An Introduction to Lead Capture

Good News! The shortest podcast you will ever hear is back!

2 Minute Tuesdays is back! I want to start with an introduction to the complicated and often times confusing world of Lead Capture – and guess what? 2 minutes is just scratching the surface. Well, to be clear, this 2 minutes is going to scratch the surface, I’ll follow up with in-depth segments for each item later. (now would be a good time to subscribe to the weekly newsletter)

As always you’ll find the show notes, links and anything important down below.

Lead Capture isn’t a plugin, it isn’t a switch you can turn on, and it sure as hell isn’t a form on your website.

Lead Capture is a system, a system that is made up of many precise and well thought out parts.

The best way to start with lead capture is to start at the end.

That’s right, the end. Specifically, that would be whatever you it is that you are offering them in exchange for the information that you want. This is typically called the Lead Magnet.

The Lead Magnet:

Your Lead Magnet could be a free report, an upgrade to service, or something actually physical in nature like a chance to win a new Porsche. The important part is that you have to offer something of value to them. Let me say that a different way, you can’t expect someone to hand over their valuable phone number or email address just because you asked.

The Thank You Page:

Remember, we’re starting at the end and working our way up the system. You’ll need to have a “thank you” page already created. This is where they’ll land when they hit the submit button. Your thank you page should do exactly that and thank them for providing their info. Depending on what you are offering a s Lead Magnet, you need to also set the stage for what happens next. As an example for a thank you page for a CMA Request (How much is my home worth?) your script might go a little like this:

“Hey thanks for providing your information, as I explained earlier, getting an accurate value for your home cannot be done by bots and algorithms, it takes a real human being with intimate knowledge of the neighborhood, the marketplace, and the current trends to come up with your home value.

I should have a comprehensive report ready for you within 24 hours. If I find that I need a little more information I’ll reach out to you. In the meantime I’ll get right to work on this for you and remember that if you have any questions at all, please ask!“

This could be done in text, in video, or even better, both!

We’ve now thanked them, told them what is going to happen next and it’s a good time for a little social encouragement that they are heading in the right direction. What I am talking about is testimonials. This is the perfect place to show off the glowing remarks from others that have previously gone down this path. This could be a scrolling array of testimonials or a simple screen capture like this:

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I asked my friend Amy what she thought about this pdf…

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The Form:

Here’s the simple truth about forms. The shorter your form is, the more apt someone is going to be to fill it out.

I know you want/need all the information you can possibly get but like my good friend Wayne used to say, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take“. What I mean by that is what good is it if you have a long form that nobody fills out? Wouldn’t it be better to have not enough information but a higher success rate of completion?

You’ll note that in my thank you script above, I eluded to just that, “…If I find that I need a little more information I’ll reach out to you.” That’s why the thank you page is so important.

The Landing Page:

Yes, this is where most people focus on but remember that it’s the complete system that works. You can have a great landing page and if the rest is weak, you’ll have little success.

A Landing page is sometimes called a Squeeze Page. In a proper landing page you send people to you’ll see that it’s ‘distraction free’. You can have a logo, but you remove any menu bar, and sidebar, anything that they could possibly click on and look somewhere else. That’s why it’s called a Squeeze Page – they are squeezed into doing only one of two options –

1. Do the thing that you want them to do, or
2. Close the window or tab.

Your Landing Page can NOT be generic. It should specifically match the ad or call to action that you put up that brought them to it. Think of it as a matched Problem & Solution. They identified with the problem you posed in the ad and clicked in hopes of finding the solution.

Speaking of solutions: without giving it all away, your Landing Page needs to sell them how your Lead Magnet is the solution to their problem. Text, images and video can be wonderful in getting this point across.

Testimonials also add a layer of confidence to their decision making. Every Landing Page should include testimonials that relate to that product or service. It’s great to put these right before the form if possible.

The CTA:

The Call to Action. This could be an ad, a simple button, an linked image or it could be something right smack in the middle of your content. It needs to be timely and relevant to what the reader is expecting. You wouldn’t put a “How much is your home worth?” in the middle of a page that was for buyers, right? Here’s a relevant one now…

The Target Audience:

Often times when I set up things like this for clients I ask them who it is that they are looking to attract. Sometimes the answer makes me laugh. Everybody is not an acceptable answer. As a matter of fact the best answer is usually the smallest group size possible. True Story: I once was hired to run a FB ad campaign targeting 1 guy. Really. And it was successful too!

You need to know exactly who it is you are looking to attract. Go read, “Who are your next customers“. (it’ll open a new tab, then come back)

The Demographic:

If you have a visual of that next new customer, great! Snowflakes are supposed to all be different but we are people and somehow there’s a lot we have in common. So your one perfect next client also has a few thousand other people that are very close to be replicas. Identify that common demographic whatever it happens to be.

Running Ads on which platform?

Now you have some basis in which to decide on which platform you want to run an ad (if you are going to do that at all). In case you didn’t realize it, Facebook has a wealth of data based on what a person likes and doesn’t. Google on the other hand is better if the target is keyword driven. They are not at all the same.

ReTargeting:

We’ve all done it. We Google or look up something obscure like “kayaks” and then we start seeing kayak ads everywhere.

Not too long ago, I really did search Amazon for toilet seats and for the next month all the ads on the bicycle and motorcycle websites I visited have ads for toilet seats. Yay me!

The big guys have some pretty cool tools but you can do this too. You can run a tracking code (pixel) that catalogues each visitor. How this can work for lead capture is this:

• We have a small pool that we ran an ad for.
• Of that pool there’s a smaller group that actually clicked on the ad and went to our Landing Page.
• That smaller pool is different and it’s who we want to focus on most. The conversion rate is much much higher for the second timers.
• Why focus on them? a Retargeting Ad Campaign is going to be a little different, cost a little more, needs a different Landing Page, and has a better chance of becoming our next client.
• and that’s why I still see ads for toilet seats everywhere.

If I wanted to, now that you’ve read this article, I could run a FB ad campaign that follows you everywhere. I won’t though.

BONUS:

Bonus is always good right? It’s what I didn’t mention in the short 2 minutes above. I speak of Rule #173 of the Lead Capture Bible which states two things.

1. Every landing page submit should be answered as quickly as possible. If you order a website from me I have a autoresponder email that goes out immediately. I built a system for a brokerage that yields an almost instant phone call. The form with the phone number is automatically sent to an Agent, if that agent is on the phone or doesn’t respond immediately it goes to the next and then the next.
2. Every landing page submit should also go into an automated drip campaign. This isn’t a hard sell, quite the opposite. I use my newsletter as a drip. I think of it as an incubator of sorts. When you clicked on the submit button you probably weren’t ready to buy a website. But once a week I’m going to remind you that I’m still here, still building smart websites and when you are ready… here I am!

Speaking of Newsletters: