A lead magnet is a free checklist, guide, calculator or small tool you trade for an email address, and with the AI you already pay for it takes one afternoon. It takes two shapes, Workflow and Tech: the AI writes the content and the follow-up emails, and your email tool gates the download and sends the follow-up. The content half takes about an hour. The rest of the afternoon goes to checking the facts, building the signup page and testing the delivery email on yourself. If customers keep asking you the same question before they buy, that question is your lead magnet, and this is a job you can finish today.
- Shape
- WorkflowTech
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Workflow and Tech
This job is a Workflow first because a lead magnet is a chain of steps, and the AI does well at every step that is writing. Pick the problem, write the content, write the landing page, write the delivery email, write two or three follow-up emails. Each step feeds the next, so the order matters. If you write the follow-up before the content is settled, you rewrite it.
It is Tech second because the content is useless until something hands it over. A visitor needs a page to land on, a form to type an address into, and an email tool that sends the file and the follow-up without you doing anything. Most email tools, such as Kit and Mailchimp, can host a signup form, deliver a file and send a short sequence on a schedule, though some of that sits on paid plans. None of that is hard, but every setting matters. A form that does not tag the subscriber, or a delivery email that links to a file only you can open, breaks the whole chain without telling you.
What this means for you: do the writing first, then do the setup with the finished files in front of you. The AI helps with both. Give it the name of your email tool and it will walk you through that tool's form and automation settings.
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat. Each one is something you can copy and paste, not something you describe from memory.
- The one question: the question customers ask most often before they buy, in their own words, copied from an email or your notes after a call.
- Five more real questions: related ones from your inbox or contact form, so the AI can see what sits around the main one.
- Your answer, rough: how you answer that question out loud, typed fast, mistakes and all, because this is the part only you have.
- What people get wrong: two or three mistakes you see customers make before they come to you.
- The offer it leads to: the one service or product the lead magnet should point toward, with its description copied from your website.
- The format: checklist, short guide, template or calculator. If you are not sure, say checklist.
- Your email tool's name: and, if you know it, whether it can tag subscribers by which form they used.
- A tone note: one line on how you talk to customers, such as plain and warm or brisk and practical, whatever is true.
Leave out anything private. The lead magnet will be read by strangers, and the AI may repeat what you give it.
What comes back
Paste the brief below into ChatGPT or Claude, with your inputs filled in where the brackets are.
You are helping a small business make one lead magnet: a free resource people get in exchange for their email address.
The question our customers ask most before buying:
[paste the question]
Related questions they ask:
[paste five]
How we answer it out loud (rough notes):
[paste your answer]
Mistakes customers make before they come to us:
[paste two or three]
The offer this should lead toward:
[paste the offer and its description]
Format: [checklist, short guide, template or calculator]
Our tone: [one line]
Our email tool: [name], and whether it can tag subscribers by form: [yes, no or not sure]
Please return, in this order:
1. Five title options, each naming the specific result the reader gets. No vague titles.
2. The full lead magnet in the chosen format. Keep it as short as the problem allows. Every line must be something the reader can act on.
3. Landing page copy: a headline, three short lines on what is inside, and the button text.
4. The delivery email that sends the file, under 120 words.
5. Two follow-up emails for the next week: one that answers the next question a reader of this resource will have, and one that names our offer plainly and says how to take the next step.
6. Step-by-step setup in our email tool: the signup form, the tag, the delivery email and the two follow-ups on a schedule.
7. A list of every fact, number or claim in your answer that we should check before publishing.
Use only the facts we gave you. Do not invent prices, statistics, guarantees, results or customer stories.What you get back is the whole lead magnet in one long reply: titles to choose from, the resource itself, the page copy, three emails and the setup steps for your tool. Copy the resource into a document, export it as a PDF, and you have the file. If the setup steps are vague, ask a follow-up naming the exact screen you are on. If one section is weak, ask for three alternatives to that section rather than regenerating everything.
For a calculator or a small free tool, the reply is a description of the inputs, the formula and the result text, plus a suggestion of where to build it. A spreadsheet shared as a copy is the simplest version. A form tool with scoring, the kind our quizzes page walks through, is the next step up. Anything beyond that is a build project, not an afternoon.
