Lead Generation Form: Tips, Examples & Free Template

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Lead generation forms are online web forms used by businesses to capture the email addresses of their site visitors through a lead magnet. Sales and marketing teams use these forms as a lead generation tactic to source new leads to eventually nurture and convert. With several different styles of lead generation forms, there can be multiple on your site to increase the chances of identifying leads.

Free Lead Generation Form Template

We’ve created a standard lead generation form template for you to use and take inspiration from. Our template consists of an attention-grabbing header, a brief disclosure about the exchange of email addresses for a newsletter, value input boxes, and a final CTA (call-to-action) button. Together, these basic components can effectively capture the valuable information you’re after while also reminding the visitor of the value you’re promising to provide.

The size and length of your lead generation form will depend on which webpage you intend to attach it to and what information you’re targeting. An effective lead generation form should be visual to pique the interest of your visitors so they’ll willingly submit their information. There's a step-by-step process for salespeople to follow to create a form to successfully generate leads. 

How to Create a Lead Generation Form in 7 Steps

Before you begin designing the form, it’s important to understand who you’re targeting and how you plan on sourcing them. Then determine what lead magnet will yield the results you’re after. With this pre-work done, you’ll be able to design and upload the lead generation form to your site. Once a form is live, continue monitoring and evaluating its engagement and success. Let’s dive deeper into these seven steps. 

1. Consider Your Target Audience

Before you start asking them to give over their information or complete some sort of task on your site, you need to research and understand your target audience’s behavior and their intentions with your brand. The best way to anticipate the actions of your target audience is to build and study your ideal customer profile, or detailed records of your primary customers’ interests, demographics, and buying patterns. 

Some of the top categories that can make up a customer profile include: 

• Demographics: This includes data points like the age, income level, education history, and gender of the audience. 
• Firmographics: Refers to the information about a lead’s company size, industry, revenue, and organizational structure.
• Behavioral Data: This attributes to the data on how your ideal customers interact with your business and progress through your sales process.

Compile this data and study your target audience’s behavior with your brand or similar brands. With this data-backed insight, you’re able to better understand not only how your target audience engages with your brand but also why. That will directly influence where you should upload the form, the style of form you choose to use, and what lead magnet would yield the results you're after.

2. Pick Your Source

Now that you know your target audience, it’s time to consider where the visitor starts and how they’ll come across your lead generation form. Choosing a source requires you to revisit your sales funnel to best visualize your lead’s customer journey. Research where your ideal customer spends most of their time and where they’re most likely to interact, via social media or Google results, to decide what online lead generation method will be most effective.

Common online lead generation methods include:

• Social Media: Post content or run ads catered to your target audience across platforms to generate leads via social media. 
• Organic SEO: Write and update content on your website for Google to recognize it as relevant and reliable for organic SEO rankings to improve.
• PPC Ads: Run pay-per-click ads that you can run on Google and other search engines to drive your audience directly to your website.

The sourcing method you choose will directly influence where on your site you upload your lead generation form. To avoid forcing forms onto your site, strategize their location with your customer’s experience in mind. If a lead is on your site from an ad, an appropriate location for a form can be attached to a quick pop-up offering a discount. If your lead is coming from a paid social media post, potentially create a new landing page for your form.

3. Choose the Lead Information You Want

After determining what leads you’re after and how you plan on getting their attention, use the research you completed in steps one through three to decide what information you want from the lead. Understanding where your visitors might be in their buyer's journey is key when deciding what requested information is appropriate.

Information to consider targeting in a lead generation form includes:

• Email Address: Request email addresses to build your mailing lists to begin nurturing leads by directly sending them strategic content.
• Phone Number: Ask for visitors' phone numbers only if your sales reps regularly practice sales calls.
• Zip Code: Gather zip code or location data to build out reporting metrics for sales reps to visualize and distribute leads geographically.
• Company Size or Industry: Specifically for B2B salespeople, this CTA helps reps begin lead qualification by disclosing company size, industry, and even an estimated budget.

Some audiences are more likely to give their information for an immediate discount or content download, whereas some might give you their email address to be subscribed to your mailing list for a future benefit.

4. Decide on a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is the free asset that you’re exchanging for the lead’s contact information, so the more you ask your leads to fill out, the more enticing the lead magnet should be. The most effective magnets offer some sort of content, or even service, that’s seen by the lead as valuable or highly attractive. The goal is to have a good enough lead magnet that your visitors are willing to fill it out.

Examples of lead magnets are:

• Free Trial: Limited or timed access to the product or service so the lead can test drive the solution before committing to a purchase.
• Free Template: Downloadable digital content that visitors can access and customize to their own specific needs.
• Webinar: Branded pre-recorded audio or video presentations used for training, educational, or learning purposes.
• Consultation: Scheduled phone meetings between a sales rep and the lead to discuss potential solutions to a problem the lead has.

The CTA button you attach to the form should act as a directive and clearly summarize to the visitor what the lead magnet is. It can be as simple as the Subscribe button in our template if you’re offering a newsletter subscription, or if you’re offering a consultation, it can read BOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATION NOW. Use capital letters and punctuation at your discretion as long as it’s cohesive with your branding.

