Lead Generation Form: What Should it Include (or Not) in 2020
Leads are the lifeblood of every business. Without a consistent stream of high-quality potential buyers, your company will struggle to stay afloat. Fortunately, the internet has made lead generation much easier than ever before. A stellar lead generation form is all you need to go from lead-less to lead-full.
In this article, we’ll cover everything lead generation form related in 2020 and beyond. We’ll talk about what lead gen forms are, the fields your forms should and shouldn’t have, how to optimize your forms for success, and more.
Sound like a plan? Then let’s get started!
What’s a Lead Generation Form?
A lead generation form is exactly what it sounds like: a form that allows companies to generate leads. Most forms do this by asking for an email address in exchange for something of value such as a free ebook, trial of a product, or frequent newsletter updates.
What Fields Should Your Lead Generation Form Have?
Some lead generation forms are incredibly simple and only ask website visitors to fill in a single field, maybe two. Others are quite extensive and ask for heaps of information. Which approach should your company take as it moves into the new year?
The short answer is: it depends…
The fewer details you ask your website visitors to surrender, the more leads you’ll generate. But that’s not the end of the story. If a website visitor is willing to fill in 12 fields worth of personal information, they’re subconsciously signally their immense interest in your company and it’s offerings. Which means that this visitor is probably a very high-quality lead.
How many fields your lead generation forms should have really comes down to your lead generation philosophy. Do you want quality or quantity?
Whatever your answer is, we recommend including the two fields below. Why two? Because two fields has been proven to be the most effective number, according to CrazyEgg.
It should be noted, though, that the kind of lead generation form matters. For example, most people will fill out additional form fields when entering a contest, but not when responding to standard contact forms.
Name
The name of the person filling in your lead generation forms isn’t vital information. You should be perfectly capable of communicating and building relationships with them no matter what they call themselves. But being able to address your new leads in a personalized way is valuable.
It will allow you to interact with them on an individualized basis, thus building trust between you and them. You’ve heard it before, people buy from businesses they know, like, and trust.
Email Address
While the name field is optional, the email field is not. It’s pretty obvious, if you don’t get this crucial piece of information from your website visitors, you won’t be able to communicate with them — which is the entire point of generating leads.
Once you have their email address, it can be added to your company’s database. While you’ll want to operate with care (there are strict laws in regards to email marketing), this person can then be sent useful information and marketing messages at a later date — a viable strategy since email marketing produces an average ROI of 4,400% in the U.S.!What Fields Should Your
Website Contact Forms NOT Have?
Just as there are fields that your contact forms should have, there are also fields that should be avoided in 2020. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule. But in general, we advise against using address, company, and phone number fields in your website contact forms. Let us explain why:
Address
A person’s physical address is a pretty personal piece of information — much more personal that their name, email address, or phone number. Forcing website visitors to give it up is a surefire way to lower your conversion rate, both now and in the coming year.
The thing is, in most cases, an address isn’t even relevant to the company asking for it. Unless you work in real estate or some other industry where the physical location of your leads is paramount, we suggest leaving this field off your lead generation forms.
Phone Number
Research shows that lead generation forms that include mandatory phone numbers fields can reduce conversion rates by up to 52%. That’s a huge drop!
A phone call is a more personal form of communication than an email and many folks are hesitant to give companies access to themselves in that kind of way. If you’re intent on including a phone number field on your lead generation form, we at least suggest making it optional.
Company
Knowing what companies your website visitors work for is valuable. It will tell you which industries your organization’s products are used in and give you something to brag about, i.e. “Our solutions are used by (insert totally amazing company)!”
So why do we suggest not including a “Company” field in your lead generation forms? Because more fields reduce conversion rates and you can easily learn this information in a different way.
We’re excited to announce that we have a new product in the works called Lusha Forms. This revolutionary tool will allow you to embed a form on your company’s website and only include fields for information that Lusha doesn’t currently have. Because our database is so extensive, this means that most forms you create will only need the email address field.
In 2020 and beyond, tools like Lusha Forms that make use of modern technology will be the best way to capture leads!
Honestly, anything more than the two fields mentioned in the section above is probably overkilling and will shrink your conversion rate. So unless you absolutely need more information, we recommend keeping your lead generation forms as simple as possible.
Optimize Your Lead Generation Forms for Greater Success
Now that we know which fields to include in our lead generation forms and which to avoid, let’s talk about a few other ways to optimize our forms for conversions in 2020.
Form Placement Matters
It’s true, where your form is located on your company’s website can have a dramatic effect on the conversion rate. In most cases, placing your form above the fold (i.e. in a section of your website that can be seen without scrolling down) is the best option.
