Lead capturing 101: Strategies and software for more successful leads

When it comes to your business’s lead management, you can’t do much without knowing who your leads are or how to contact them. It’s not enough to strike a first spark of interest unless you can keep the flame burning.

This is why lead management is much more than simply advertising. You need to tend to your new leads if they are to become satisfied paying customers.

But first, you need to bring those potential customers into the fold. To do that, you need to find out more about them.

This is what lead capturing is all about. In this article, we’ll explore everything you need to know about lead capturing, and guide you through how to set up a lead capturing system that delivers.

We’ll also introduce monday CRM as an easy-to-use sales platform that can make lead capture and management easier.

What is lead capturing?

Lead capturing is the process of finding out about your potential customers. It involves gathering key bits of their information, so you can reach out to them — keeping them engaged and interested in your product or service so they eventually make a purchase.

That means offering a simple and attractive method for your prospective leads to tell you about themselves. The data you typically might want to capture includes:

• Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Business sector
• Interests and preferences
• Online behavior
• Brand interaction history

In order to gather this information you need to:

• know what draws their attention
• understand what they want from their relationship with you
• know how to keep in touch with them

Let’s look at a few approaches and strategies companies can use for lead capturing.

Read: The Lead Management Process: A Practical Guide

4 top strategies to capture leads

1. Lead capturing forms

This is the most common method that companies use to gather lead data. Most people have entered their information in a lead capturing form, whether they’re aware of it or not. If you’ve ever signed up for an email list, downloaded a PDF report or ebook, or registered for an industry seminar on a company website, you’ll have filled in a lead capturing form. It could be as simple as a single email address field, or it could be a multi-step questionnaire.

For example, at monday.com, this is the basic lead capture form we use to gather prospective customer information.

To simplify the lead-capturing process, monday CRM even offers a built-in lead capturing template, so you can capture client information and automatically consolidate it in one board.

2. Landing pages

A landing page is a standalone web page your lead “lands” on after clicking the link that grabbed their attention. It has two purposes:

1. To give your potential customers the specific information they’re looking for, sothey don’t have to wade through your full website.
2.  To present a lead capture form for them to provide information about themselves.

For example, at the end of the main landing page about Adobe Photoshop, there’s a CTA to capture lead information at the end of the page. It’s a basic CTA for those who want to purchase the software already, but this could also exist as a CTA asking for information for a free trial or to learn more information.

3. Advertising campaigns

While lead management is not simply advertising, advertising campaigns are great for lead capture. An effective way to generate interest in your product or service is to offer something to prospective customers. For example, this could be:

• a free trial or a freemium version
• a quiz or competition
• a free online course
• a gated, downloadable asset

Whatever you decide to offer in your advertising campaign, you should use a lead capture form to capture your lead’s email address (at minimum) before they can access the offer.

An example here is with well-known glasses brand Warby Parker. They offer an interactive quiz ad where users fill in their glasses preferences. At the end of the quiz, users must submit their email details to save their quiz results and receive more information. Once a user fills this out, Warby Parker successfully receives the prospective customer’s lead information, and the person who fills it out is likely further drawn to the product and farther down the journey to making a purchase.

4. Pop-ups

When someone spends some time engaging with your website or perhaps scrolls past a particular point on the page, they’re actively showing interest. This is when companies can use a  pop-up prompt to take their interest further. A pop-up can cover the whole page (with an exit X should they rather not opt-in), or it may appear subtly (perhaps less  intrusively) at the bottom or side of the page.

For example after a reader spends enough time on Hubspot’s blog, a relevant pop-up CTA populates on the side of the blog. In this example, the reader can enter their contact information to download a template.

How to develop a successful lead capturing strategy

You first need to decide on what best suits your company and your approach. You also need to consider the impression you want to make your leads.

What you don’t want is to deter a lead who, up until now, has been interested in what you’re offering. This is why it’s key to plan out and develop a specific lead capturing strategy, and to be open to testing and modifying it until you find that lead capture sweet spot.

Here are 5 questions to guide you toward a thorough and effective lead capturing strategy:

1. What is your objective?

Establish a realistic lead capture goal. For example, set a monthly revenue target, and work out how many leads you would need to convert to reach that target. Consider your lead conversion rate—that is, the percentage of leads who become customers—and use this to calculate how many leads you need to sign up.

2. What are you going to offer your leads?

Decide what will be an irresistible yet cost-effective offer for site visitors. Can you create an ebook that has high potential of converting the reader into a customer? Can you host a webinar to showcase how your product will target your visitors’ pain points? Make sure that the “reward” you’re offering comes across as a good deal for what you’re asking from them.

3. How will your landing page and lead capture tools look?

Think about what specific information you want your leads to share with you. What visuals or wording will catch their interest and encourage them to engage? Decide on the best formats and tools to use, from a simple email box to a multi-step form or a pop-up. Check out customizable templates and examples with apps like Typeform.

4. How well does your lead capturing work?

Make use of A/B testing of different variants of lead capture tools. Use your CRM’s data analytics and reporting tools to gauge engagement and conversion rates.

5. What can you do to improve your lead capturing?

Based on what works and what doesn’t, change things up. Adapt your working, your approaches, the position or timing of your pop-ups. Assess, iterate, and assess again, until you hit on the best approach to meet your lead capture goal.

What is lead capturing software?

Lead capture software collects and aggregates data about your potential clients, so that you can analyze it, report on it and provide actionable facts to your marketing and sales teams to inform their strategies.

It helps you build a database of customers and visitors to your site.

Incorporating lead capturing tools into your analytical CRM helps you gather and store data about your leads. You can then analyze that data for trends, behaviors and preferences to better inform marketing and sales teams, so they can offer better service.

Monday CRM is one of the best rated software platforms for lead capture. Check it out today.

Which features should you look for in lead capture software?

1. Lead scoring

Lead scoring is a way to rank leads by assigning them a score based on their priority or their potential—for example if they are raw, warm or qualified.

With monday CRM you can customize the parameters you want to weigh, score and rank your leads by, which will then be done automatically for incoming leads so that you can know where to target your lead nurturing efforts.

2. Integrations

By connecting your CRM to the existing tools your sales team already uses, you can manage the whole span of your sales pipeline capturing, communicating, and engaging with leads without having to switch tabs.

For example, monday CRM integrates with Facebook Ads to manage your campaigns. SurveyMonkey and Typeform can help your teams engage leads and capture lead data, while Clearbit helps you manage that data effectively.

3. Analytics

You need to be able to track and understand your lead capture metrics, so your software tools should offer advanced reporting and analytics. Key metrics to access and analyze include the lead source, frequency and number of engagements and sales opportunities.

Knowing where your leads came from or how much they engaged with your site can give you valuable insights to inform your future strategies and campaigns.

Why should you automate lead capturing?

Automating CRM lead capturing processes can free your marketing and sales teams from time-consuming admin busywork so they can focus on nurturing customer relationships and closing more sales.

For example, by setting automatic notifications when a lead opens an email, or automatically assigning leads to reps when they are qualified, you can maximize lead management efficiency.

Automation not only helps you find leads, but it can help you find higher-quality leads. By automating data collection and behavior analysis, and assigning lead scores, you can get a clearer picture of which prospects have the best potential of becoming repeat customers.

Streamline and organize lead capture with monday CRM

monday CRM is an intuitive and customizable no-code platform used to manage, automate, and centralize your entire sales cycle. It can make managing and automating your lead capture strategy a breeze:

• Collect leads on your website through Facebook campaigns or via other sources
• Centralize and qualify every lead in one place
• Automate follow-ups and assign leads to reps automatically
• Use email templates for fast email creation

To find out more about how monday CRM can improve your lead capture and supercharge your lead management strategy, get in touch via our very own lead capture form!