Landing pages & email
Promote a B2B free resource without making unsupported promises
Explain the useful task, show what is included and make access clear. Let the resource earn trust before you introduce an offer.
Good promotion helps the right reader understand what they can do with a resource. Describe a specific task and the real contents, then make the next step easy.
When B2B consultants and agencies promote a lead magnet, the temptation is to sell the outcome they hope for: more leads, faster growth, hours saved. Those promises are hard to support, and a sceptical B2B reader notices. This guide shows how to promote a B2B lead magnet with copy that stays within what the resource actually does. Each step maps to a field in the free Promotion Copy Template, which includes resource-page, social-post and delivery-email templates and a complete example, as a PDF and an editable text file. It is free: enter your email and reply VERIFY to the short email we send you, and we email you the template, followed by four short follow-up emails over two weeks on using our free Brief Builder (the last one names our own $79 Workflow Pack).
The examples below are written for a hypothetical finance consultant whose free resource is a two-page month-end close checklist for small finance teams.
Six steps from finished resource to tested promotion
Describe a task you can support.
Name the reader, their problem and the action the resource helps them take. Leave out claims about leads, revenue or time savings unless you have evidence you could show a reader.
Overstated
"Close your books in half the time with this checklist."
Clearer
"List every month-end task, owner and deadline on one page."
Illustrative wording, not a measured result.
To rewrite an overstated line, ask three questions. What will the reader have finished when they close the file? Could they tell whether they had finished it? Does anything in the resource itself support the wording? The clearer version above passes all three: the reader ends with one page listing tasks, owners and deadlines, and can check that it is complete. The overstated version depends on things the checklist cannot control, such as the team's workload and systems. If you want to say more about results, you need evidence you could publish alongside the claim.
Write a resource page that answers the basics.
State the title, the reader, the contents, the format and how access works, and match every line to the actual file. For the six parts of the page, the access note and the form, see what a B2B lead magnet landing page should include.
Share a helpful post, not a big promise.
A social post follows a simple pattern from the template: reader, specific problem, useful resource, one download action. Keep the tone of a colleague pointing to something useful.
"Does your month-end close live in five different spreadsheets? I've put the tasks, owners and deadlines I use into a free two-page checklist. Request it from my resource page; the download appears straight away, and follow-up emails are optional."
Say plainly how readers get the file, for example: "Free PDF: enter your email and it opens straight away." Do not imply scarcity or a deadline that does not exist.
Make the delivery message useful.
Send the link, name the first useful step and give a help route if the file will not open. The guide to planning helpful emails after a download has a worked delivery email and what any later emails can contain.
Offer further emails as a separate choice.
Delivery and marketing permission are different decisions: keep any follow-up checkbox separate, optional and unticked, deliver the resource either way, and include a working unsubscribe link in every follow-up. The landing page guide shows example wording for the request form.
Test the whole journey before you share.
Follow your own promotion as a reader would, from the post to the opened file.
- The post and the resource page describe the same resource.
- The requested file opens, downloads and saves.
- The emailed link works and help is easy to find.
- Optional follow-ups stay separate from delivery.
- If you ask for an email first, the file opens straight after sign-up.
- Every link uses the final, verified address.
Note what you checked and when. This is a checklist to run yourself; it does not report tests carried out by this site.
Where to share it
Start with places you already own, where the people who see the link already know your work. Each row below uses the hypothetical month-end close checklist; replace the wording with your own resource.
To see which places bring requests, add a UTM tag to each link: extra text on the end of the address that your analytics tool reads. utm_source names where the link was placed (linkedin), utm_medium names the kind of channel (social, email) and utm_campaign names this promotion (close-checklist). For example: [your resource page address]?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=close-checklist.
| Channel | What to write | Illustrative line | How to tell it brought requests |
|---|---|---|---|
| LinkedIn post | Reader, problem, resource and one link, in the post pattern above. | "Does your month-end close live in five spreadsheets? The tasks, owners and deadlines I use are now a free two-page checklist." | Tag the link utm_source=linkedin, utm_medium=social. |
| LinkedIn featured section | The resource title and the task in one line, linking to the resource page. | "Month-end close checklist: every task, owner and deadline on one page." | Use a different source value, such as utm_source=linkedin-featured, so it is not counted with your posts. |
| Email signature | One short line under your name. | "Free: plan your month-end close on one page." | Tag the link utm_source=signature, utm_medium=email. |
| Proposal or quote footer | One line, only where the resource relates to the work proposed. | "Before we start, you may find our free month-end close checklist useful." | Tag the link utm_source=proposal, utm_medium=document, and check the link is clickable in the exported PDF. |
| Service page | A short box on the related service page for readers not ready to talk yet. | "Not ready for a call? Start with the free month-end close checklist." | Do not tag links between pages of your own site; tags can overwrite where the visit first came from. Check your analytics for visits that reached the resource page from the service page. |
| Existing newsletter | A short item in your next regular issue, sent only to people who already subscribed. | "New this month: a two-page checklist for planning your close." | Tag the link utm_source=newsletter, utm_medium=email. |
| Partner or referral contacts | A personal note to people who serve the same readers, asking whether it would help their clients. | "We've made a free close checklist for small finance teams. Feel free to pass it on if it helps." | Give each partner their own source value, such as utm_source=partner-name, utm_medium=referral. |
Illustrative wording for a hypothetical resource. Your analytics shows visits per tag; whether it can also count requests per tag depends on your form and analytics setup, so check that before relying on the numbers.
Two-week sharing plan
One way to spread the work over two weeks. It is an illustrative order, not a benchmark or a recommended posting frequency.
- Day 1: publish the resource page, run the journey test and share the first post.
- Day 3: add the line to your email signature and link the resource from the related service page.
- Day 7: mention it in your existing newsletter.
- Day 10: write a second post built on a different problem from your brief.
- Day 14: review the counts for each tag and decide which places to keep using.
Proposal footers, the featured section and partner notes fit whenever the next proposal or conversation comes up.
See a complete example in the template
Page 3 of the Promotion Copy Template shows every field completed for a real resource, this site's own Brief Builder: a resource-page headline and description, a list of included contents, a social post and a delivery email with a starting step and a help route. Compare your draft with it field by field. Where your copy promises more than the example does, ask whether your resource can support that promise.
Do you need new tools to promote it?
Often not. If your website can host a page with a form and your email tool can send a delivery message and a separate, consent-based sequence, the copy is the main job. Only if your current setup cannot show an immediate download, keep consent separate or suppress unsubscribed contacts is it worth comparing landing page builders for lead magnets or email marketing platforms for B2B consultants. Both guides summarise vendor documentation; neither names a winner.
Sources & editorial notes
- Fields, the social-post pattern and the delivery-email pattern follow the free Promotion Copy Template (version 1).
- The finance consultant, the checklist and all copy are hypothetical. They are not performance claims.
Examples are illustrative. See our Editorial Policy, Review Methodology and Affiliate Disclosure.
Write the page, the post and the email.
Your resource is finished. The free Promotion Copy Template gives you the resource-page fields, a social post and the delivery email, with a completed example.
Free: enter your email, then reply VERIFY to the short email we send you, so we know the address is yours. We email you the template, then four short follow-up emails over two weeks on using our free Brief Builder (the last one names our own $79 Workflow Pack). Every email has an unsubscribe link. A 3-page PDF plus an editable text copy.