How to Design a Lead Magnet in Canva in Under 30 Minutes

You know how important it is to connect with your audience and make a lasting impression, but we aren’t just talking about social media here. 

Everything you design in your business serves as a touchpoint for your audience and is an opportunity to build a connection with them. That’s why lead magnets, opt-ins, and freebies are so great! But just because you’ve already caught someone’s eye and they’ve given you their email doesn’t mean the work stops there. 

Opt-ins are a great way to expand your audience and build a connection with them, but a poorly designed lead magnet can lose you a lead.

What if your opt-in is the only time you get to interact with someone in your audience? What if it’s your first, and only, chance to make a lasting impression and position yourself as someone who can help them? 

Your audience signed up for your opt-in because they’re eager to have a solution to their problem or you have a tool to fulfill a need in their business. But it will be so much harder if they can’t read any of the info. Or if the design is too chaotic to focus on any one point. Or if it looks totally different than the branding they’ve come to associate with your business!

So how do you design a lead magnet that catches their attention, is easy to read, easy to follow, and provides value? Oh, and doesn’t take forever?

We’re breaking down how to design a lead magnet in less time with these 7 tips.

Keep your copy simple

A lead magnet shouldn’t be full of all the same information you’d offer in a course. The whole point is to entice your audience to keep coming back for more. You can't do that if you’re giving all the juicy deets away from the go!

And because opt-ins are typically only ONE PDF file, a ton of information will only bog down what you’re trying to say. With a course, you can break your information up into modules or lessons (like in Kajabi*), but with a lead magnet or opt-in, you need to keep things simple. 

Organize your ideas like you’re writing your senior research paper! Clearly list the main thing and make sure all of your other points line up with it. No side conversations or rants!

Then, once you’ve written your copy, make it as short and sweet as possible. You want to get the most information across in the least amount of words. If a line of text isn’t supporting your “thesis,” then it’s safe to say you can probably toss it.

Include a cover page and welcome message

Would you buy a book without a cover? Would you even pick it up? Probably not. 

We see so many business owners forget about these two SUPER important pieces of an opt-in: the cover page and the welcome page. Many tend to look at these as an extra piece of work they don’t want to do, but adding these can really change how your audience perceives what they’re about to dig into. 

A cover page adds a layer of professionalism, and is a great way to cultivate interest since you can use them in mockups, social media posts, and on your Stories!

Chances are, the person downloading your opt-in is in the early stages of their customer journey and doesn’t know much about you. A welcome page is a great place to introduce your business and give a little background into why you do what you do. 

It can also be a good time to reinforce your brand values and serve as a reminder about who you are to the people who may be a little farther down that customer journey. 

If you aren’t offering a PDF as your opt-in, we still recommend putting together a short welcome packet (2-3 pages) with a cover page, a welcome page, and maybe a list of your products or services. You can name the file “start here” or something similar in the ZIP file when they download your opt-in.

Choosing the right images

The images you choose for your opt-in are just as important as the design itself! Using photography in your opt-in can extend your brand and add depth to your design. 

The best images you can use are ones from a brand shoot that show off your beautiful, smiling face! It’ll help people put a face to the name and add a touch of personality. 

But sometimes we can’t have a brand photo for every single need, which is where stock photography comes in handy! Many stock photo memberships offer high-quality photos that can fall perfectly in line with your brand. 

While there are websites that offer free stock photos — like Unsplash and Pexels — we recommend paying for a stock photo membership. Not only will it give you a wider library to choose from, but will minimize the number of times you see someone else using the same photos!

We recommend using Social Squares for professional stock photos that can meet the unique angle your brand has!

Remember the visual hierarchy

Even when you aren’t trying to design graphics for social media that stop the scroll, it’s important to make your visuals refreshing to look at while allowing the main idea to stand out. 

If you prioritize everything, nothing will be important! That doesn’t mean you can’t include details, it just means to make the main thing the biggest thing. Design your graphic so that your audience’s eyes immediately gravitate toward the most important bits of information. 

You can do so by using bigger fonts, bold fonts, and contrasting your brand colors. In a PDF document with text, this could look like this:

Embrace that white space

White space is nothing to be afraid of! And no, keeping it around won’t make your graphics and visuals boring. Your design needs room to breathe, especially when there are paragraphs of copy involved! 

Overcrowding graphics makes them hard to understand, hard to read until the end, and — let’s be honest — way less appealing. 

Less is ALWAYS more with design. 

Don’t have enough white space? Evaluate what you can ditch to make the design stand out. Do you really need to underline your title or have 5 arrows? If the answer is no, it’s time to part ways!

Mind your fonts

Can people read the text in your opt-in? If you’re even finding that you’re squinting your eyes to get a better look, the answer is most definitely no. If you, the creator of your opt-in and graphic can’t even read it, your audience definitely won’t be able to. 

The number one rule with fonts is to keep things legible, no matter how “boring” that may feel. You can still use a funky title font here and there, but using it everywhere is a no-no. Stick with sans or sans serif font families. 

You also want to make sure your fonts are big enough to read and keep what you use to a minimum of two to three fonts per page! Again, readability is the goal here, so you don’t want to drive people away with font choices, and you want your lead magnet to be accessible to people whose sight isn’t 20/20 or who have challenges with reading “creative” fonts.

Choose a template that’s right for you so you aren’t always starting from scratch

Dreaming up the perfect opt-in takes a lot of hard work! No matter what industry you find yourself in, trying to come up with a strategic offer AND design a beautiful graphic to match can get tedious and exhausting. 

That’s why we love Canva templates! Making an opt-in that's uniquely you without the hassle of DIY design work? Sign us up!

With our Melanie Workbook & Worksheets Canva Templates, you can create beautiful resources for clients, students, or potential leads. Show off your brilliance and give your people the resources they need to succeed with these workbooks and worksheet Canva templates! 

This Canva template bundle comes with everything from checklists to worksheets and more. You’ll also have instant access to easy-to-customize designs and a branded mood board template!

Let’s bring your idea to life, love! Shop the Melanie Lead Magnet Builder Canva Templates here.