How to judge it
You can reject a weak draft in a few minutes if you know what to look for.
A title that promises everything: "The ultimate guide to your home" helps nobody. A good title names one result for one kind of person. If you cannot tell who the title is for, pick another or ask for more.
Content anyone could have written: read three lines at random. If they would fit any business in any town, the AI filled space instead of using your answer. Paste your rough notes again and ask it to build every item from them.
Invented facts: any number, time frame, rule or result you did not put in the brief is a red flag. Check the list in item seven against the text, then read the text yourself, because the list misses things.
Length that hides the point: if the useful part is buried under an introduction, cut the introduction. A checklist that needs a page of explanation before the first item is a guide pretending to be a checklist.
A follow-up that only sells: the first follow-up should help, not sell. If both follow-ups read like ads, the reader learns that your emails are ads and stops opening them.
A gap between the magnet and the offer: if someone who finishes the checklist would have no reason to want what you sell, the lead magnet collects the wrong people. The link should be obvious enough that the final email feels like the next step, not a change of subject.
A good draft passes all six with small edits. A draft that fails three or more is faster to redo with a sharper brief than to patch.
What stays with you
The AI writes a strong first draft, but several parts of this job are yours alone.
The problem worth solving: the AI can rank questions, but only you know which one comes up on every call and which one people pay you to fix. Choose the question from your inbox, not from a list of ideas.
Every fact in the file: prices, steps, local rules, time frames and anything that sounds like a promise. Read each line against what you actually do. A lead magnet with one wrong fact teaches the reader not to trust the rest.
The setup and the test: someone has to build the form, connect the tag, upload the file and schedule the emails. Then sign up yourself with a second address and check that the file opens, the links work and the follow-ups arrive in order. A broken delivery email is invisible until a stranger complains, and most strangers do not complain.
Consent and honesty: say plainly on the signup page what you will send after someone enters an address, and send only that. Make it easy to unsubscribe. Your email tool handles the unsubscribe link, but the promise on the page is yours.
Putting it in front of people: a lead magnet nobody sees collects nothing. Link it from the pages where the question comes up, from your email signature and from your social profiles. The forms page covers where a signup form earns its place on a site.
An example, for illustration
Say you run a small pool-cleaning business. Every spring, new pool owners call with the same question: what has to happen before the pool opens for the season? That question is the lead magnet.
The brief has the question, five related ones ("how long after opening can we swim," "does it need draining"), the owner's rough spoken answer, and the three mistakes she sees most often. The format is a checklist. The offer it leads to is her spring opening visit.
The AI returns five titles, and she picks the plainest: "Pool opening checklist for first-year owners." The checklist has fourteen items in the order she would do them, each one a single action. She cuts two that do not apply in her area and corrects a chemical reading the AI wrote that she would never use. The delivery email sends the PDF. The first follow-up answers the question that always comes next, which is what to do if the water turns green in week one. The second names her spring opening visit and links to her booking page.
She builds the form in her email tool, tags each subscriber with the checklist's name, and signs up twice with her own addresses to test the delivery. Then she links the page from her pool opening service page and adds it to her email signature for the season.
This example is invented to show the process, not drawn from a real business.
Which format to choose
There is one real choice in this job, and it is the format.
| Format | Time to make | What it needs from you | Good fit when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checklist | About an hour plus checking | Your steps, in order | The problem is a sequence of actions |
| Short guide | An afternoon | Your explanation of why, not only what | The reader needs to understand before acting |
| Template | About an hour | A real example you already use | The reader keeps asking to see yours |
| Calculator or free tool | A few sessions | A formula you trust and a place to build it | The question has a number for an answer |
When in doubt, make the checklist first. It is the fastest to judge, and it tells you whether people want the topic before you spend a week on a tool.
Keep it current
A lead magnet that names a price you changed or a rule that no longer applies quietly costs you trust. Save your brief and the finished file next to your other marketing files. Once a season, read the file again, update anything that drifted, and look at which follow-up email gets replies. If none of them do, rewrite the brief around a different question and make a new one in an afternoon.
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