How to Build a Lead Generation Funnel with Online Forms

Most professional salespeople and marketers know that the age of Mad Men, slick ads, and fast sales are long gone. Today, sales require strategic planning, coordination, and trust building.

If you want to make sales or acquire clients, lead generation is now the best way to go. It’s the lynchpin that brings your sales and marketing strategies together.

Lead generation funnels provide two major benefits. They help simplify and automate much of your customer/client acquisition process. And because they’re automatic, they provide you with the stability of a consistent stream of leads to help your business grow.

What is a lead generation funnel?

In sales and marketing, funnels are one way of looking at customer acquisition and explaining their progress. The funnel is a way of visualizing how several people will enter at the wide end and only a few will come out of the bottom.

It’s not the best analogy, because in a real funnel, everything that goes in will come out eventually. But in a lead generation funnel, you won’t be able to sell to everyone that enters the funnel.

Another way to look at it is like a series of sieves used for gold mining. You start with a coarse sieve to eliminate gravel and debris. Then you use finer meshes and other filters until you hit pay dirt.

There are different ways to build a lead generation funnel. There are different approaches that work for different audiences. And there are different strategies that depend on how you handle your marketing and sales.

Regardless of how you build your funnel, they all have the same intention. Move a prospect through a series of steps with the ultimate goal of converting potential customers into paying customers.

There are three main parts of every buyer's journey through your funnel:

1. Awareness Stage - Once the potential buyer knows that you exist, they’ve entered the top of your funnel. At this point, they’ve read a couple of your blogs, seen a few of your videos, or read some of your social media posts. They know your name and that you exist.
2. Engagement Stage - The middle of the funnel is where you’ve started to earn your future client’s trust and respect. They’re following you on social media, they’ve sent you their email address through a lead generation page, or they’ve even signed up for a free trial.
3. Conversion Stage - Now it’s time to vet the lead and see if they’re ready to become a paying customer/client. If you’ve seen a lot of interaction with your brand through analytics, opened emails, filled forms, etc., then it’s time to approach them and hopefully convert them into a paying customer.

How to bring people to your funnel: The Awareness Stage

As was mentioned at the beginning of this article, greasy sales tactics, fearmongering, and “last chance” deals are no longer as effective as they once were.

When those techniques were effective, there was no need for funnels. One quick ad could drive tons of sales. But now they’re unlikely to even get people into your funnel. There are a number of reasons for that:

• Attention shortage - Time Magazine once published an article stating that the average person now has a shorter attention span than a goldfish. With all the distractions and obligations of these modern times, people just aren’t paying attention anymore. And fighting to gain attention can come across as obnoxious and wind up driving people away.
• Savvy shoppers - Cigarette ads in the 1950s used a lot of pseudo-science and photos of old men in white coats to convince people of the “medical benefits” of one cigarette brand over the other. People can usually see right through nonsense like that these days.
• Access to bottomless research and information - If you’re making big claims or selling information, the proof is just a Google search away. Within a few minutes on a cell phone, people can check your BBB rating, reviews, and the validity of the information you’re offering.
• Once bitten, twice shy - Even though it’s not as effective, there are still a lot of businesses trying to turn a quick buck with huge claims and squeeze pages that provide more hype than value. Those tactics may work on some of the people, some of the time. But they can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Most people get wise to shady tactics fast.

Earning People’s Trust

If old-school advertising no longer works, what’s the alternative? You’ve got to take the hard path. Fortunately, the hard way is also the most robust.

• Value has to be shown.
• Trust has to be established.
• Attention has to be earned to be held.

You and/or your business have to stand out from the crowd as a trustworthy thought leader. If you offer quality content and insights that provide value, people will respect that.

That’s true for both B2B and B2C relationships. Potential clients are individuals who will respond well to a high-quality presence.

The thing is that businesses are run by people. The decision-makers in those businesses can recognize a leader in the industry just as well as any individual client.

Know your audience

Chances are that you or someone up the chain got into the business you’re in because they were passionate about that business. The saying “eat your own dog food,” sums it up nicely.

Your potential customers, clients, and associates are also your people. If you want to understand them, you have to be one of them. You need to know their journey, their wants, and their struggles. You need to experience it yourself.

• Be a part of their community - Spend time in Subreddits, follow hashtags, and hang out where they hang out.
• Interact with your buyers, present and future - It’s not enough to be a lurker. If you want to know people, you’ve got to talk to them.
• Learn their pain points - You can gain many insights from how people complain. It gives you a valuable opportunity to create solutions for their problems.
• Study interactions with analytics - Once you’ve gotten a foothold and have some traffic, you can use analytics to find out how they interact with your site and various accounts. Learn from where they go and where they leave.

Content suggestions for the top of your funnel

• Blog Posts - Content is king. Blogging is great for search engine optimization(SEO) and for establishing your knowledge.
• Social Media Platforms - Use the outlets that work best for your brand.
• Videos - YouTube is still solid. Shorter videos are hot right now, but don’t embarrass yourself.

How to get people involved with your brand: Sparking engagement

Now that you have their attention and interest, you’re halfway there. Hopefully, you can see that the process of building a reputation will bring in higher-quality leads. And that’s your next step.

Moving clients into the next stage of the funnel involves getting their permission to open a dialog with them. Two ways to do that are with lead magnets and calls to action. But first, let’s talk a little bit about psychology.

Using AIDA to help with conversions

AIDA is a marketing acronym that stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. It works like a sales funnel, but on a micro level.

As an example, in content marketing, a blog post usually closes out with a paragraph or two meant to generate leads. Here’s how AIDA is used in that scenario:

• Attention - The article mentions the product or service that it’s trying to pitch.
• Interest - Then the article explains the relevant benefits of that service.
• Desire - After enough praise, the reader will hopefully want to check the product out.
• Action - Then they will click a conveniently located link to do just that.

AIDA can be used in all kinds of content, like social media posts, videos, and blogs that were mentioned in the previous section. If done properly it’ll come across as helpful instead of pushy.

Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are offerings used to attract people into the second stage of your funnel. They do that by offering something of value in exchange for an email address.

Lead magnets can be offered from any part of your marketing presence. They can be paid shoutouts in influencer videos, product teasers, and even ads.

Here are some examples of lead magnet offerings that can be given away once you’ve gotten a potential buyer’s email address:

• E-books - Providing even a small amount of high-quality information can be extremely valuable to your potential leads.
• Infographics - Even better than a short E-book is a cheat sheet or infographic. It’s a great way to deliver lots of information without boring people.
• White papers and case studies - If you’re trying to build a B2B relationship, providing hard-to-find industry-specific knowledge could get you far.

Calls-to-Action

A call to action, or CTA does what it says on the tin. It’s the last step in the AIDA approach. For example, “Sign up today for a free trial.” is a CTA. It tells the reader what to expect and that it won’t cost them anything.

If you’ve already captured a potential lead’s interest, calls to action could be enough to bypass the whole lead funnel. You can use one to send people to a page where they can schedule a sales demo or check out your offering.

A CTA can also be used as part of a lead magnet if you don’t want to try to close the deal too soon.

Your lead magnet landing page

Your website is probably designed for organic search traffic. You should have a dedicated page just for your lead magnets for the following reasons:

• Your landing page should look and feel like the lead magnet.
• The information on the landing page should be consistent with the information promised in your lead magnet.
• The copy on your landing page should be custom tailored to the specific lead magnet you used.

If you’re promising an educational video in a social media post, your landing page should make it clear that they’re about to get that video sent to the email they submit.

In order to capture emails, you’ll need a form tool that’s attractive, as well as functional. The best tool for the job is Paperform. Paperform offers advanced design features to make your form look like it belongs to your brand.

You’re not out of the funnel yet

You may get some conversions at this point. But don’t push too much as soon as you get the lead.

You don’t want to come across as desperate or “trying too hard.” That’s a great way to scare potential customers off.

If you promised them an e-book when they gave you their email, then give them even more, like a free infographic a couple of days later. This is another opportunity to nurture your leads. Having a must-read newsletter, for example, will maintain your relationship with your leads until it’s time to close the deal.

Now for Lead Conversion: Closing the Sale

Congratulations on winning those leads. Now the marketer's job is done and it's time to send your leads on over to the sales pipeline and start closing deals. But before you do, take a look at your leads.

No matter how good your sales pitch is, you won’t close a sale with every lead, of course. And trying to do so could drive off leads that aren’t ready yet. You first need to know who is and isn’t ready by targeting your ideal buyer.

Qualified Leads

To get the best conversion rates, you'll need high-quality leads. In order to qualify leads, you need solid analytics in place.

You should be tracking every action they take, how much time they spend on your site, and how engaged they are with your brand.

Once you have all the data you need, you can find the ideal customer with lead scoring.

Every action, like signing up for email, downloading an infographic, and watching informational videos all the way through should earn them points. On the other hand, unsubscribing from a list or being in the wrong demographic could cost them points.

The number of points assigned to each action is up to you. But they should be weighted according to their importance to your business.

Content suggestions for the bottom of your funnel

Free trials, discounts, and sales are some of the best ways to nurture leads at this point. They provide value and help close sales.

Track your results, try other approaches, lather, rinse, and repeat

It’s more than a numbers game. They’re not just visitors, customers, and leads. These are real people. Treating them as such will serve you well.

You can pore over analytics and charts all day long. But if you really want to know your audience, reach out to them.

You can use polls and surveys to find out what’s really important to your customers and clients. You can also do market research before launching your next product or service.