalized and effective lead magnets that resonate with your audience on an individual level.

3. Worksheet Lead Magnet Template

Empower your customers by providing a comprehensive tool to understand and navigate the various aspects of designing a mobile application using our Worksheet Lead Magnet Template.

This lead magnet serves as a valuable resource, offering a step-by-step framework for customers to explore and comprehend the intricacies of the design process. This template guides them through creating their app, from outlining app objectives to visualizing user interface elements.

By offering this lead magnet, you not only provide valuable insights to your customers but also establish yourself as a trusted authority in mobile application design.

4. Roadmap Lead Magnet

Offering your target audience insights into how you deliver your services is a great way to build trust, credibility and a relationship with your customers.

By offering them a roadmap for how you can help them achieve their goals, this lead magnet can be the perfect tool for getting new clients on board.

The roadmap template explains the step-by-step process of building a successful startup. But you can customize it to fit your business offerings.

For instance, if your company specializes in web design services, you can quickly adapt the roadmap to guide clients through creating highly converting websites.

This tailored approach ensures relevance and resonates with your audience, positioning you as a trusted resource in your industry.

5. Resources Lead Magnet

Gain a competitive edge in the interior design market by leveraging this attention-grabbing lead magnet template to promote your services.

With a harmonious blend of colors, captivating design elements, and a
well-thought-out layout, this template effectively showcases the expertise and artistic vision of interior designers.

Also, the high-quality images for each design idea help your audience visualize the final result.

Overall, the template is designed to create a sense of intrigue and curiosity in your audience, encouraging them to sign up for more information.

6. HR Guide Ebook Template

This lead magnet template for remote team management is a great pick for HR teams and businesses. It’s a fully designed ebook guide you can customize as much as you want.

Add, remove or duplicate pages, change colors and fonts, replace images, apply one-click branding and make this template your own in minutes. When you’re done, download it as a PDF and share it with your audience.

Visme templates are the ultimate solution for designing stunning visuals without the need to start from scratch or compromise on professional design quality.

However, don't just take our word for it. Here's a testimonial from one of our delighted customers, Brad Wills, Sourcing Executive at IBM's Recruitment Processing Outsourcing (RPO)!

“Visme is something that I would highly recommend. It made us look a lot better in our clients’ eyes because it's something that's visually effective as a marketing tool.”

"With Visme, instead of days, a page would take us anywhere from 4-8 hours on a duplicate or templated process and even up to 72 hours for projects with unique needs and with immense input and back and forth on the design process.”

7. Industry Statistics PDF Template

Are you looking for some innovative lead magnet ideas? One effective approach is to share industry reports and research data, which not only helps establish authority in your niche but also generates leads and builds backlinks. Use this industry statistics PDF template to create your own data-rich lead magnet.

Customize the widgets and charts included in this template with your own data. Change the graph types, add more pages, duplicate content, remove elements, upload your own assets and even connect a Google sheet to sync live data.

Download this lead magnet template in PDF format or share it online with a link. If you’ve connected a Google sheet, you can keep your published resource up-to-date with live sync.

8. Branding Workbook Template

Business workbooks offer incredible value to new entrepreneurs and marketers. They’re constantly looking for DIY resources to save costs and achieve better results.

Share this branding workbook template with your audience to help them create a strategic brand identity for their business. Add your contact details and CTAs so interested leads can get in touch with your experts for further help.

Visme goes beyond just creating lead magnets and offers a powerful analytics feature to help you track and analyze the performance of your content. With Visme's analytics, you gain valuable insights into how your audience receives your lead magnets.

You can monitor key metrics such as views, clicks, date and time of view, location, unique visits and more, enabling you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your lead-generation efforts.

By understanding which lead magnets are most effective, you can refine your strategies, improve engagement and ultimately drive better results for your business.

9. Christmas Gift Guide Template

For eCommerce businesses seeking lead magnet examples, our Christmas-themed template is a perfect fit, particularly during the holiday season. Share themed gift guides to help shoppers choose presents for their loved ones and shop from your store.

Duplicate pages to add more products, change product images, names and details, and even change the entire color theme of the PDF to fit any other occasion, like Thanksgiving or Halloween.

10. Email Pitch Samples PDF Template

Looking for lead magnet PDF examples to provide valuable resources to your audience? Use this email pitch samples pdf lead magnet to offer amazing value with bundles of email, copy and other written samples.

You can customize this PDF lead magnet template with your own content and change anything from the cover page to fonts to colors and everything in between.

Lead Magnet PDF FAQs

Q. How long should a lead magnet pdf be?

The primary purpose of a lead magnet is to incentivize prospects to leave their contact details so you can nurture them toward conversion. So creating a lengthy lead magnet that takes three or four days to read through could hurt your chances of getting them into your funnel.

Ultimately, the key is to strike a balance between providing enough valuable content to showcase your expertise and keeping it concise enough to be easily consumed by your audience.

Q. What software do you use to create a lead magnet?

When it comes to creating a lead magnet, there are several software options to choose from. But we recommend Visme as it comes packed with its array of templates, tools and resources that makes creating lead magnets a breeze.

Visme offers thousands of professionally designed lead magnet templates, including ebooks, checklists, templates, downloadable guides, whitepapers and one pagers—you name it!

Plus, users have access to animation and interactive elements, millions of design assets, a full suite of AI-powered tools, collaboration and workflow management tools, and much more to create beautiful lead magnets that effortlessly pull leads into their funnel.

Q. How to create a PDF lead magnet?

Follow these steps to create a high-converting PDF lead magnet:

Step 1: Figure out what you want to achieve with your lead magnet and the specific audience you’re targeting

Step 2: Decide on the topic you want to write about and what format works for your audience.

Step 3: Write compelling, relevant and valuable that will nudge readers to take action. And if you need help with content ideas, use Visme’s AI text generator.

Step 4: Design branded and irresistible lead magnets using the extensive array of templates and design assets in Visme’s library: high-quality images, videos, icons, illustrations, shapes, 2D and 3D animated characters and other interactive elements. If you need help designing your lead magnet, you can prompt the Visme AI Document Generator to explain what you want to create, choose your style, and watch the tool generate your lead magnet, complete with content and ready-made design.

Step 5: Once your design is ready, download the lead magnet in PDF format for easy distribution. Use them alongside your lead forms, lead generation landing page, emails and other channels to generate leads.

Q. How to create a lead magnet on Canva?

To create a lead magnet on Canva, follow these steps:

• Log in to your Canva account or sign up for a new one.
• Once you're logged in, click on the "Create a design" button.
• In the search bar, type "lead magnet" to see available templates or start with a custom dimension for your lead magnet.
• Customize your lead magnet by adding your branding, images, and content. Canva offers various elements, fonts, and images to help you create an eye-catching design.
• Once you're satisfied with your lead magnet, download it as a PDF or image file to share with your audience.

Ready to Create a High-Value Lead Magnet PDF?

Lead magnets are brilliant tools for generating leads, increasing brand awareness, building trust and establishing authority in your niche. Pay attention to your audience’s pain points, plan in advance and deliver actionable value to wow readers and convert them into customers.

Designing a lead magnet from scratch can be hard, but you can always use Visme’s lead magnet templates to create one in minutes. You can easily Design ebooks, templates, checklists, guides and other downloadable resources online.

Our ebook creator is packed with features to help you customize your PDFs as much as you want. You can also make a lead magnet from scratch using premade content blocks, built-in design assets, branding capabilities, multiple download formats and more.