The bridge between content that earns attention and a funnel that captures it. A good lead magnet is not "an ebook" — it is the specific artifact this audience would trade an email for, on this topic, from this brand, buildable with what the brand already has.
Inputs
- The topic — a subject, a campaign, or an existing piece the magnet should extend.
- The brand profile — audience, expertise, existing assets, funnel stage
from
~/.claude-marketing/brands/{slug}/. The best magnets are cut from IP the brand already owns: the internal checklist, the template they use on every engagement, the dataset nobody else has. --max-effort— cap suggestions at what the team can actually build.
The grading matrix
Every idea is graded on two axes, stated with reasons — ungraded idea lists outsource the real decision back to the user:
| Grade | Lead-gen power | Build effort |
|---|---|---|
| A | Audience actively searches for this; clear next step toward the offer | Assembled from existing assets in hours |
| B | Wanted once seen; adjacent to the buying decision | Days; some new material |
| C | Nice-to-have; collects curiosity, not intent | A real project |
The sweet spot is power-A × effort-A: the artifact the brand already uses internally, packaged. Flag any power-C × effort-C idea as not worth building.
Output structure
# Lead magnets — [topic], {brand}
## 1. [Specific name — "The 23-point pre-launch QA checklist", never "a checklist"]
**What it is:** [2-3 sentences — contents, format, length]
**Cut from:** [the existing brand asset or expertise it is built from]
**Power: A/B/C** — [why: search demand, intent proximity, offer fit]
**Effort: A/B/C** — [why: what exists vs what must be made]
**Funnel fit:** [what it qualifies the lead FOR — the next step it sets up]
**Delivery:** [landing page + email / in-content unlock / webinar follow-up]
[... 3-5 ideas, best power-to-effort ratio first ...]
## Not recommended
[Ideas that look obvious for this topic but grade badly here, with the grade —
pre-empting the "what about an ebook?" conversation]
## Next steps
[Route onward: /digital-marketing-pro:email-sequence for the nurture that
follows capture; /digital-marketing-pro:funnel-architect if there is nowhere
to send the lead yet]
Critical rules
- Specific, or it does not ship. Every idea carries a name a designer could brief from. "A template" is a category; "the client-onboarding email sequence template with the 6 send-day rules annotated" is an idea.
- Tied to existing IP first. An idea requiring expertise the brand does not demonstrably have is graded effort-C and flagged — a magnet the brand cannot credibly deliver damages the exact trust it exists to build.
- Grade honestly, both axes, with reasons. The grades are the deliverable; the ideas are commodity.
- A magnet must lead somewhere. Each idea names what it qualifies the lead for. Capture with no next step is a list nobody emails.
- Compliance applies. Gated content in regulated industries carries the same disclaimer and claims rules as published content — a magnet is not a compliance side door.