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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

THE 30 GREATEST LEAD

GENERATION TIPS, TRICKS & IDEAS

By Jessica Meher
Jessica is Head of Enterprise Marketing at HubSpot and author ofseveral ebooks including “25
Website Must-haves for Generating
HubSpot generate over 60 thousand leads per month and forteaching businesses how to build
effective online marketing strategies.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

MECHANICS OF LEAD GENERATION

THE 30 GREATEST TIPS, TRICKS AND IDEAS

CHAPTER 1: CONTENT AND OFFERS

CHAPTER 2: CALLS-TO-ACTION

CHAPTER 3: LANDING PAGES

CHAPTER 4: FORMS

CHAPTER 5: CHANNELS

CONCLUSION

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

“LEADS ARE THE METRIC THAT, AS MARKETERS, WE

RELY ON. BECAUSE LEADS MEAN MONEY.” - KIPP BODNAR

Generating leads - both high in quantity and quality - is a marketers most important objective. A successful lead
generation engine is what keeps the funnel full of sales prospects while you sleep. Surprisingly, only 1 in 10
marketers feel their lead generation campaigns are effective.What gives?

leads and revenue. These tactics have been tested over the past 7 years and have been used by our 8,000+
customers to generate more than 9.8 million leads last year.

So what goes into a best-of-class lead generation engine?First, lets take a look into the mechanics of high
performing lead generation campaigns....

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

THE MECHANICS OF LEAD GENERATION

campaigns contain most, if not all, of these components.From a tactical perspective, a marketer needs four
crucial elements to make inbound lead generation happen. These include:

OFFER CALL-TO-ACTION LANDING PAGE FORM

An offer is a piece of content that A call-to-action (CTA) is either A landing page, unlike normal You can’t capture leads without
is perceived high in value. Offers text, an image or a button that website pages, is a specialized forms. Forms will collect contact
include ebooks, whitepapers, free links directly to a landing page page that contains information information from a visitor in
consultations, coupons and product about one particular offer, and a exchange for an offer.
demonstrations. your offer. form to download that offer.

The tips in this ebook will cover each of these elements so that each component is fully optimized to help you

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

CHAPTER 1
CREATING IRRESISTIBLE OFFERS
Yes. It’s one of the most powerful words in the human language. And if you think about all the things we do as
marketers, it’s ultimately to get people to say “yes” to our offers.

When an offer is exclusive, scarce, or in high demand, it becomes moredesirable. Whether they are whitepapers,
free trials, memberships, sales promotions, or downloads, these irresistible elements can overcome a lead’s
typical friction, doubt, or concern.

Why do these elements work? Because they trigger a physiological reaction that makes an offer morevaluable.
People need to perceive the value of your offer to be greater than what you’re asking for in return. The higher the
perception of value, the more irresistible the offer. So how do you create irresistible offers?
Glad you asked....

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Use the Element of Scarcity

If you look at the principle of supply and demand, you’ll notice that when supply is limited, demand goes up.

around. Scarcity is great because it creates a fear of shortage, and thus a sense of urgency.

Limited Time Offers

Limited time offers are among the most popular in the scarcity category. Just think about your average car

Limited Quantity Offers

When something is of limited quantity, it suddenly becomes more unique or exclusive. In some studies, limited
quantity or supply offers have outperformed limited-time offers. Why? Because it’s hard to tell when an offer of
limited quantity will suddenly become unavailable, while a time-based offer has a known end time.Limited quantity
offers are great for not only getting people to say “yes” to your offer, but to avoid procrastination completely.

Limited Time and Limited Quantity

Groupon is the perfect example of using both tactics. All Groupon deals end within a certain time frame, and they
limit the number of people who can buy a Groupon. That’s a powerful combination. The site also packages these
scarcity tactics with discounting, which is another great value-add, especially for ecommerce businesses.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

The Bandwagon Effect

It’s a natural tendency for humans to copy one another, even without realizing it -- we like to be a part of tribes and
social communities. So when we notice our social circle is doing one thing, we tend to follow suit.One great way
to make an offer more valuable is to show that other people are participating in that offer.

Proof in Numbers
When possible, a great way to indicate how awesome an offer is to mention the number of people who have
purchased, downloaded, signed up, or donated.

