Lead capture is a highly important part of the marketing process. A lead is simply a person who’s a potential client for your business.It’s important to capture your lead’s contact information such as name, email address and phone number for the purpose of following up with additional marketing material. You can then begin the process of moving this lead towards becoming a customer.

In this article we'll explore why lead capture for event is critical to your success at an event and best practices to maximise your leads. 

Why is Lead Capture Important?

Attracting new clients is vital to the growth of any business. Therefore, it’s important to have a strategy for generating a consistent flow of new leads.

Although a marketing strategy can have several goals including brand awareness, improved engagement and more, generating new leads is almost always the key factor in determining marketing success.

A survey showed that 67% of companies use lead generation as the sole metric to determine if content was successful.

Lead capture involves securing the contact details of your prospect so you can follow up with them. Without capturing these details, it’s almost impossible to convert leads into customers.

What is a Lead Capture Funnel?

Obtaining a lead’s contact details is part of the journey from becoming aware of your company through to deciding to become a customer. This concept Is known as the marketing funnel.

As a marketer, our job is simply to move people to the next stage of the funnel.

By capturing our lead’s information early in the process, we can show them compelling marketing content to move them along the funnel and closer to becoming a customer.

Why Lead Capture is Vital in Today’s Marketing Landscape?

There’s been a shift in marketing over the past few years towards content and permission-based marketing.

Businesses win in this climate by providing great value to prospects and asking permission to follow up with them in future.

Permission-based marketing is also an important part of legislation since GDPR came into effect in 2018. Businesses need to be transparent about where they obtained someone’s personal data and what they are going to do with it. Therefore, it’s more important than ever to get lead capture right.

How Do you Capture Quality Leads?

If we define successful lead capture as increasing the number of relevant leads for our business, here are some tips which will help.

Start with research

Start by defining your ideal client.

Which vertical markets do they belong to? Where are they based? How old are they? What are their main struggles and aspirations?

A great tool to help with this is a buyer persona, which is a way of creating a template of an ideal client to help inform your marketing decisions.

Optimise your landing page

You can improve your number of leads by optimising the landing pages on your website.

The average conversion rate for a landing page is just over 2%. There are several techniques for improving this rate.

  • Provide a compelling offer – include an attention-grabbing headline and copy that solves your reader’s main problem
  • Images – includes aspirational images to support your offer
  • Call to action – have a clear call to action with contrasting buttons
  • Clear design – provide a simple distraction-free layout with minimal navigation
  • Trust indicators and social proof – provide testimonials and certifications

Optimise your lead form

The contact form itself is a highly important part of lead capture.

An ideal rule to follow is to only ask for the minimum amount of information you need. Every additional field you add to your lead form will reduce conversions. 

Refine and Test

Above all, test for yourself and see what works.

A/B testing is a useful technique for showing two separate versions of your landing page to determine which is more popular. You can use A/B testing for almost any element you can think of including page layouts, lead forms, button colour, headlines and more.

Consider Scorecard Marketing

By using a scorecard or quiz, you can answer your prospect's most pressing question and gain vital information about them at the same time. This can help to pre-qualify your leads before the first conversation.

Some examples of scorecard apps include ScoreApp, TypeForm and Thrive Quiz Builder.

How to Capture More Leads using Lead Generation

Finally, how do you make people aware of your services to give you the opportunity to capture their details? This comes with lead generation.

The topic of lead generation is a huge one, but here are a few ideas to get started:

  • Content Marketing - Blogs, Social Media
  • Paid Advertising - Google Ads, Social Media, Retargeting
  • Search Engine Optimisation
  • Networking
  • Email Marketing
  • Webinars / Webcasts
  • SMS and WhatsApp Marketing
  • Competitions and Giveaways
  • Referral Schemes
  • Affiliate Schemes
  • Direct Mail
  • Expo Events

 

Lead generation is vital for attracting new customers and increasing business growth. Lead capture is an integral part of the process that allows you to follow up with prospects and move them closer to becoming a customer, resulting in more customers over time.

If you’d like more information about lead capture in the events industry, contact the team at ExpoBeacon. We help provide Expo owners and exhibitors with technology tools to help ensure the overall success at your event.