How to Create a Lead Capture Form to Gather Warm Leads

Building a list of leads with invalid data is the biggest roadblock in your business’ growth.

More and more, salespeople are relying on lead capture forms to gather relevant and accurate data.

By following 5 simple steps you can build your own and start gathering warm leads!

What is a lead capture form?

A lead capture form aims to gather leads’ information. The process involves leads or visitors giving their information, which means you’ll get accurate and up-to-date information.

Lead capture forms can be found in landing pages, as chatbots, or popups, among others.

The form will request leads’ data such as name, phone number, company email, zip code, or other relevant information.

However, this information has to come at a price too, which is why it is requested in exchange for valuable resources such as discounts, ebooks, masterclasses, or other exclusive information.

A lead capture form can typically look like so ⬇️

Credit: Mailchimp

How to create a lead capture form

By following 5 simple steps, you can create a lead capture form that will drive your conversions.

Step 1: Define your ICP

Defining your buyer persona is the first step in most (if not all) sales processes, as you cannot really go through with a sales strategy if you don’t have a clear and defined idea of who you want to target.

However, this step doesn’t have to take up too much of your time.

With this ICP generator, you can have your buyer persona up and running in no time.

Step 2: Define your triggers

Closely linked to defining your ICP, you’ll also have to decide what triggers you want for each of your lead capture forms.

You can have static lead capture landing pages or static forms embedded in your website as such:

Although this is a decent choice, it’s quite limited as it has no personalization whatsoever.

By deciding on triggers, you can tailor your lead capture forms to your visitor’s pain points, preferences, needs, and interests.

You can set the form to appear based on the amount of times a visitor has opened a specific page, or how much time they spend on it, depending on the topic of a blog post, and many other options.

For example, if you have an article on your blog about lead generation, you can include a lead capture form offering a spot in an upcoming webinar that deals with the topic.

This means that you know your potential lead already has an interest in the topic and you are gaining a warm and valuable new lead.

Step 3: Select your resources

There are many resources you can offer so that your leads feel encouraged to engage.

Make sure you have a wide selection of resources that will align perfectly with the triggers you have previously defined.

Some resources include:

Discounts
Free trials (or extended free periods)
Exclusive benefits (for example: extra credits)
Whitepapers
Guides
Newsletters
Ebooks
Templates
Demos
Webinars

Step 4: Choose a tool

Once you have clearly decided who you want to target, when, and with what you have to decide on the how.

This means choosing a lead capture tool.

Some of these tools include:

Mailchimp
Zoho
ZoomInfo
OptiMonk
HubSpot Marketing Hub

Make sure that the tool you pick offers the features that you want. These can include:

Static forms
Multipage forms
Popups
Chatbots
Automatic emailing
Personalization
Customizable reports

Step 5: Design your form

Once you start designing your lead capture form, you’ll have to decide how many fields you want to include and what information you’ll be requesting.

Make sure you have a catchy form, without being too overwhelming for your visitors.

Among many other things, you also need to decide your lead capture form placing. For example, you can include a chatbot that will appear in the corner of your website so that your visitors can ask questions as they go.

Another way to go is to include your lead capture form beside the landing page or at the end.

Placing your form at the end will ensure that the leads you get are quality leads, as they are more likely to have more interest if they reach the end of the page.

5 tips for your lead capture form

There are always some things that will get you a few steps closer to closing more deals with your leads.

These are just 5 of our favorite and most important lead capture form best practices:

Make it short and sweet.

Make sure your tone is simple and clear and there are no ambiguous or long sentences. You don’t want to confuse visitors into thinking they’re being scammed.

Although shorter forms lead to higher conversion rates, if you need to gather more information, you can go for a multi-page lead capture form or progressive profiling.

Longer forms will acquire higher-quality leads because these leads are truly interested and are willing to take an extra step in exchange for your resources.

On the other hand, shorter forms will get you more requests, but these leads may not be completely convinced and are just gathering information.

No matter what kind of path you choose to take, make sure you do keep your sentences short and sweet!

Include your privacy policy

As we’ve mentioned, giving you info to a website on the internet can be tricky.

So including your privacy policy will make your visitors feel at ease knowing that you are legit and what they can truly expect from you.

You want your visitors to trust you so much they’ll give you their info in exchange for a resource, so you have to prove to be trustworthy and make them know their info is safe with you.

Stay relevant and personalize

Offering a resource on a topic when your visitor is inquiring about a different topic altogether won’t make you relevant.

However, if you personalize your forms to appear on a relevant site, this will increase your conversion rates.

This method will cater to warm leads primarily, meaning they already have an interest, and you’re immediately answering questions and pain points that could lead to a conversion.

Send your emails immediately

Make sure your email is sent in a maximum of 10 minutes after your leads have submitted their form. The sooner the better.

You know the lead is engaged at that point, don’t let them cool down.

A/B test

Sticking to a first draft of your lead capture form and hoping for the best, will probably not get you the results you’re aiming for.

This is why we suggest A/B testing your form, to make sure you optimize every detail of your form.

PRO TIP: Test elements one by one so you get a real and accurate review of your performance.

5 mistakes to avoid

Unfortunately, we’re going through relatively unsafe times when it comes to being scammed over the internet.

However, there are some practices you can avoid to make sure that your visitors know they can trust you and that you’re not just another online scammer, but rather that you’re there to make their life better.

Overcomplicated forms

People like to skim and quick and easy solutions.

If they have to jump through hoops to understand and complete your form, chances are they won’t even bother to get started.

Asking intrusive questions upfront

Asking for leads’ personal info, such as personal addresses, can seem a bit risky and will discourage a potential lead from trusting you from that moment forward.

If you need this information to analyze demographics or to get deeper insights, you may do so by using progressive profiling.

This will allow you to establish a relationship of trust with your lead before being intrusive.

Not following through

This entails many factors, for example:

→ Answering back with another email asking for more data information before sending the promised resource

→ Taking too long to send your resources

→ Worst one: Never sending your resources

→ Sending a low-quality resource that could force them to submit a different form in exchange for a decent-quality resource

None of these options will end in your leads trusting you. We can assure that much.

Including irrelevant fields

Stick to relevant fields so that your form is as short as possible.

If you don’t need leads’ locations, this is a field you can skip entirely and dedicate it to a more relevant question.

Not adding clear CTAs

When you create a form, you’re guiding your lead through the entire process, so missing out on a clear CTA could leave your leads confused and they may move on to something else before engaging with you.

PRO TIP: Instead of marking the submit button with “Submit”, try thinking of something slightly more original that is related to the CTA. For example: “Access Webinar”, and “Get the ebook”.

Buttons marked as “Submit” only receive 14% of clicks.