If you're a coach, a therapist or healing practitioner, or you run an expert-led service, you've probably asked a peer to share your freebie. They said yes and they meant it. Then nothing went out.
Partners are happy to share a lead magnet that takes one small, finished piece of your method and solves a narrow problem their audience already has. They pass it on when it makes them look generous, stays clear of what they sell, and comes with a page, a link and copy they can send in five minutes.
Good partners guard their audience, and they're right to, which is why a clear authority lane makes them glad to promote you. Your job is to make your gift an easy, safe yes for them. Then you make sure the people who download it hear from you in a way that builds trust and leads to a conversation.
Key Takeaways
- Pick one step of your coaching method that gives a visible result in a single sitting and makes the next step obvious.
- Name the gift after the result your partner's audience wants, and keep your method's name inside the gift.
- Choose partners whose work comes just before or just after yours, so your gift helps their audience without competing with their offer.
- Give every partner their own tracking link, a landing page that speaks to their people and copy they can paste without editing.
- Tag every opt-in by partner and send a short follow-up sequence that refers back to the gift and offers one clear next step.
Why Good Partners Sit On Your Freebie
Picture it from their side. Your partner has spent years earning the attention of their list. Every email about someone else's offer spends a little of that trust. So before they hit send, they ask three quiet questions. Will my people thank me for this? Does it compete with what I sell? And how much work will it take me?
Most coaching freebies fail at least one of those. "7 Secrets to a Thriving Business" is too broad, so it overlaps with whatever the partner teaches. A 40-page ebook feels like homework. And a link to your homepage gives their audience nothing to do.
The gifts that get shared make the partner look good. On the Virtual Summit Strategies podcast, Sophia Clark explained how she pitched her summit to speakers as a way to give their audience more. Once they saw it that way, they realized they'd "look like a superhero" to their own people.
Summer Bock went a step further. Alongside the usual "save your seat" option, she created a recipe book with her speakers as contributors and offered it as a second way to sign up. Her reasoning was simple. Her speakers could send their list something fresh and useful instead of another "sign up for this summit" email.
That's the bar. Your partner should feel proud to send it.
Which Slice Of Your Method Should You Give Away?
Start by writing your method as stages. Most coaching frameworks have somewhere between three and six. Then look for the stage that is early in the journey, makes sense without context, and produces something the person can see or use today.
Keep the stage where the deep change happens for your paid work. That's the part that needs you, your feedback and time. The lead magnet should create appetite for it.
For example, a career coach whose method runs clarify, position, network, interview and negotiate might give away the positioning stage as a one-page "Two-Sentence Career Story" worksheet. Someone can finish it in one sitting. They walk away with something real. And the next question pops up on its own: "Great, now how do I use this in an interview?"
Trena Little, a YouTube strategist, described the free opt-in she offers when she speaks on summits as something that "goes hand in hand" with her talk, usually a checklist, a worksheet or a roadmap. Those formats keep working because they're short and finishable.
| Format | Fits a method step that... | Hypothetical example |
|---|---|---|
| Checklist | involves spotting what's missing | A business coach's "Before You Raise Your Prices" checklist |
| Self-assessment or scorecard | starts with diagnosis | A leadership coach's 12-question delegation scorecard |
| Worksheet or planner | asks the person to decide something | A health coach's one-week meal rhythm planner |
| Short video lesson | needs a demonstration | A presentation coach showing how to open a talk |
| Script or template | involves a hard message or conversation | A sales coach's follow-up email template for quiet prospects |
Here's a tip. If you can't explain what someone will have in their hands when they finish, the slice is too big.
Name It For Their Audience And Brand It With Your Method
Your partner's audience doesn't know your method yet, so the title should name the result in their words. "The Two-Sentence Career Story" beats "Module 2 of the Career Clarity Framework" every time.
Put your method's name inside the gift. A line at the top such as "This is step two of my five-step Career Clarity Method" tells the reader there's a bigger picture. Once they've used one step and seen it work, the full method feels credible. If you haven't named your method yet, it's worth doing first, and this guide on becoming the obvious choice in your niche walks through it.
Then run the one-sentence test. Could your partner describe the gift in a single line of their own email without reading your sales page? If they'd need to explain it, simplify the title.
Pick Partners Whose Work Sits Next To Yours
Jay Fiset made a useful point on the podcast about choosing collaborators. Start with the one problem you solve really well. Then look upstream for people whose work causes or reveals that problem, and downstream for people who solve the problem your work creates next.
Those partners are the easiest yes, because your gift becomes the natural next step for their audience. Nobody feels like they're losing a client to you.
For example, a money-mindset coach might partner upstream with a bookkeeper whose clients keep saying "I know what to do, I just don't do it," and downstream with a financial planner who wants clients to arrive calmer and more ready to act.
Before you finalize the gift, ask each partner what their people keep asking about that they don't cover. Rose Jubb, reflecting on a summit she sponsored, said that if she did it again she'd ask far more questions about the audience and tweak her free gift to fit. Ten minutes on a call can save you building the wrong thing.
Give Each Partner A Kit They Can Send In Five Minutes
The more work sharing takes, the less often it happens. Hand every partner a kit that needs no thought.
What to include:
- A unique promoter link, so you can see and thank them for every opt-in
- A landing page that names their audience and mentions them by name
- Two short emails and three social posts, written plainly, that they can edit or paste as is
- One image sized for social
- Suggested send dates
- One honest sentence about what you'll send people after they opt in
That last item matters more than people think. Partners worry their audience will be flooded with emails. Trena Little shared that one summit she spoke on warned speakers that attendees could get dozens of emails in a day if every speaker started a sequence at once, so speakers could space theirs out. That kind of consideration is why partners agree to work with you again.