Some examples include:

• Webinars: On this page promoting our webinar with Facebook, we’ve stated
that more than 40,000 have signed up.
• Blog Subscription: Similarly, on our blog under our “subscribe” module,
it indicates over 130,000 people have subscribed. This is proof that it’s a
highly trustworthy and popular blog people should follow.
• Conferences: Events like SXSW and INBOUND are some of the hottest

Just make sure your claims are not only true, but believable.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Leverage Newsjacking
After Prince William and Kate Middleton got married in April of 2011, no one could stop talking about Kate’s
wedding dress. Within hours after the wedding, vendors began making near-identical copies or similar styles of
the Stella McCartney-designed dress. Even vendors such as David’s Bridal now have a “Royal” category so you
can dress “just like Kate.”

When something is buzz-worthy, it creates high demand. In situations like this, you can align offers with “what’s
hot.” Companies will often leverage newsjacking for this type of technique and it
works very well for offers, too.

As an example, earlier this year people couldn’t stop talking about Pinterest.

owners and marketers, How to Use Pinterest for Business.It quickly became one
of HubSpot’s most successful ebooks with more than 125,000 downloads to date.

people knew that), and learning how to use Pinterest for marketing was in high
demand, it made the offer more unique and thus more irresistible -- that’s the
power of leveraging both timing and popularity!

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Focus on Creating An Amazing Title

Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO and co-founder, once said that “you can have a great offer with a bad title and no
one will download it. But if you have an amazing title, suddenly everyone wants it.” Yes - people do judge a book by
it’s cover. I f your offer is a piece of content, such as a whitepaper, ebook, or presentation, put effort into creating
an amazing title.

For an experiment, we changed the title of an ebook and ran an A/B test to see which one would perform better.
We took the original title “ The Productivity Handbook for Busy Marketers” and changed it to “7 Apps That Will
Change the Way You Do Marketing.”

As you can see, the revised version outperformed the original by 776%
Not only that, but it resulted in more customers as well. If you’re struggling to come up with the perfect headline,
try using the Headline Analyzer Tool by Advanced Marketing Institute or read 7 Proven Headlines that Convert.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Create Offers For Different Buying Stages

The most common offer I see on most websites is “Contact Us.” Sure, you want all your prospects to talk to sales,
but not everyone is ready. As you know, buyers are more likely to do their own research before even engaging
with a sales rep. And, every prospect is at a different stage of exploration. Some may need more education than
others. That’s why it’s important to develop different offers at different buying cycles.

Someone at the top of the buying cycle may be more interested in an informational piece like a guide or ebook,
whereas someone more committed at the bottom of the cycle might be more interested in a free trial or demo.You
don’t need to pick and choose; create offers for each phase, and include a primary and secondary CTA to these
offers on various pages throughout your site.

Early Middle Ready

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Avoid Corporate Gobbledygook

A professional image is necessary but you still want to avoid the dreaded corporate gobbledygook. What is
gobbledygook you ask? Great question.

These are jargon terms and phrases that have been over-used and abused rendering them meaningless (you’ll

meant to add more emphasis of a particular subject but instead they make your eyes roll.

Avoid these words when describing your offers

• Next Generation • Cutting edge

• Flexible • Ground breaking
• Robust • Best of breed
• Scalable • Mission critical
• Easy to use

To learn more, download The Gobbledygook Manifesto ebook by David Meerman Scott

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Use High-Value Offer Formats

Not all offers are created equal. Some “formats” of offers perform better than others at converting leads. For
example, what’s more valuable, a whitepaper or an ebook?

Below are the type of offers, in order of performance, that generate the most amount of leads.

• Ebooks or Guides
• Templates or Presentations
• Research & Reports (ex: State of Inbound Marketing)
• Whitepapers
• Kits (multiple offers packaged together)
• Live Webinars
• On-demand Videos
• Blog (including offers in the nav or sidebar)
• Blog posts (if there is a CTA in the post)
• Middle-of-the-funnel offers: Demo Requests, Contact Sales, RFP, Etc (more sales-ready offers).

