5 Strategies To Optimize Your B2B Lead Generation Forms

Are you wondering how you can improve your game plan for generating more frequent and better leads? For generating quality leads, you have to gain access to your audience information. You need to capture this information to understand the visitors’ preference which will help you persuade them to buy your product in the long run. Lead generations forms are a great way to capture these data.

Studies show that on average 0.5-3% leads are generated from different types of forms. But following some simple tactics and strategies, you can efficiently produce more quality B2B leads from here.

Here are 5 strategies to optimize your B2B lead generation forms:

1. Present the form in the second step

Instead of providing the form right in front of a customer, it is a good practice first to grab the viewer’s attention using a call-to-action button. Once the viewer clicks on the CTA, you can then take them to the form.

You should use call to action buttons which are related to the form that you’ll show them afterwards. Instead of using Submit, Download, Order or Buy in the CTA button, it’s better to use communicative verbs like Gain, Access, Receive and Get, says John Costa, digital marketing head of WebAlive SEO Company. Proper CTA verbs alone can improve lead generation rate by 38%.

Uber’s landing page has a good example of such CTA buttons. “Sign up to drive” and “Sign up to ride” both are clear and communicative CTAs. And each of these takes the user to the appropriate form.

Two-step forms can be a lot more efficient than other lead collection techniques like exit popups. Unbounce compared the conversion rate for two-step opt-in-form with exit pop-up and found the form to be 1147% better.

2. Choose which fits you the best: Gated or Ungated forms

If you have scrolled through different websites, then you must have come across gated forms. Here you would have to provide your basic information to access certain materials. The Benchmark Report on B2B Content Marketing and Lead Generation of 2014 shows that 80% of B2B content marketing assets are gated.

It is true that gated content helps in generating leads, but there are cases where ungated materials perform better. Sometimes if you keep some of your top contents ungated that alone can turn your readers into valuable customers. From David Meerman Scott’s perspective, ungated content gets downloaded 20 to 50 time more than gated materials. Ungated content doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no form at all. The form will be optional and whoever gets interested will sign up on their own. These will be genuine, and high quality leads.

3. Escape the regular approach and make the forms more interactive

Nobody likes filling up a form. So, customize and design your form’s appearance so that it does not look like a regular boring one, but does the same task. Use more attractive user interface elements like stylish design, images, micro-transition effects etc.

Remember that, we all prefer clickable elements rather than thinking and writing something on our own. So, try to include poll-like elements to your form. It will also help you identify your visitors as you can quickly sort them based on the aspect they selected.

4. Progressive profiling: Gather information in steps

Asking for too much information at a time may result in losing valuable leads. Every additional field means there is a chance that the reader might not submit the form. Shorter forms increase the chance of submission.

Initially, you can go with asking for the name, email, company, and permission to send updates. If it’s a gated content, then provide the content through email alongside one or two links which will give the reader access to more materials in exchange for more information. Based on that information, your reader’s will get further links to new content. Use conditional logic to guess what a particular audience is searching for based on the information you get through this process.

5. Proper placement of the form

The top of a site gets the most views. As you scroll downwards, the number of readers keep on decreasing. So, place the form above the fold for maximum exposure. A recent Nielsen Norman study revealed that viewers spend 57% of their time above the fold. 74% of viewing time belongs to first two screenfuls.

I hope these proven strategies will help you capture your potential customer information through lead generation forms more effectively. If you can prove your value to your potential customers, it shouldn’t be much difficult to turn them into new leads.