Why Each Partner Campaign Gets Its Own Landing Page
A landing page that says "Shared with you by Maria, for the small business owners in her community" lands very differently from a generic page. It carries your partner's trust onto the page, and it lets you tag every opt-in by where it came from.
It also lets you match how each audience likes to receive things. Azul Terronez described how, on his Authors Who Lead summit, his team moved their PDF playbook to the top of the page after seeing that some people weren't ready to give time to a live summit. About 30% chose the playbook over summit access. Some audiences want something to read first, before they decide you're worth their time.
Follow-Up That Gets Downloads Talking To You
This is where most lead magnets quietly die. The gift goes out, the list grows, and nobody hears from you again in a way that matters.
Carol Lourie put it plainly when she talked about speaking on summits. The free gift has to be relevant and valuable, and you need to know whether your email sequence is converting or even being opened. Rose Jubb added a practical step: keep people who download from a partner campaign on their own segment, so your emails can mention where they met you.
A simple sequence might look like this (adjust the timing to suit your audience):
- Day 0. Deliver the gift, tell them how to use it in ten minutes, and thank the partner by name.
- Day 2. Share the most common mistake people make at this step, and how to avoid it.
- Day 4. Explain the stage of your method that comes next, and why it's harder to do alone.
- Day 6. Tell a short story from your own experience that shows the method working. Coaches can use a client story with permission. Therapists should use their own story or a general teaching point.
- Day 8. Invite them to a call or a small workshop, and say clearly who it's for and who it isn't for.
If your downloads turn into lots of calls with people who aren't a fit, this piece on why your funnel converts strangers but not your ideal clients will help you tighten the invitation.
Let me explain why I push so hard on this part. Jennie and I watched EventRaptor customers add hundreds of people to their lists and convert few or none of them, because they had no process for turning those people into clients. In my experience, a good follow-up process might turn 10 to 15% of them into clients. That's no promise, and it depends on your offer and your market. But "build it and they will come" is a myth, and follow-up is how you avoid it.
Where EventRaptor Takes Work Off Your Plate
Once you're sharing gifts with several partners at once, the admin piles up fast. Links, pages, who sent what, which tag goes where. That's the work we built EventRaptor to carry.
In a collaborative giveaway on EventRaptor, contributors apply or get invited, their gifts sit together in one place, and a leaderboard shows who's promoting. If you're weighing that format, here's how to turn a collaborative giveaway into qualified coaching calls.
In a virtual summit, each speaker's free gift can live on their speaker page. Every speaker gets a promoter link, and they can see a leaderboard, so nobody has to chase anyone for numbers. Reminder and follow-up emails run on the event's timing. Registrants sync to GHL/CRMRaptor with tags, so your partner-specific follow-up can start the same day someone opts in. When we run a summit done-for-you, our team also writes the swipe copy, session descriptions and speaker introductions your partners need for their kit. For more on choosing partners who actually send emails, see this guide to recruiting summit speakers who promote.
This approach has worked for us too. More than 5,000 people on our EventRaptor list came to us because other speakers promoted our summits. And when we produced the Out-Earn Your Man summit for Lucy Bedewi in September 2021, her email list grew from 25 people to 825. She booked 4 discovery calls right after she presented, and all 4 became clients. That's one person's result, and it doesn't predict what another host will see.
A Note For Therapists And Healing Practitioners
Everything above works for private practice too, including virtual summits for therapists, with a few guardrails. Keep your lead magnet educational: a guide to choosing the right kind of support, a worksheet for preparing questions before a first consultation, or a reflection sheet on a topic you teach about. Say clearly that it's an educational resource and not therapy.
Don't promise mental health outcomes. Never use stories or testimonials from therapy clients. And check your licensing board's advertising rules before you publish the gift or the follow-up emails. Your best partners are often other practitioners whose specialties sit next to yours, and sharing a well-made resource with them is a respectful way to build referral relationships.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Makes A Lead Magnet Easy For Partners To Share?
Partners share gifts that solve one narrow problem their audience already has and stay clear of what the partner sells. It also has to be easy to send. A unique link, a landing page that mentions the partner, and ready-to-paste emails remove most of the friction.
How Long Should A Partner-Friendly Lead Magnet Be?
Short enough to finish in one sitting. A one-page checklist, a short scorecard or a 10 to 15 minute video usually works better than a long ebook, because people actually use it and get a result. A gift that gets used builds far more trust than one that gets saved for later.
Should I Give Away My Whole Coaching Framework?
No. Give away one early, self-contained step and name the full method inside the gift so people can see where it fits. Keep the stages that need your feedback and guidance for your paid work. Once someone succeeds with one step, the rest of the method feels credible.
How Do I Track Which Partner Sent Which Leads?
Give each partner a unique promoter link and, ideally, their own landing page, then tag every opt-in by source in your CRM. That lets you thank partners with real numbers and send follow-up that mentions where people met you. On EventRaptor, promoter links, leaderboards and tagged sync to GHL/CRMRaptor handle this for you.
Can Therapists Use Partner Lead Magnets Ethically?
Yes, as long as the resource is clearly educational and not presented as therapy. Avoid outcome promises and client testimonials, and check your licensing board's advertising rules before you publish. Sharing resources with practitioners in neighboring specialties can be a natural way to build professional referrals.
Your Next Step
This week, write your method's stages on one page and circle the one that gives the fastest visible result. Draft a title in your client's words. Then ask two people whose work sits right next to yours what their audience keeps asking about. You'll learn more from those two conversations than from another month of guessing.
If you'd like help deciding whether your gift belongs in a giveaway, a summit or a simple partner campaign, and how the follow-up should run afterward, Book your Client Attraction Planning Call. We'll look at your method, your partners and your offer, and map out a first campaign that fits.