For a modern company strategizing its marketing program’s reach, the world is the size of a village.
Thus, any segment appears fair game, and access to customer buying power is unlimited. Yes, that’s one side of the coin – the optimist’s view of things. The other (less glowing perspective) is that competition is incredibly intense. Why? Because businesses in every country have caught on to the internet to reach previously inaccessible customer potential. Thus, capturing the latter at an “initial interest” level (and eventually persuading them to become brand loyalists) requires gaining insight into their motivations, aspirations, and the meaningful differentiators they’re likely to respond to.
A severe challenge is acquiring prospects from a cold start, and this is often done in two ways.
First, of course, there’s paid advertising, a mammoth industry that has galloped at a frenetic pace since the internet impacted our lives. Indeed, in 2022 nearly five billion people globally connected to social media (SM), resulting in an ad expenditure of $173 billion. This led many businesses to spend more money, inducing prospects to visit websites, listen to podcasts, click on videos, and request more information.
Second comes SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which pushes one’s website or app to the forefront of prospects’ online searches, making it easy to find in response to keyword searches. As a result, companies spent $51.25 billion in 2022 on agency guidance to compete on primary and secondary keywords with high page rankings.
So, success for online and brick-and-mortar businesses in every industry depends on powerful paid advertising along with the three-factor SEO drivers: website design, content relevance, and link popularity.
What has all this got to do with the benefits of forms or using forms for data collection?
Everything!
After all, marketers’ sweat, tears, and money converge on grabbing the attention and interest of likely prospects; engaging the latter and progressing to subsequent touchpoints on the way to a sale is vital. For this, understanding how to create effective lead-generating forms is critical.
What is a lead generation form?
Have you ever visited a website, and just as you’re about to close the window a form pops up?
This can be as simple as asking for your email or nudging a newsletter subscription. That’s a lead-generating form that allows businesses to gather prospect data, helping them eventually market to you!
Lead-generating forms be focused on anything that takes you to a new touchpoint (e.g., more information, a request for a direct conversation, a subscription to an eBook, a free trial, an application to view a white paper or blog, etc.) However, the form itself remains one of the most crucial touchpoints to building brand loyalty – it’s the foundation, after all!
What are the benefits of online forms?
Are they really that big a deal in a marketer’s armory? Don’t take my word for it – consider the following:
According to Pardot, 79% of cutting-edge businesses resort to dedicated software and marketing automation for form outputs. This makes it easy to develop customized web forms, either from scratch or with the help of templates. Aside from being simple to access and apply, software-provided templates emerge from proven success stories in similar situations.
In fact, the effective inbound leads derived from form information result in 25% progressing to sales.
While the usefulness of forms is undisputed, the type of forms used matter.
Paper forms can reduce efficiency, making it more time-consuming to gather and analyze the feedback received. Instead, offline forms can be a great solution to help you continue gathering – even without steady internet access! Alternately, website forms and pop-ups allow you to connect with prospects at just the right time, making them one of the most useful nudges to convert prospects into leads.
What are the benefits of custom forms?
Sometimes keeping a short form in place just isn’t enough. Allow your prospects the ability to control the interaction. The easiest way to do this is by offering them multiple options.
A form doesn’t just have to offer just one thing. Instead, it can empower prospects to take charge of their journey with you!
Form developers know that a respondent pushing the CTA button opens the door to multiple possibilities. Therefore, templates must contain the flexibility to anticipate and present relevant options. Here are a few ideas:
- Subscribe now!
- Obtain permission to send further emails (i.e., by creating a GDPR-compliant web form)
- Free trials
- Gated content (eBooks, white papers, webinars, etc.)
This allows respondents to opt for what they prefer, all while giving you the information you need.
However, be wary of giving customers too many options. The dilemma of making a choice can get overwhelming, increasing the bounce rate on your form instead.
Ensuring security
One of the most significant obstacles audiences face with filling out forms is a lack of trust. At the back of people’s minds are marketers selling personal information to others, or using it to follow up with a flood of endless spam emails and messages.
This makes people increasingly wary of sharing personal information, often leading to incorrect (and therefore useless) information being shared.
To overcome this, marketers’ primary challenge is to establish trust in their form communications. This can:
- Strengthen the prospect-company bond by immediately respecting the data received
- Reduce the bounce rate by reassuring people of their data’s security after initiating the CTA
A well-organized form dives into the above issue with complete transparency, providing impressive template options that feature passcodes, and ensuring that the ask for sensitive information is limited.
Improving efficiency
The form fields can save time and accelerate productivity as a precursor to deeper engagement. How? By creating a custom form requesting participant information on anticipated obstacles in their customer journey (CJ). Forewarned is forearmed in making future discussions smooth and seamless.
Other advantages of the electronic forms that one can achieve as quickly as counting 1-2-3 are:
- Integrating them with key platforms such as PayPal, Stripe, Google Sheets, CRM tools, and MailChimp. This allows them to:
- Facilitate entities providing e-signature integrations (where relevant), such as DocuSign and Adobe Sign
- Add processors around customized forms for online payments
- Automat follow-up emails
- Transferring the captured information instantly to cloud-based data storage silos with defined “for the following eyes only” protocols and selected accessibility (thus taking the first steps in building a usable database and circling back to customer security).
- Build a comprehensive understanding of customer experiences (CXs), preferences, behavioral constructs, and demographics to empower brand differentiation and pinpoint promotional targeting. Many believe deployable data is a business’s most valuable asset in the tech era. They’re right, and forms are undoubtedly a primary data source.
Conclusion
While electronic forms are a great way to get started with lead generation, it’s important to use them strategically. Website pop-ups can be annoying if they impact visitors’ ability to browse. Just imagine a pop-up on every page of your website – visitors will be frustrated just by clicking the close button, increasing your bounce rate!
Alternatively, a lengthy form will scare away visitors who really do want to share their information. Too many fields, even if they’re quick, can feel overwhelming. Create your form keeping the intent in mind, and always stick to the CTA you promised. If you’re saying you’ll get back to them in 24 hours, make sure this is followed, always.
Ready to get started capturing critical insights? Sogolytics can help!
Our intuitive platform offers numerous templates to help you get started, while our industry-leading support will be happy to help you customize everything – from the questions to the design – to create a form that truly resonates with your audience!
