What is Inbound Lead Generation?

Inbound lead generation is how you attract potential customers to your business through various marketing strategies and tactics, such as content marketing, search engine optimization, and social media. An Inbound lead forms strategy is key to turning website visitors generated from inbound tactics into leads. These forms can be used to capture information such as name, email, industry, job title, and other relevant data depending on the type of business.

Some interesting stats around lead generation forms:

1. Short forms (1-2 fields) see the highest conversion rate at around 11%. (Formstack)
2. Long forms (11+ fields) see the lowest conversion rate at around 1%. (Formstack)
3. The top performing forms have 3-5 fields. (Unbounce)
4. Forms with a clear call to action see a conversion rate increase of up to 371%. (Formstack)

6 Examples of Lead Generation Forms

We think of lead generation in terms of low-intent and high-intent touch points. When building your customer lifecycle journey, you'll want to ensure that journey includes experiences for both upper and lower funnel prospects.

Low-Intent Forms

Low-intent forms are a great way to start building a relationship with prospects and warming them up to your brand. Prospects who are most inclined to convert from these forms are usually doing their research and interested in learning more about your product or industry. They are less intrusive than high-intent forms and allows you to capture contact information that can be used to nurture the lead over time. A few examples:

Content Download

Gated content including as case studies, templates, guides and more are great ways to provide value to your potential prospects.

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Newsletter Sign-Up

Email newsletter forms are a light touch point that allow your team to nurture leads until they're ready to convert.

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Webinar Registration

Webinars can be high-intent or low-intent, depending on the webinar content. Educational content such as the Segment webinar below can be low-intent content. The prospects who are interested in learning about first-party data likely are at beginning stages of research.

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High-Intent Forms

High-intent lead generation forms are forms that capture contact information from visitors who are actively seeking a product or service and are more likely to make a purchase or commitment. These forms are are used to capture leads that are further along in the buying process.

Product Demo

Prospects who are interested in seeing a product demo are likely familiar with your industry and somewhat familiar with your offerings. Signing up for a product demo is a strong signal that they are keen to learn more.

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Free Trial

Most prospects who are ready to give your product a try are highly interested and should generally be treated as high-priority. They are likely trying other free product demos from your competitors as well, so it's important to start the conversation ASAP.

Contact Us

Prospects who submit a contact us form are interested in speaking with your sales team. In my experience, these are going to be your best leads and generally see high conversion rates.

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