It’s important to test different types of offers with your audience to determine what works for you. While ebooks

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

CHAPTER 2
CALLS-TO-ACTION THAT ROCK
Calls-to-action (CTA) are the secret sauce to driving people to your offers.If your CTAs aren’t effective at capturing
people’s attention and persuading them to the click, then it makes the offer useless.

CTAs can be used on product pages (non-landing pages), in display ads, email, social media, direct mail and pretty
much anywhere you can market your offer.

that prospects choose your offer over your competitors. In this guide, we’ll uncover tips to creating CTAs that rock.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Place Your CTA Where the Eye Can See

Calls-to-action do best “above the fold” - the space where your web page is viewable to the user without having to
scroll down. According to heat map analysis, anything “below the fold” will only be viewed by 50% of people who

Notice the placement of the

primary CTA on the Freshbooks
homepage. Two buttons for “Try it
Free for 30 Days” stand out above
the fold

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Clarity Trumps Persuasion

That is one of my favorite phrases I learned from the folks at MarketingExperiements. Often times, marketers will put
more focus on being clever than clear.
away a free guide, say “Download our FREE guide to X.” If you’re hosting a free webinar, say “Register for our FREE

Notice that this CTA is to promote a free ebook.

There is little copy in this banner ad and a button
that indicates it’s clickable.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Use Contrast to Make CTAs Stand Out

A call-to-action is meant to stand out, so if your CTA blends in too much with your site design, no one will notice
it. You want as many eyeballs to land on that call-to-action as possible, so use contrasting colors to make the CTA
stand out, and more importantly, use design to make it clear it is a clickable call-to-action.

While Evernote has a beautifully

designed website, the primary
call-to-action for their free trial is
somewhat buried because the
button is the same color as the
green background. It would be worth
testing to see that if a different color
- such as blue, red, or orange - would
result in more clicks.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Link Your CTA to a Dedicated Landing Page

This tip might seem minor, but it’s incredible how often businesses miss this opportunity. Calls-to-action are meant
Do not use CTAs to drive people
to your homepage. Even if your CTA is about your brand or product (and perhaps not an offer like a download),
still send them to a targeted landing page that is relevant to what they are looking for. If you have the opportunity
to use a CTA, send them to a page that will convert them into a lead.

This CTA for a Twitter

ebook drives visitors
directly to a landing page
for that ebook.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Promote Offers on Product Pages

creating a different offer for each of them. Then you can place CTAs linking to each offer on the website pages that
are most relevant to that offer.

In this example, a CTA

for “Request a Demo” is
placed on a product page.
To generate more leads,
we might also have a CTA
for a “Free Guide to SEO,”
because it is related to
the product offering.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Thank You Pages Are Great CTA Real Estate

Even if someone completes a form on your website (thus they’ve converted as a lead), don’t stop there.Increasing
engagement is also a top priority for marketers so that prospects turn into loyal fans.

Once someone reaches a “thank you page,” the page that a visitor arrives on after completing a form, use that
space as an opportunity to promote more offers and content. For example, if a visitor on hubspot.com downloads
a guide on email marketing, we can offer them another offer for a EmailRFP for a chance to see a demo of our
email marketing platform.

PrecallPro, a HubSpot customer,

offers a secondary call-to-action for a
demonstration on their thank-you page.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

CHAPTER 3
LANDING PAGES THAT CONVERT
Landing pages are one of the most important elements of lead generation. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa’s
research, landing pages are effective for 94% ofB2B and B2C companies. The use of landing pages enables
marketers to direct website visitors to targeted pages and capture leads at a much higher rate.

What’s great about landing pages is that they direct your visitors to one particular offer without the distractions
of everything else on your website. Visitors are on a landing page for one and only purpose: to complete the lead
capture form.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Elements of an Effective Landing Page

Landing pages, sometimes called a “Lead Capture Page,” are used to convert visitors into leads by completing a
transaction or by collecting contact information from them. Landing pages consist of:

A headline and (optional) sub-headline

A brief description of the offer

At least one supporting image

(Optional) supporting elements such

as testimonials or security badges

And most importantly, a form to

capture information

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Remove the Main Navigation

Removed main navigation

Once a visitor arrives on a landing page,

it’s your job to keep them there. If there
are links on the page to move about your
website, it will distract the visitor and
decrease the chance of them converting
on the page.

