Some companies are afraid of their customers. They’re afraid they won’t complete form fields that are optional, and they’re worried that by letting people type what they want, they will lose the reporting capabilities enabled by dropdown lists.
It’s important to remember that not all of the data gathered on your forms is equal. Some fields are absolutely required, while others are a bonus used to qualify leads or learn from your customers.
There are 2 primary decisions to make when asking for extra information, and we’re going to explore the answers today.
You’ve optimized your landing page to convert like an electric car salesman in a world without oil, and your PPC campaign is pumping out a CPA lower than a spring break limbo pole. Yet despite having a well targeted and relevant giveaway (a whitepaper for example) on your lead gen landing page, you feel like you could be generating more paying customers from your prospects.
Could it be that you’re not holding their hand long enough?
Turning a visitor into a lead is one thing, and turning them into a paying customer is a whole other bucket of frogs. It requires constant attention and marketing effort to capitalize on your available opportunities.
“statistics show that it takes six to seven contacts before you can turn a prospect into a customer.”
– Constant Contact (pdf)
A fundamental rule of landing page design is to try and keep your Call To Action (CTA) above the fold. This enables your visitors to quickly see where they need to interact with your page to be successful. This is easy with a standard “Click-Through” style landing page that just offers a big shiny button for the user to click. You simply ensure that you place it in the top portion of the page.
On a lead gen form, the CTA is at the bottom of the form (the submission button). So it’s quite common (especially if you have a relatively long form) to have the CTA fall below the fold.
The solution to this problem is to implement 2 design rules that focus user attention on the lead capture form area.
I'd definitely give my email address for a free lolcat! (Image ref: icanhascheezburger.com)
You may have noticed the primary Unbounce giveaway that we’re using to generate leads for our upcoming product launch. It’s an eBook called “101 Landing Page Optimization Tips“.
If you didn’t know, we’re a new startup company that’s soon to unleash a new landing page service (WYSIWYG editor, A/B testing, reporting etc.), so right at the start we sat down to think of ways to gather some relevant and targeted sales leads.
If Miley Cyrus (or Hannah Montana) is willing to dress up like a carrot to get attention, the least YOU can do is have a nice gift for people sharing their personal information.
Building a list of sales leads is a big deal for most marketers, and internet marketing has opened up previously unheard of opportunities for capturing new prospects.
The Question: How do you make your client list swell like a ripe plum in the summer sun?
The ability to generate good leads lies in your ability to give away something of value that is relevant to your target customers.
In this post we’ll discuss the types of freebies commonly given out in exchange for personal contact information.
The Short Answer: Free giveaways that are useful, valuable or funny.
Get in the habit of measuring things. You never know when they'll turn out to be bigger than you thought...
The quest for lead generation is a simple fact of marketing life. Companies require personal data to fill their sales funnels and maintain momentum, and the data that they seek varies from the simple to the extreme.
Informational requirements vary greatly depending on the campaign and the product or service being sold. But more than anything it’s influenced by the need (or greed) of the departments in your company.
Landing Page form threshold is the minimum agreed upon set of information requirements that still produce an acceptable conversion rate.
The design of a lead-gen form on a landing page always starts in the same place (simplicity), and grows according to the same law of information desire.
The following fictional dialog may sound familiar:
Download our free white papers and reports for some bedtime conversion optimization reading.
Read our opinionated guide to landing page conversion.
Using Twitter to enhance, promote and measure your landing page campaigns.
A collection of articles about landing page fundamentals.
