As I wrote about in Part 1, lead generation techniques are incredibly important and vital to building your business and continually filling up your lead funnel.
Building a Great Lead Capture Page
15. The Elements of a Standard Lead Capture Page
A good lead capture page (LCP), also known as a landing page, is made up of common elements:
- Headline and sub-headline
- Brief description of the offer
- An image associated with the offer’s content or format
- Reputation signifiers like badges and testimonials
- A form to capture leads’ information
16. Remove the Navigation Menu
Once a prospect is on your LCP, the goal is to keep them there until they convert. Remove the navigation menu to lower the chance that they navigate away without converting.
17. Consistency in Headline of the LCP
The headline should reflect the offer accurately so users do not feel like they have been tricked. It should also closely follow the wording of the CTA to increase clarity.
18. Minimal Design is Beneficial
Do not clutter your LCP. If it is overloaded with text and images, users may spend so much time reading they never convert. Put that extra information inside of your inbound content instead.
19. Don’t Forget the Offer’s Value-add
A common mistake is to emphasize the topic of the LCP without mentioning its specific value-add. Your LCP should lay out the tangible gains to be made by the prospect.
20. Facilitate Social Media Engagement
Providing one-click options for prospects (on the LCP) and converted leads (on the Thank You page) to share your offer on social media helps multiply your reach.
21. Multiple LCPs Make More Leads
The more offers you have, and the more LCPs that provide distinct CTAs, the greater the opportunities you have to convert prospects. Multiple offer formats also account for differences in prospects’ preferred ways of consuming content.
Building Better Forms Lead Generation Tips
22. Streamlined Forms
Every field you add to a form increases friction, acting as a barrier to conversions. Determine which information is essential, but also which fields can be combined. For example, never have two distinct fields for a prospect’s first and last names.
23. Rephrasing the Submit Button
Leaving the submit button with its default text, “Submit,” is a waste of real estate. Instead, use this space to reiterate your CTA. It should also follow our tips on CTA visibility provided in Part 1.
24. Reputation Signifiers
Prospects are skittish. If an offer does not feel trustworthy, they will navigate away and never look back. Including your privacy policy, certification badges, testimonials, and customer logos is a good way to build your reputation in the eyes of the prospect.
25. Form Length
Even a short form that looks long will perform worse than its converse. Do everything you can to decrease the real estate a form takes up. Consider reducing the spacing between fields, using smaller font size, and placing field names to the left of fields rather than above them.
Embracing Multi-channel Engagement
26. Blogging is Key
Companies that blog seven times a month double their lead volume. Every post should have hyperlinks to related content on your website, as well as a prominent CTA just above the fold.
27. Email Isn’t Dead
Now that ’90s and ’00s have been solved by modern spam filtering, email is again an important marketing channel. However, if you send low-quality, spam-like emails, the prospect will unsubscribe and you will lose the contact. Focus on opt-in email campaigns with valuable offers. Email will also help with lead follow-up.
28. Social Media
Social media is about engagement. It is best used when your content puts you in dialog with prospects and so piques their interest that they decide to share it with their contacts. That means that the discussions you have about and around your content are as important as the original post itself.
29. Organic Search
Search engine optimization is old hat by now, but more important than it has ever been. Follow the usual SEO tips: put keywords in headers and URLs, always provide alt-text for images, and properly structure content within nested headers to facilitate ease of use.
30. A/B Test Everything
We live in a data-driven world and A/B testing has become the key to achieving marginal gains that, in sum, make for a huge increase in lead generation. Test everything from offer titles to CTAs to LCP arrangements and figure out what really works.
If your business needs help optimizing your inbound marketing campaigns, please contact us to learn more about what we can do to help.
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Founder & CEO of ThinkFlame, Shelly Patrick, trains individuals and companies to understand how their marketing affects their sales conversation and how to integrate marketing into their yearly plans for consistent growth.