The Design Lab’s Best: 5 DIY Lead Magnet Design Tips

Thinking about growing your email list and boosting your biz with a lead magnet?

There are so many ways to create professionally designed, totally on-brand freebies — whether it’s through Canva, hiring a designer, or even just using Google Docs. Which means the possibilities are truly endless. 

That also means the possibilities are truly endless, which means you’re opening a whole can of overwhelmed worms. If you’re DIYing your next lead magnet or freebie, we want to help support you through it. 

In this post, we’ve rounded up five of our best DIY lead magnet design resources. Scroll on to check them out!

Lead magnet design tip #1: Get the basics down first

First impressions are everything, as they say. You want to make a great one with a well-designed lead magnet. But what does “well-designed” look like and how can you get started? 

In the video below, we’re showing you a few of our product design basics to help you get started. This video is all about how to design a digital product — but guess what? Your freebie or lead magnet is a digital product. The price of that product just happens to be $0.00.

With these bits of know-how in your back pocket, you’ll be on your way to designing a great lead magnet in no time!

Lead magnet design tip #2: Using a list? Try this!

Lists can be deceptive. On one hand, it seems like there won’t be a whole lot of information to work with. But once you start playing around with it…you’re not really sure how to make it work. 

How do you highlight the important information? How do you make it easy to read, yet informative? How do you keep it simple (as lists should be)? 

In this video, we’re dishing out all of our list-designing secrets!

Lead magnet design tip #3: Break up that text

In your lead magnet, you’re likely going to have lots of information to share. You may not have as much as you would in a paid product, per se, but there’s still going to be a lot you want to say. 

However, keep in mind that lead magnets and freebies are supposed to be more bite-sized chunks of information. 

What are we getting at here? Please, for the love of all things orange, don’t slap a bunch of text into a PDF with a pretty background and call it a day. Good content should be just as aesthetic as it is useful — people want to consume information in a way that’s not too overwhelming.

To keep your lead magnets from becoming unreadable (or turning off new leads), try out the tips below!

Lead magnet design tip #4: Fit the format

We all know good design when we see it. It’s why people are drawn to buying products with a pretty label or packaging, or laughing at a great billboard as you drive by.

But for most lead magnets and freebies, that content is shared in a PDF. Normally, PDFs can be a total snooze fest. But with the right PDF design tips… your PDFs can draw people in and give them a really fun experience! 
Watch the video below to learn how to handle things like margins and white space, when to center align vs left align your text, and how to scale your content for print and digital.

Lead magnet design tip #5: Use Canva’s PDF Maker

Canva is such an amazing tool, and it’s every DIY designer’s dream! Their design tool makes it so easy to do things like create social graphics, make quick edits to your brand assets, and more. 

And now? You can use their guidelines to create a PDF on par with the pros. It’s free, easy to customize, and can take you way less time than trying to start from scratch on your own. 
Interested? Check it out here!

Get more design tips to DIY it like a pro!

DIY design is no easy feat — go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back for making it to the bottom. We see you!

And if you want even more resources to help you design great lead magnets and freebies, our shop has you covered. Get access to everything you need, from roadmaps and cover designs to teaching pages and so much more!

Each of these templates are available for instant download after purchasing and can quickly be added to your PDF. Plus, they come with a video walkthrough tutorial to show you how to set them up inside of Canva and customize them as you see fit. 

How’s that for design made simple?