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If you want to get quality leads, you will need to use quality sources.
Lead generation forms are a great and powerful way to get started with your lead generation efforts, but you will need to put care and effort into them. It is crucial you do that, because otherwise you might end up losing important prospects and see your lead gen efforts derail right from the start.
In this post, we will look into lead generation form best practices so you can increase both immediate form submissions and get yourself quality warm leads.
Why are lead generation forms important?
Without a doubt, having appealing, easy-to-complete, and secure lead forms can have a great impact on the number of users who go on to complete them.
Strong lead forms can increase your total number of leads, reduce the cost per lead, and give you the information you need to qualify and later convert leads effectively. They are an opportunity for leads to identify themselves and for you to reach out and nurture the relationship in relevant and personalized ways.
Collecting the necessary information at the beginning of the buyer’s journey will help you build a reciprocal and trusted relationship, in which the lead will feel confident that their information is used for a very valued product or service.
With all that being said, it is clear that lead generation forms are worth the extra effort, so let’s take a look at a lead generation form best practices you should test.
Best practices for the creation of lead generation forms
1. Keep it short & sweet
Most of the time, simple wins. This is the case for lead generation forms as well. You want a basic and visually appealing and grabs the user’s attention design, with simple questions that can be answered quickly.
Make sure you always ask for the lead’s first name, last name, and email address and maybe an additional 2-3 more fields. But keep it as simple as possible.
Α majority of your leads will feel intimidated if they have to fill out lengthy forms online. There’s no need to ask your leads to fill out tons of different fields. You won’t need them anyway and they will feel skeptical of your lead capturing process. So think wisely about the form fields you include.
Short forms typically yield better results. So you can go back at a later time and reach out to them, staying in contact and keeping your brand top of mind.
2. Choose reliable & secure form software
Security is also a major issue you need to consider when it comes to choosing a provider. That is because not all forms are reliable and secure.
Some may not reliably deliver the lead’s information once it’s submitted. If they don’t get an error message when this happens, they have no way of knowing you never got the form submission.
Others have major issues surrounding security and privacy. For example, they might share your data. Make sure your forms are GDPR Compliant, so add a GDPR agreement form field to your them, so people know what you plan to do with any information you collect.
3. Make it interesting
Your lead generation form is much more than just flashy colors and a strong CTA. It needs to speak to the user in order to persuade them to sign up. Therefore, you have to use your words wisely, in order to effectively capture interest and of course the information of new, high-quality leads.
The more interesting the copy you serve them, the more interested your visitors will be to fill out your form and start the journey. Like with all your marketing efforts, your copy needs to give your readers some value regarding your goods or a solution to a problem they might have, that you can fix.
4. Τhink of your placement
The content of the lead form is of course important, yet it’s also just as essential for everything around the lead form to be working in your favor. From the sidebar to the header or the footer, there are many places your lead generation forms can go.
What’s for certain is that it has to be placed in an obvious, easy to find spot.
Many will say that you should place it above the fold or avoid putting it at the bottom of a landing page because the majority of visitors will never see it. This of course depends on different factors, so you must always test it on your page.
5. Make your CTA stand out
If you want your forms to be submitted, you must have a clear call-to-action. Not many brands get this right. Your CTA can play a pivotal role in really capturing the attention and convincing the prospect to sign up.
That is why it has to be creative and unique, catchy and actionable.
A good idea might be to prepare them about what exactly will happen after they click the submit button. And remember that by improving the copy of your call-to-action button you can greatly enhance your conversion rates.
6. Send a thank you email right away
We understand the excitement of receiving lead generation forms, yet don’t let your excitement make you forget to acknowledge your leads. It’s important that you send them a welcome autoresponder series, as soon as they submit the form. Simply by informing them that the form has been submitted you can kick off the relationship with them. And you will for sure get bonus points if you personalize the message to show their name or any other relevant data.
It’s important to remember that making a good first impression can get you from lead forms to conversions, in an instant.
7. Test it
So, you think you created the perfect form. However, how will you know if your leads think the same? The best thing you can do for that is to test different versions of the forms to see which one performs better.
You can embed WayMore forms directly onto your landing page or on an email, and then split test the different versions of the same landing page or email, which only feature different forms.
Split testing is particularly valuable so you can see how much lead information you can capture without seeing drop-off rates in form submissions.
Strong lead forms can increase your total number of leads, reduce the cost per lead, and give you the information you need to qualify and later convert leads effectively. They are an opportunity for leads to identify themselves and for you to reach out and nurture the relationship in relevant and personalized ways.