5. Build the Form

After deciding who you’re targeting and what you want them to do with the lead generation form, you can start designing the form itself. Keep in mind brand style and user accessibility while utilizing an online form builder or a landing page builder tool to get your design started. Decide which builder to use by researching the capabilities you’re most interested in, like drag-and-drop editors, templates, customization options, or reporting capabilities.

The top online form builders for lead generation are:

• Jotform: Design forms from their template library with highly intuitive features and then embed, upload, and integrate the form with your site and CRM (free starting price)
• Zoho Forms: Create quality web forms along with insight from their analytics capabilities that also sync to other Zoho applications (free starting price)
• Typeform: Customize your lead generation forms with their stack of visual design tools, including video and photo editors (free starting price)

The help of a template or guide will ensure your form has all the necessary components to effectively gather the information you’re targeting from your audience. It doesn’t need to be overly complex, but the visual design of your form should be cohesive with your product positioning. Once you have all the components attached to a form, level up the visual aspect of the form with design elements like your company logo, eye catching buttons, animations, or photos.

6. Upload the Form

Lead generation forms can be uploaded and attached to different styles of webpages. They can be uploaded to pop ups, click triggers, or stand alone pages like landing pages. The form builder you use to create the form should also help export and add it to your desired location by plugging in and embedding your location URL. If that capability is limited or behind a paywall, use your content management system or purchase an additional uploading tool.

Tools to help upload individual forms to websites are:

• Online Form Builder: The same software you use to build the form can be used to seamlessly sync and upload the created form directly to your site.
• Web Content Management System: The system you use to build your website and domain, like GoDaddy or WordPress, should offer content form uploading capabilities.
• Third-Party External Uploader: A third-party program can share and embed your form by connecting to your web server.

Similar to a lead generation website, the form itself aims to convert your site’s visitors into leads by increasing their interest in your product or service and then capturing their information. Because of this, consider your visitor’s journey through your site and ensure key players from your data, design, marketing, or sales teams all have access to the page through the backend of your website.

7. Evaluate the Form

Continue monitoring the success of your lead generation form after it’s been uploaded by syncing the emails it captures to your CRM software. It’s best practice to schedule maintenance on your sites regularly, whether it’s monthly, quarterly, or yearly. If you aren’t seeing the results you were expecting, don’t hesitate to adjust the design or content of the form. Consider split testing or revamping forms entirely to compare engagement and response metrics.

Examples of content elements to split test are:

• Colors: Use colors and shading that are cohesive with your brand while also keeping the form engaging and attractive to the eye.
• Font: Experiment with large and bolded text fonts that draw your visitor in while also not distracting them from the CTA you’re trying to get them to accomplish.
• Copy: Strategize the words and symbols you use, like using witty jokes or exclamation marks to increase visitor experience, as long as your language is still clear and concise.
• Audio and Video: Consider attaching animations, audio, or video content elements that showcase your product or service.

Split testing, or A/B testing, is the process of researching the user experience of marketing campaigns. It’s an experiment that compares the engagement or effectiveness of two different landing form variants. Through trial and error, you’ll master what style and type of form generates the leads you want.

4 Lead Generation Form Examples

Lead generation forms can come in many different shapes and styles. There’s variety in the input boxes you can use, how many you choose to have on a single form, and what the visitor will receive after the CTA. Below are examples of live lead generation forms styles including consultation requests, contact, discounts, and quote provider forms.

Consultation Request Form Example

If your sales process involves offering a consultation call to new leads, uploading a consultation request form on your site is necessary. The input boxes should include the lead’s name, phone number, email address, and some details about the lead and their goals — like MuteSix has done here. This ensures your reps are able to go into that call with as much insight as possible.

Contact Form Example

Contact forms are a basic lead generation form that gives your visitors the opportunity to reach out to your reps or intake team directly. Pediatric Mobility Innovations’ example only requires the lead’s name and email address and then gives them the opportunity to fill out an input box to preface their reason for requesting contact from you.

Discount Exchange Form Example

Discount exchange forms are most commonly used on ecommerce and B2C websites, like Blue Apron. Built onto landing pages, they usually require the visitor to submit only their email address or phone number in exchange for a discount link, code, or limited-time offer.

Quote Form Example

Quote forms require more information from your visitors than a standard lead generation form because you need more data to generate an accurate quote for the lead. Additional information to target when generating quotes includes their geographic location, property or company size, and estimated time of purchase, like Allstate asks for a zip code.

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These examples exist in different places and serve different purposes on their respective sites. Since there can be multiple forms across your site, one can be on your standard contact page, while another can pop up and act as a lead magnet while offering a discount. Your own lead generation forms can also include as much or as little as these do, as long as you’re conveying the message you want and persuading the visitor to give their contact information.

3 Tips for Creating a Lead Generation Form

Since there are different types of lead generation forms you can host on your website, there are best practices to follow to ensure they’re all successful and yield the results you want. This includes keeping in mind ease of use and your business branding, incorporating a success message, and frequently checking in on the forms.

Keeping these tips in mind while you’re creating and implementing a lead generation form or forms onto your site will help ensure you’re building one that’s effective and appealing and results in the quality leads you’re after.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Bottom Line: Lead Generation Form

Implementing lead generation forms creates an entirely new stream of leads for sales teams. After determining who you’re targeting and what you want from them, the help of a template will ensure you’re including the necessary components while giving you design freedom. And now that you have an idea on how to create and implement a lead generation form, check out our article on how to optimize your entire lead generation website.