3 tips to skyrocket your lead gathering strategy
Times are shifting, and so are prospects. Almost every day we read of yet another new method to grow our lead base, from industry experts recommendations to niche software. Staying effective in lead gathering is not necessarily complicated or expensive, but rather its a matter of paying attention to users behavior and adapting your means to it.
We will refer to lead generation as a broader notion, involving all the day-to-day activities you do for engaging with possible audiences, while lead gathering gets closer to the practical side and means literally collecting new leads - picking the apples and throwing them in the sales basket (or the email marketing basket, and so on).
Among the most widely used tactics for online lead generation there are various types of search marketing, email campaigns, webinars, videos, blogging, press releases, co-marketing, and social media. As for how do you gather those leads? Our personal suggestion is to keep it simple. Forms are the key notion here.
Web forms are probably the handiest tool for capturing leads in-house and pre-qualifying them. And they're one of the top business-critical website elements. You can create forms yourself and place them on whatever landing page or channel you need. After working with web forms over the years from both sides of the barricade (observing form users and form owners alike), weve gleaned a handful of action points that can radically influence the success of your lead gathering campaign. We will now share the top three conclusions weve drawn along the way and how to use them to your advantage.
1. The first encounter is often the most important. Lose no time in lead scoring with your form.
Its amazing how many openings for lead scoring a simple feedback form can give, and how many marketers dont leverage them. Beyond the main question of interest for the prospects, you can also configure the form to ask for information that define their areas of activity - and thus qualify the lead. The most widespread criteria for ranking leads is their sales readiness. You can use additional filters such as demographics or interests to mark their relevance to your company.
2. Forms are useful to you, but boring to visitors. Adapt your mindset.
We all fill in multiple forms daily, on desktop and mobile devices. For any marketer in the quest for gathering leads, the first challenge is to defy the yawn that sadly comes the second a visitor spots the form on your page or in the email body. You should prepare to overcome this barrier by being aware that in the eyes of any visitor, the form is just a gateway to reaching their goal - registering for an event, downloading some goodies, or anything else.
Just because forms are generally dull doesnt mean you cant make them engaging from the first glance. If youre seeking design ideas, simply Google cool forms and you will find loads of inspiring lists with creative forms that please the eye.
3. Manage your data wisely by integrating the form with your apps of choice.
The form is part of a process - the lead gathering process - and therefore should integrate with the apps that manage the rest of your companys lifecycle marketing. Dont just publish the form on your page and forget about it. Once you convert potential customers into subscribers, you will need to engage them further in order to retain them. To keep track of your leads along the way, CRMs come in handy, as well as email marketing systems.
Most successful web forms for marketers
First of all, lets align the key concept here: how do we define success of a marketing endeavor? Or overall form success?
Generally speaking, the main indicator of a good form is the high level of completion and low dropouts. This might seem a bit too abstract in the larger picture of a marketing campaign, but if you break it down its essential.
Most marketers set their goals gradually, from the point of crafting their email campaign and landing page to the stage where a qualified lead is handed over to the sales department. A wise goal for the stage of lead collecting revolves around web forms - a form conversion rate above average. This is the number of form impressions divided by the number of valid form entries, after we subtract the unfinished attempts or invalid submissions.
47% of marketers affirm that increasing conversions is their top priority for 2014. The higher your form conversion rate, the more leads enter your funnel at one blast - and the more chances to close deals in the near future. In the end, it all boils down to tight brand engagement and positive ROI of your time investment.
Among the most used and top performing web forms for marketers are:
Newsletter subscription forms. You can place them on your website, Facebook page, or even in outside-the-box places such as your email signature, the description of your YouTube videos, or as a QR code on your business cards.
File download forms. They are most often used on landing pages as main conversion points, with the goal of downloading an e-book or whitepaper, a badge, or any other types of resources.
Marketing surveys. These are the pillars of market research. Whenever you start a new project, prepare a change, or simply need to know inside information about your audience, craft a friendly survey - and be sure to incentivize responsibly, so that users will be drawn to complete it.
Any type of web form can skyrocket your lead gathering strategy, provided you adapt it to your visitors intent. As with any marketing tool, theres always room for innovation, so test test test until you find the best converting formula.
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