According to Nielsen Group, the average difference in how website users treat information above and below the fold is 84% (in favor of above the fold) regardless of screen size. That’s quite a difference and goes to show you that form placement is vital to your company’s ability to generate leads at a consistent clip.
Prioritize Ease of Use
Your lead generation form needs to be the definition of simplicity. If it’s not and your website visitors have to fill in 14 different fields, squint to read important information, or go through seven different steps in order to complete your form, they won’t. Instead, they’ll abandon your form faster than you can say “Jack Robinson” and you’ll have lost a lead.
Don’t let this happen! Instead, always keep your potential leads and their comfort at the forefront of your mind. If you think an aspect of your lead generation form might compromise their experience on your website in anyway, change it.
Direct Attention
This lead generation form optimization tip is closely related to our last one, but deserves its own section. One way you can both draw attention to your forms and make them easier to fill out is to use directional cues to signal to web users what you want them to pay attention to.
You can do this by including arrows in your lead generation forms or pictures of people looking in a specific direction.
Use Contrasting Colors
Another way to make sure your lead generation forms stand grab attention in the new year is to create them using contrasting colors. For example, if your website background is white, make your form red, orange, or a similarly bright and eye-catching color. That way your potential leads won’t miss it.
Just make sure that you choose the right color. The folks at WebpageFX tell us that people make subconscious judgments about the websites they visit in just 90 seconds. And 62–90% of said judgements are based on color alone.
So how do you choose the right colors for your lead generation form? There’s a lot that goes into color theory, but we’ll simplify it for you. Make sure your form colors:
- Reflect your company and its brand
- Match the other colors on your site
- Stand out from the rest of your site
Follow those three tips and you should be good to go!
Create a Killer CTA
Your lead generation form’s CTA is arguably its most important element. A subpar CTA will sink your conversion rate faster than just about anything else, aside from the number of forms you require website visitors to fill in.
Fortunately, there are a few strategies you can use to make sure the CTA on your lead generation form is top notch:
- Be Direct: Your potential leads shouldn’t have to guess what they’ll get once they click your CTA. For instance, “Download Whitepaper” makes it clear that once clicked, a new lead will have the opportunity to download a whitepaper.
- Stress Benefits: CTAs like “Submit” don’t perform well. One of the reasons why is because they don’t showcase benefits. “Get Your Ebook Now” on the other hand tells potential leads exactly how they’ll benefit from clicking.
- Keep Design In Mind: As a marketer, one of your biggest challenges is grabbing the attention of your audience. That’s why we suggest making your CTA buttons a different color than the rest of your lead generation form so that they’re easy to see.
Here’s an excellent CTA example:
Source: wordstream.com
Test Your Forms
Finally, to really ensure your lead generation forms are the best they can be, you need to test them. The easiest way to do that is to run what’s known as an A/B test.
If you’re not familiar with the term, an A/B test in regard to lead generation forms is when two alternative forms are created and tested against each other to see which performs best. The trick is to only make one change per test. For example, you could create nearly identical forms, only varying the CTA. After splitting traffic to both, the CTA that secures the most lead wins.
Nobody gets it perfect on the first try — not even well-known marketing companies like Marketo. A few years ago, the software maker tested its lead generation forms and was able to reduce its cost per lead by an astounding $10.66!
Power Your Lead Generation Forms With Automation
Now that we’ve covered how to build a lead generation form that converts at a high level, let’s talk about the secret sauce of your lead gen efforts: automation. There are many different ways you can introduce automation into your marketing workflow. Here are two ideas:
- CRM Organization: As soon as a new lead fills out your lead generation form, their contact details should be automatically added to your CRM of choice. This is easily done with automation, either through a native integration or via a tool like Zapier, depending on the software programs you use.
- Email Marketing: You can also use automation to fuel your email marketing efforts. Once a new lead gives you their email address, you can have your chosen email provider send a pre-written welcome message or series. This will allow you to introduce new leads to your company on autopilot.
Automation will save you and your marketing time loads of time. It will also ensure that nothing falls through the cracks and each of your new leads receives a quality experience. We encourage you to take advantage of this technology moving forward!
Supercharge Your Lead Generation Form With These Tools
At this point, you know which fields to include and which to remove from your lead generation form. You also know how to optimize your form for greater success and power it with automation. What’s next?
The only thing left is to supercharge your lead generation form with the following three software tools. Each has been chosen for a specific reason. Here’s why:
JotForm
Source: jotform.com
JotForm makes it incredibly easy to create online lead generation forms. It’s easy to use and will allow you to quickly design professional forms that match your company’s unique branding. It also integrates seamlessly with many popular tools like WordPress, HubSpot, and MailChimp.
Liked what you’ve read?
Check out the full blog post on Lusha’s blog.
Originally published at https://www.lusha.com on October 24, 2019.
