Lead magnet ideas for local shops
A local shop’s lead magnet should give a neighbor a reason to come in and a way to hear from you: a brochure for your next event, a care guide for what you sell, a gift guide for the holidays. Here are ten briefs that open in Chapbook, and one sample expanded above as the outline the planner proposed for a day of events at a bookshop.
World Book Day
A day of reading at Larkspur Books, by Larkspur Books
Brochure, 612 words, 6 pages
The outline the planner proposed from its brief, chapter by chapter:
- 01 Start the Day with a Story 116 words
- 02 Make a Book to Keep 137 words
- 03 Twenty Years on Wren Street 118 words
- 04 Stay for the Open Evening 128 words
- 05 Find Us and Join Us 87 words
10 ideas, each a brief to start from
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A brochure for your next event
A shop event needs something a neighbor can pick up, keep and hand to a friend. World Book Day, expanded above, is this idea as a sample for a fictional bookshop’s day of readings.
Brochure Expanded above: the outline it produced. Start from this brief: A brochure for your next event
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The care guide for what you sell
Someone who has just bought a good knife, a houseplant or a pair of boots wants to look after it. A care guide adds value after the sale, and it’s a natural reason for them to give you an email address.
Lead magnet Start from this brief: The care guide for what you sell
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A beginner’s project from your shelves
A hobby shop’s best customers are made, not found. A workbook for a first project gets a beginner started, and sends them back to you each time they run out of yarn or need a new tool.
Workbook Start from this brief: A beginner’s project from your shelves
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How to build a cheese board, in pictures
A specialty shop sells knowledge along with products, and customers ask the same question at the counter every week. An illustrated guide answers it at home and gives them a reason to come back for the next one.
Illustrated guide Start from this brief: How to build a cheese board, in pictures
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The holiday gift guide
People want to buy locally for the holidays and can’t always get to you to browse. A guide built from your shelves lets them shop from the couch and walk in knowing what they want.
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A guide to your neighborhood
Being known as the shop that knows the street is hard for an online store to copy. A guide to the places nearby also gives your neighbors a reason to share it, and the other shops a reason to stock it.
Collection Start from this brief: A guide to your neighborhood
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A booklet for your repair or custom service
Many customers don’t know that you fix things or make them to order. A short booklet by the register tells them how it works, and gives them something to pass on to a friend who needs it.
Brochure Start from this brief: A booklet for your repair or custom service
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A monthly shop note
A shop’s regulars like hearing what’s just arrived before anyone else does. A short designed issue gives them that, and it’s a reason to walk over that an email with a discount code doesn’t give.
Newsletter Start from this brief: A monthly shop note
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A kids’ table pack for your Saturday
A toy shop or bookshop with families in on Saturdays needs something for the small table in the corner. A printable pack keeps children busy for a while, and parents can ask for the whole pack themselves.
Activity pack Start from this brief: A kids’ table pack for your Saturday
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The story of the shop
A shop with decades behind it has a story its neighbors would read, and an anniversary is a good reason to tell it. It makes a fine thing to sell at the counter or give to your longest customers.
Nonfiction book Start from this brief: The story of the shop
How to choose one
Listen to what people ask at the counter. If it’s how to look after something, write the care guide. If it’s what to buy for someone else, make the gift guide. If your window draws people who don’t yet do what you sell, make a first project. Print a stack for the counter either way, because the people already in your shop are the easiest ones to reach.
Use your own shop’s real details, and add your own photos wherever a real place or product is shown. A generated picture is fine for a watercolor of a stack of books, but not for the actual chair you are selling. For a longer look at a small business’s story, Slow Money is a sample about a fictional family bakery, and it isn’t a customer’s book.
What the sample shows
World Book Day is a sample brochure, not a customer’s. The shop, the street and the readers are invented. The outline above is the one the planner proposed from its brief, and you can read the booklet it became.
Every brief here opens in Chapbook
Each idea comes with the paragraph Chapbook needs to start: the topic, the reader and the voice. Open one, put in your own shop, your own street and your real dates, and Chapbook proposes titles and an outline for you to approve before anything is drafted.
Questions people ask
What is a good lead magnet for a local shop?
One that helps someone use what you sell or gives them a reason to visit, such as a care guide, a first project, or a brochure for your next event. A neighbor can use it the same day, and it gives them a reason to come back.
How do I get it into people’s hands in the shop?
Print copies for the counter, and on a paid plan use the book page’s QR code on a sign by the register. Sign-ups land in your Readers list, and from there you can export each sign-up as a CSV for your email tool.
Will Chapbook get my address, hours and prices right?
Give the assistant your real details and it saves them as facts a brochure must carry word for word. Drafting is told never to invent a detail of that kind, but check the last page before you print, since you’re the one who knows.
Read a chapter of your own book before you pay for it.
The outline, one sample chapter up to 2,500 words and a watermarked cover are free: 60 Book Credits on sign-up, no card.