Landing Pages & Forms & More – Oh My! Capturing Leads Effectively

by Fronetics | Feb 25, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Marketing, Strategy

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The most efficient lead-generation strategy includes a way to capture potential customers’ information.

An effective lead-generation campaign requires several different strategic layers.

Firstly, you must entice potential customers with an exclusive, high-value offer — like ebooks, whitepapers, free consultations, product demonstrations, or discounts. A clear, highly visible call to action (CTA) or two can help ensure they know how to attain it and can encourage them to choose it over your competitors’ offers.

But you’re not done there. Unless you are capturing those quality leads effectively, you could be dropping the ball and missing out on potential customers.

Here are some tips for successfully capturing leads.

Landing pages in lead generation

You absolutely need to have a landing page for your offer. Your CTA should not take the potential customer to your website’s homepage or anywhere else, but rather to a landing page, which provides your offer and captures the lead information.

Landing pages are one of the most important elements of lead generation and are effective for 94% of B2B and B2C companies, according to research done by MarketingSherpa. A great landing page:

Describes the offer
Does not include links to other things on your website that will distract the lead and perhaps send them elsewhere before you can obtain their information
Is simple and not cluttered with information but emphasizes the benefits of your offer
Has ways to share the offer on social media
Has a form to capture the lead information

Capturing leads: It’s all in your form

The last point suggests the next step in your strategy: A good form is how you will successfully capture those leads. It is where your potential customers will provide their contact information in exchange for the special offer you have enticed them with.

So, what makes for a good form?

Keep it short. The fewer fields you have in a form, the more likely you will receive conversions.
Avoid using the word “submit” on your form. Nobody wants to submit their information, so use a phrase that demonstrates that they are getting something they want by supplying their information — something simple like “Get it free,” or “Download now.”
Add a privacy message (or link to your privacy policy) that indicates their email or contact information will not be shared or sold.

Want more leads? Use multiple channels

To generate and capture the most leads possible, completing these steps in just one of your marketing platforms is not enough. Marketers should utilize multiple channels in order to maximize their lead-generation efforts.

The objective is to make it easy for buyers to research, evaluate, and purchase products in any way that is most appropriate for them. Some leads may find you through your blog, some through social media, and some through organic search (which is why all of your content should be SEO-friendly). Thus, you should make sure you are promoting your special offers, effectively placing CTAs, and properly using landing pages and forms in every facet of your digital presence.

Such an efficient, multi-layer lead-generation strategy can reduce your cost per lead while delivering higher quality prospects to your sales team.

Want to learn more? Download for a complete list of innovative tips and proven strategies to improve your lead-generation and -nurturing strategy.

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A Call to Action is Key to Any Lead Nurturing Campaign

by Fronetics | Feb 10, 2016 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

A good call to action will help potential leads feel compelled to choose your offer over your competitors’ offers.

If you feel your marketing campaign falls short in generating quality leads, you are not alone. Typically one in 10 marketing professionals questions the effectiveness of their lead generation methods. While you may have some of the components of a strong campaign in place, it is possible that you are leaving out a very important ingredient for success: a call to action (CTA).

CTAs are vital in any tactical marketing campaign. This is where you actually ask for your potential customer or client to take some form of action that moves them one step closer to your objective: connecting them to your company.

Say that you offer potential customers a high-value offer — like an ebook, whitepaper, free consultation, or discount — as a lead nurturing tactic. If you do not include an actual call to action, the customers have no direction for obtaining the offer, and you are probably missing out on a myriad of quality leads.

What makes a good call to action?

Not all CTAs are created equal. You are competing with every other brand in a fight for the attention (and choice) of consumers, so it’s critical that prospects feel compelled to choose your offer over your competitors’.

Calls to action are the secret sauce to driving people to your offers. If your CTAs aren’t effective at capturing people’s attention and persuading them to the click, then no matter how impressive your offer is, it is rendered useless.
Typically, a good call to action can be used on product pages (non-landing pages), in display ads, email, social media, direct mail, and pretty much anywhere you can market your offer.

There are several tricks of the trade to creating a highly productive CTA:

Location, location, location

Just like with important news, the placement of your call to action should be “above the fold,” or, high enough on the page so the reader will not have to scroll to see it. It is also good to have a second CTA located further down within the offer.

Clarity is key

Do not try to be so clever with your words that your offer gets lost in translation. State the offer very clearly and be specific. Don’t just say “download now,” but rather, “Download you free e-book.”

Make the CTA stand out

Choose contrasting colors for your call to action so that it draws the attention of the eye and does not blend in on the page.

Link to a landing page

Send potential customers to a targeted landing page that is relevant to what they are looking for. Your call to action should send them to a page that will convert them into a lead. Landing pages are one of the most important elements of lead generation. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa’s research, landing pages are effective for 94% of B2B and B2C companies.

There are many innovative methods to increasing the number of quality leads a marketing plan generates. The trick is in knowing how. For more proven tips, download The 30 Greatest Tips & Tricks That Will Change The Way You Nurture Leads to learn the best ways to improve the productivity of your marketing strategies.