One of the best ways to increase your

landing page conversion rates is to simply
remove the main navigation from the page.
That’s it!

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Match the Headline of the Landing Page to the

Corresponding CTA

Keep your messaging consistent on both your CTA

and the headline of the landing page. If people click

catch on the landing page, you’ll instantly lose their

trust. Similarly, if the headline reads differently than
the CTA, it might lead to confusion, and the visitor
might wonder if the CTA is linked to the wrong page.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Less is More
I’m sure you’re aware of the rule “keep it simple, stupid.” The same applies to landing pages. A cluttered page
means a distracted visitor. Be brief and to the point; it’s in the offer itself where you give more information. In
addition to your headline, include a brief paragraph explaining what the offer is, followed by a few bullet points

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

say something like “Find out how XYZ can increase productivity by 50%.” In other words, convey the value of your
offer clearly and effectively.

The landing page copy

tells the visitor what
they will receive when
downloading the offer.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Encourage Social Sharing

On your landing page, don’t forget to include buttons to enable your prospects to share content and offers. Include
multiple social media channels as well as email, since people have different sharing preferences.
When your offer

Social media sharing

buttons are prominately
displayed on the page.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

More Landing Pages Equal More Leads

According to a recent marketing benchmarks report, companies see a 55% increase in leads by increasing
landing pages from 10 to 15. The more content, offers, and landing pages you create, more opportunities to
generate more leads for your business.

EBOOK WHITEPAPER WEBINAR FREE TRIAL

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

CHAPTER 4
OPTIMIZED FORMS
Forms are the key to a landing page. Without them, there is no way to “convert” a visitor into a lead. Forms come
in handy when it’s time for people to sign-up, subscribe to your site or download an offer.

The following tips will uncover how to build great landing page forms.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

The Right Form Length

You might be wondering how much or how little information you should require with a form. There is no magic

the information you really need.

likely you will receive more conversions. This

form, it creates friction (more work for the

visitor) and fewer conversions. A longer form
looks like more work and sometimes it will
be avoided all together. But on the other

quality those leads might be. The best way

to determine what works best is to test it.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

To Submit or Not to Submit

That is the question most of your visitors are asking.One of the best
ways to increase form conversion rates is to simplyNOT use default
word on your button: “SUBMIT.”

If you think about it, no one wants to “submit” to anything. Instead,

in return.

For example, if the form is to download a brochure kit, the submit

button should say, “Get Your Brochure Kit.” Other examples
include “Download whitepaper,” “Get your free ebook,” or “Join our
Newsletter.”

Another helpful tip, make the button big, bold and colorful. Make
sure it looks like a button (usually beveled and appears “clickable”).

Don’t do this!

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Reduce Anxiety With Proof-Elements

People are more resistant to give up their information these days, especially because of the increase in spam.
There are a few different elements you can add to the form or landing page to help reduce a visitor’s anxiety to
complete the form:

• Add a privacy message (or link to your privacy policy) that

indicates their email will not be shared or sold.

• If your form requires sensitive information, include security

information is safe and secure.

• Adding testimonials or customer logos is another great to

indicate social proof. For example, if your offer was for a Free Example of security seals at the
Trial, you may want to include a few customer testimonials about bottom of a landing page form.
your product or service.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Make the Form Appear Shorter

that the form appears shorter.If the form covers less space on the page, it may seem as if you’re asking for less.

Name:*
A Name:* B

Email*
Email*
Company*

Phone*
Company*

Phone*
A might look shorter than B on the page.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

CHAPTER 5
MULTI-CHANNEL LEAD GENERATION
Your website isn’t a silo. Marketers must utilize many other channels in order to maximize their lead generation
efforts. In this sense, a channel might be a retail store, a website, a social media platform, an email, or a text
message. The objective is to make it easy for buyers to research, evaluate and purchase products in any way that
is most appropriate for them. It’s all about having the right marketing mix.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Blogging Brings in the Leads

According to HubSpot’s recent Benchmarks report, companies that blog 6-8 times per month double their lead
volume. This proves that blogging is a highly effective channel for lead generation.

In every blog post, include hyperlinks to landing pages within the copy of the post, as well as a prominent call-to-
action.

