How long should a lead magnet be?
Long enough to keep one promise in one sitting. As a rule of thumb for a general reader, that is 1,200–1,900 words for a quick win, 2,400–3,600 to teach one method and 3,600–6,000 to show your expertise. These are starting points, not a study of what converts.
Targets by job and reader
Decide what the lead magnet has to do, then who is reading it. The ranges below are Chapbook’s rule of thumb: a reading time for each goal, a quarter shorter for people who read between meetings and a quarter longer for practitioners who want the detail.
| The job | Busy founders and executives | General readers | Practitioners |
|---|---|---|---|
| A quick win: a checklist, cheat sheet or short list of mistakes | 1,000–1,400 | 1,200–1,900 | 1,500–2,400 |
| Teach one method, step by step | 1,800–2,700 | 2,400–3,600 | 3,000–4,500 |
| Show your expertise before a sales call | 2,700–4,500 | 3,600–6,000 | 4,500–7,400 |
| A guide they keep and come back to | 4,500–7,100 | 6,000–9,500 | 7,400–10,000 |
Words, not pages, because pages depend on the design. At the measurements of Chapbook’s own samples, on US Letter with the cover and front matter counted, 1,000 words comes to about 8 pages, 2,500 to 13, 5,000 to 22 and 10,000 to 39. A larger type size or more pictures moves those numbers, and the reading time stays about the same.
How reading speed changes the answer
Brysbaert’s 2019 review of 190 studies put adults’ silent reading of English non-fiction at about 238 words a minute on average, with most adults between 175 and 300. That spread matters. A 3,000-word guide takes the average reader about 13 minutes and a slower one about 17. If you promise “a ten-minute read”, write for the slower reader, not the average.
A workbook is different. Its length is the time to do the exercises, and the words are the small part of it. Estimate how long the tasks take and say so in the title or the introduction.
Signs yours is the wrong length
Too long:
- The introduction explains why the topic matters to someone who already signed up for it.
- Two sections could each stand as their own lead magnet.
- The first useful thing comes after page three.
Too short:
- A reader could get the whole value from the title.
- It says what to do but never how, so they still need you to take the first step. That may feel like good marketing, but it reads as a sales page.
What to measure
Your own readers beat any general figure, but a download count says nothing about reading. One way to see further is a link on the last page, tagged so your analytics can count it. Clicks on that link come only from people who got to the end or skipped there. Compare it across versions and you learn more about length than a benchmark can tell you.
Where Chapbook fits
The free length guide works out the range for your goal and reader. In Chapbook a lead magnet runs 1,000 to 10,000 words, and you set each chapter’s length in the outline before anything is drafted. Its Next step page is on by default and prints once you add a link: a button and the address, tagged for your analytics unless you turn that off. The sample on this page was generated from one brief, so you can read a real example at this length.
What to do
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Write the promise in one sentence
Say what the reader will know or have at the end. If you need the word “and” twice, you probably have two lead magnets, and each will be shorter and easier to finish.
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Pick the target from the job
Use the table on this page for a word range. A checklist should not stretch to a report’s length, and a method should not be squeezed into a cheat sheet.
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Give each section a share of the words
Divide the target across your outline before you write. A section that needs twice its share is either a second idea or the real subject of the book.
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Cut against the promise
Read each section and ask whether the promise fails without it. If it would still be kept, cut the section, however good it is.
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Time one real reader
Ask someone who fits the audience to read it while you note the time and where they slowed down or stopped. That tells you more than any table can.
