If you want to generate more high-quality leads that align with your target audience, you probably need to invest more energy into lead capture.
Lead capture is the last step of the lead generation process. When used correctly, your marketing team can collect a lot of valuable contact information from consumers who are looking for solutions your business provides.
Once you have their info, you can then move to nurture a positive relationship with them.
While there are many lead capture best practices you can implement to increase your lead conversion rate, there are three essential things every marketing team needs in order to upgrade their lead capture strategy and improve the quantity and quality of prospects captured.
Three Ways to Improve your Lead Capture Strategy
Successfully capturing quality leads is a byproduct of a well-planned system. To get started, make sure your team follows these points.
Approach #1: Automate your Lead Generation Campaigns
Marketing automation can cut off a lot of the legwork for your marketing team.
When automating your lead generation campaigns, you can cut out the manual workload that goes into targeting your ideal prospects, managing your contact lists, targeting leads across various platforms, and reengaging with lost leads.
B2B marketers report that the benefits of automating marketing campaigns include saving time (74%), increased customer engagement (68%), increased opportunities to up-sell (58%), and more timely communications (58%).
How to automate your Lead Generation efforts
Marketing automation software like HubSpot and ActiveCampaign allows your team to track user behavior on your website, determine which platforms drive the most traffic to your site, and keep tabs on your conversion goals.
Design your Lead Capture forms
By automating your lead capture forms, you can choose which form layouts to use and where on your website users will see it.
(Source: ActiveCampaign)
Once a site visitor submits their contact information, the software will initiate a workflow. A workflow is a series of automated actions that can be triggered based on a user’s contact data or behavior.
Within the automation software, you can specify your workflows and the type of communication you send to your leads.
(Source: ActiveCampaign)
Qualify the leads you generate from past events you hosted
After a webinar or an in-person networking event, it is crucial to follow-up with your newly acquired contacts.
You can qualify prospects by sending out a series of emails, a survey, or a poll to figure out their level of interest in your business.
Create a Lead Nurturing Campaign
Once you generate a new batch of leads, your marketing and sales teams will likely need to nurture them before they become customers.
Automation software lets you predetermine a sequence of emails to send to them over the next few months. You can opt to send them an email newsletter alongside some of your most popular content and promotional offers.
Create automated campaigns for your existing customers
While you want to warm your leads up, you may also want to incentivize your current clients to remain loyal customers. You can do this by creating a cross-selling campaign that segments clients into various groups depending on the products or services they previously purchased from you.
Then, send them a series of emails that educate them on the best use of their purchase and suggest related services they may be interested in.
Design an email video series
Email video series are the ideal opt-in offer to demonstrate your industry expertise.
By using automation software, you can send a sequence of emails to your prospective customers’ inbox and educate them on a topic of your choice.
If they are interested, you can offer to schedule a call with a sales representative or a special discount code for a limited time.
Approach #2: Personalize your Landing Pages to match search intent
There is a lot that goes into building an effective landing page that converts website visitors into leads. It is no easy task – between designing a visually appealing layout, writing an enticing CTA, and split testing different variations to see which one generates more results.
A lot of time and money goes into creating and executing profitable landing pages. A great way to ensure that your resources are not wrongfully used is to personalize them to match a user’s search intent.
The importance of personalization
Landing pages exist to persuade site visitors to take an action we recommend. In fact, 68% of all B2B companies use them to nurture leads.
By personalizing landing pages to match the most common keywords people are using to find your organization, your lead capture pages can reflect what people are looking for.
With this strategy, your search ads and lead capture pages will find the right people at the right time – precisely when they are looking for what you offer.
To do this, HubSpot has created smart content, a feature that essentially replaces certain words and matches them with other keywords users are searching for on Google. It creates duplicate versions of the same page and redirects users to it when they click on your ad.
The more personalized a landing page is to specific search intents, the higher the chances a user will decide to take action and sign up for the content you offer.
(Source: HubSpot)
Approach #3: Optimize according to the Buyer’s Journey
The moment a consumer realizes they have a problem or need; your business has the opportunity to generate new leads and demonstrate it can deliver a solution.
However, to impress potential customers, organizations require a clear understanding of the buyer’s journey and how they can optimize their lead generation efforts for each stage.
While the buyer’s experience will be different for every business, the needs that characterize each stage will remain the same. To make lead capture work for your organization, you will need to align your best offers to the type of people who want them.
96% of users who visit a business website are not yet ready to make a purchase. Most of them are browsing a variety of options and may or may return to your site.
To pique their interest, you can offer specific lead magnets to target consumers.
Fortunately, there are other tactics you can use to capture leads throughout the buyer’s journey.
Optimizing Lead Capture for the awareness stage
Users in the awareness stage realize they have a problem and are searching for more information.
They are not looking for a specific product, service, or brand name; instead, they are looking to troubleshoot, prevent, and improve their pain point(s).
To attract leads in the awareness stage, your business can focus on:
- Improving your website’s SEO and targeting the keywords your buyer personas are using,
- Promoting content through PPC advertising,
- Creating content that provides solutions to common problems, and
- Developing a social media presence and promoting your content.
Everything you publish helps to establish your overall brand authority. Therefore, it is essential to present your organization as a responsible entity that can provide solutions. When you accomplish this, users are likely to trust you enough to offer you their contact information.
Optimizing Lead Capture for the consideration stage
During the consideration stage, consumers understand their pain point(s) and are considering and evaluating viable solutions. This includes researching tools, devices, suppliers, or providers that can deliver an answer.
They are not, however, ready to consider prices.
Instead, focus on delivering the following for higher conversion results:
- Write blog posts that provide viable solutions to common problems,
- Automate your email marketing strategy to deliver your leads newer content and promotions, and
- Create valuable content offers, such as performance graders that highlight your business’s expertise and ability to deliver results.
(Source: HubSpot)
Performance graders are interactive lead magnets that help prospects understand the value behind what you do when compared to other competitors.
After a website visitor becomes a prospect, B2B marketers are responsible for cultivating a relationship with their potential customers and providing the tools they need to make a purchasing decision.
Optimizing Lead Capture for the decision stage
Consumers in the decision stage understand their problem and have an idea of the type of solutions they want. They may also consider purchasing within a specific price range.
If your lead nurturing has been successful, then the following is likely right about your prospects:
- They have a genuine interest in purchasing from you and
- They understand the value of what you offer.
When these two factors align, leads may already have decided to become your customer.
However, prospects who are not entirely sold on the idea will likely check out customer reviews or testimonials from other businesses to ensure they pick the best option for them.
If your organization sells digital products, a free trial or free demo may be a great option to help them decide. If you sell physical items, consider offering free shipping or extended guarantee to win over new customers.
Develop a better Lead Capture Strategy
For successful lead capture, it is essential to focus on working smarter and not harder.
Often, this implies automating manual tasks that do not require much oversight.
When it comes to your business’s lead generation efforts, marketing automation software allows your team to focus on increasing your brand’s reach and creating more content that demonstrates your industry expertise.
By personalizing your organization’s landing pages on your site and search ads, and optimizing your nurturing strategy to fit prospects alongside the buyer’s journey, you are likely to increase the number of quality leads you capture.