An example of a CTA at
the bottom of a HubSpot
blog post. The offer
matches the content of
the post for relevance.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Email Marketing
Many businesses may think that email marketing is only best used when communicating with existing prospects
and customers. Not so! Email can be a great channel for new lead generation. Here are some ways you can use
email to generate more new prospects:

Simple email promoting a valuable offer that

• Focus on an opt-in strategy.If you’re buying email lists and includessocial media sharing buttons.
spamming your prospects, no one will want to share your

step to email lead generation is to make sure you have happy

subscribers that enjoy receiving emails from you.

• Send people valuable offers.If you send really interesting

or valued offers - whether it’s downloads, discounts or
educational content - people will more likely share your emails
with their friends or colleagues.

• Give people the tools to share.Don’t forget to add a “Forward

to a Friend” link or social media sharing buttons within each
email so people are encouraged to pass it on.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Social Media
Social media isn’t just for liking funny pictures or tweeting what you ate for breakfast. Social media is an emerging
channel that many businesses are taking advantage of. Here are some great tips for generating leads on social
networks.

• Build a loyal following.

connections are really about people-to-people, not always company-to-individual. Get to know your audience online,
communicate and share information. In order to generate leads, you need to have human interaction with others.

Companies that only use social media to blast out messages about
• Remember, social media is a dialogue.
themselves aren’t using social channels effectively. The goal is to interact with others and be helpful. When you
share content on social media, don’t always post something that relates to your company. Share links to other
interesting things you’ve found online. People will be very thankful you are noticing their work, too!

• Influence connections for content sharing.

pages is the single biggest lever to increase lead generation through social media. Share your new content offers by
posting links to landing pages, and in addition, share blog posts, discounts, and other great resources.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Organic Search
While promoting your offers in many channels is crucial for lead generation, it’s also equally important to make
it easy for people to find your landing pages through search engines. To do this, you need to apply search engine
optimization (SEO) best practices to your landing pages, such as:

and focus on
• Pick a primary keyword for each landing page
optimizing that page for that word. If you oversaturate a page
with too many keywords, the page will lose its importance and
authority because search engines won’t have a clear idea of
what the page is about.

• Place your primary keywords in your headline and

sub-headline. These areas of content have greater weight to
search engines.

• Include the keywords in the body contentbut don’t use them

out of context. Make sure they are relevant with the rest of
your content.

(e.g. mykeyword.jpg)
• Include Keywords in the file name of images
or use them in the ALT tag.

• Include the keywords in the page URL.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Use Links and CTAs within Offers

Your offers themselves are great channels for lead generation. For example, in this ebook I have included links
to other content offers you can download. As people share this ebook, they may discover other resources that we
offer by the links within the content.

Within this ebook “25 Website Must-

Haves,” are links to other ebooks and
guides.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

A/B Testing
While this isn’t a channel per say, itis a great
way to increase leads across all channels and
tactics. A/B testing can be used in calls-to-action,
landing pages, email marketing, advertising,
and more. According to HubSpot research, A/B
testing your landing pages and other assets can
help you generate up to 40% more leads for your
business. When done correctly, A/B testing can
provide a huge competitive advantage for your
company.

To learn more, download An Introduction to Using

A/B Testing for Marketing Optimization.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

CONCLUSION
Generating leads online has the power to transform your marketing.Using great offers, calls-to-action,
landing pages and forms - while promoting them in multi-channel environments - can reduce your cost-per-
lead while delivering higher quality prospects to your sales team.

The basics herein are just the beginning. This guide contains many best practices for every aspects of lead
generation to help bolster your conversion rates, but these tactics are only the tip of the iceberg. Continue
to tweak and test each step of your inbound lead generation process in an effort to improve lead quality and
increase revenue.

Now go, young grasshopper, on your way to becoming a lead generation master.

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 The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas

About Us
iSmart Communications is an Internet marketing agency based in Singapore. We realize the world is going to the web
first, we work with our clients to cost-effectively manage their marketing programs using an innovative and time-tested
Inbound Marketing System developed by HubSpot, the world’s No. 1 Inbound Marketing Software Platform.

Get your assessment with an

Inbound Marketing Specialist
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[email protected]
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