Lead magnet

The idea is simple: you give something concrete before asking for anything. In inbound marketing, that's often a PDF in exchange for an email address. In outbound prospecting, it's usually a resource offered inside the conversation, along the lines of "we have a follow-up template we use with accounting firms, want me to send it over?".

A good lead magnet solves a small, specific problem for your target, quickly, and shows how you work along the way. A bad one is a sales brochure dressed up as a guide.

It's different from plain content. A LinkedIn post can be read without doing anything. A lead magnet asks for a gesture, a reply, a click, a contact, and that gesture already tells you something about the person who makes it.

Templates and checklists often come first, because people can use them right away: an interview grid, a calculation sheet, a contract outline. Studies with original numbers attract attention too, as long as the numbers are genuinely yours.

A short video walking through a real case, a quick diagnostic or a calculator work well when your offer is hard to explain in writing. What they share: a resource people can use in a few minutes, not a forty-page white paper saved for later and never opened.

On LinkedIn, two uses come up again and again. The first is a post where you offer the resource to anyone who asks in the comments. The second is a follow-up: instead of writing "just bumping this", you bring something new to the conversation.

Always keep a direct link to what you sell. A guide unrelated to your offer attracts people interested in the guide, not in you. The resource should make the prospect think about the exact problem you solve, so that the next question, the one about a call, feels natural.

Track the whole chain: how many people you offer it to actually ask for it, how many conversations continue after you send it, how many meetings come out of it, then how many customers.

The meeting is the number that counts, and the MimikFlow 2026 Observatory shows why. Conversations with an attachment got more replies, 43.9% against 36.8%, but fewer meetings, 2.9% against 5.8%. You can't conclude that attachments cost meetings, because they are often sent in conversations that were already struggling. You can conclude that a reply proves nothing until it leads to a call.

To test a lead magnet, keep the same target and compare two versions of the same follow-up, one offering the resource and one without it. Give the test enough volume and enough time: replies to follow-ups can arrive more than a week later.

Sending the resource before anyone asked for it, especially in the first message. A link or a PDF arriving without context looks like an ad. Offer first, send it if the person says yes.

Forgetting what comes next. The person got your template, and then what? Plan the question you'll ask a few days later about how they used it.

Judging by downloads. A thousand downloads from students and competitors are worth less than ten requests from decision-makers in your target.

Promising more than the resource delivers. A "complete guide" that runs three pages disappoints, and the disappointment lands on you.

Every MimikFlow campaign has its own media library: videos, documents and images. You can assign a piece of media to a specific follow-up, or leave it available to the AI Setter, which sends it when the conversation calls for it, for instance when a prospect asks for an example.

Follow-ups take the previous messages into account. They can bring new proof or use the media you chose instead of repeating the same ask, which is exactly how a lead magnet should be used in prospecting.