Lead Generation Strategies Proven to Boost Your Reach + FREE ebook

In addition to the content types listed under lead magnet ideas, you can:

• Create a blog and attract blog subscribers
• Use videos or podcasts to boost engagement
• Build your business personality with photos and infographics

It’s also important to:

• Choose the right channels for distributing content
• Target lead generation offers to specific content with OptinMonster’s page-level targeting feature

The internet is a highly visual place. Use a combination of text, images, and videos to tell visitors a story and create an emotional connection between your brand and leads. Learn more about using content for lead generation in our content marketing guide.

Email Marketing and Lead Generation

One of the best ways to capture leads is via email marketing. And email is also the best way to nurture new subscribers. Email marketing has an ROI of 4400%, making it one of the most effective marketing tactics ever.

Plus the latest email marketing stats show people of all ages like email and want to get email communications from the businesses they’re interested in.

Here’s a proven process to get started with generating leads via email marketing:

1. Choose an email marketing service
2. Get OptinMonster so you can create attractive signup forms and marketing campaigns
3. Create a lead magnet
4. Learn how to write killer email subject lines so people open your emails
5. Humanize and personalize your emails
6. Test your emails and track your results so you can improve your strategy

Learn more about email marketing in Email Marketing Made Simple.

One place you’ll promote your email marketing campaigns is on your website. We’ll look at how to capture leads there in the next section.

How to Capture Leads on Your Website

Now, let’s think about lead capture strategy. That means working out how to attract your target customers’ attention when they land on your site.

If you want to capture leads on your website, you’ll need:

• A high-converting landing page
• An attractive offer
• An optin form
• A compelling call to action (CTA)

Let’s look at those in more detail.

Landing Page

A landing page is a lead capture tool that asks visitors to complete a specific action or set of actions. Typically, a landing page focuses on a single promotion. Here’s an example from DigitalMarketer:

When you click the button, you get a signup form:

Create a simple landing page with our step-by-step tutorial. Looking for something a bit more complex? Maybe a squeeze page is what you’re after.

Benefits of Landing Pages

Since landing pages focus on a single offer, they’re an excellent way to target your marketing. And when they’re properly optimized, they can improve search ranking. Plus, when people find your landing page in a search, and it matches what they’re looking for, that builds trust. All those factors can boost lead generation.

The core elements of a landing page include:

• Headline
• Subheadline
• Landing page copy
• Optin form
• Lead magnet
• Social proof
• Call to action

We’ll look at the lead magnet and social proof later in the guide, but now let’s check out the other parts of the landing page.

Headline

Just like with content marketing, the headline is the best way to get visitors’ attention when they arrive on your landing page. If you nail the headline, they’ll stick around to read the copy, and hopefully, opt in to your offer. Good landing page headlines:

• Promise results
• Offer solutions to a problem
• Ask key questions
• And more

Here’s an example from Moz.

Get help with writing landing page headlines with our roundup of headline creation tools and our guide to high converting headlines.

Subheadline

Since the best headlines are pretty short, the subheadline is where you get to add some context.

Good subheadlines elaborate on what the headline promised. They also highlight the value proposition for your offer. Good subheadlines also restate the benefits of what’s on offer and may even hint at the call to action.

Here’s an example from Jeff Bullas’ site.

Landing Page Copy

Landing page copy is where you give even more details on how what you’re offering will help your visitor. Whether you use short copy or long copy is a personal choice (we suggest you split test to see what works best for your target market). Whichever you choose, be clear about what’s in it for visitors.

Here’s what the experts say about writing landing page copy:

• Focus on the outcome for your visitors
• Letting visitors know why what you’re offering should matter to them
• Send consistent messages
• Avoid hype

Learn more about creating the perfect optin landing page.

Optin Form

The optin form is where you actually ask visitors to give their details. It’s wise to make that process as easy as possible. Some optin form good practices include:

• Ask for only the information you need, such as an email address and first name
• Include placeholder text to guide visitors as to what should go in each form field
• Match the design to the rest of your site for a more professional trustworthy look
• Test the optin form to make sure it works

Get some more tips on creating optin forms in our 63-point checklist.

It’s also important to choose the right optin form design. If you’re looking for something more than a name, email, and phone number to put in your OptinMonster campaign, check out our pick for the best form plugin (WordPress) and get more form field options!

Call to Action

One of the best ways to inspire your website visitors to become leads is with your call to action (CTA). A call to action is a word or phrase that encourages visitors to take action. For example, a CTA can ask visitors to:

• Subscribe to your email list
• Grab a download
• Share your content on social media

Use your CTA to instruct your visitors about the one thing you want them to do next. Good CTAs:

• Highlight the benefits of taking action
• Use action words
• Emphasize urgency
• Foster anticipation
• Remove risk

As well as using CTAs on your landing page, you can use them on any web page, inside blog posts, and in email marketing. You can also add a CTA to your lead magnet to encourage prospects to take the next step on the journey to becoming customers.

Here’s some more guidance on creating the perfect call to action.

Other Tips For Capturing Email Leads

If you’re capturing email leads on your site as a whole, and not just on a landing page, here are some other tips for success.

Show your campaign to people who are really interested in using OptinMonster’s display rules to target:

• People who have looked at more than one page
• People who have scrolled a certain distance down the page
• Returning visitors

You can do all of this via OptinMonster’s display rules.

You can also choose a popup type that doesn’t disturb your visitors. For example, a floating bar sits neatly at the top or bottom of your page. Active Campaign gets 800 free trial users each month with a simple floating bar.

You can also use a slide-in that appears on the bottom right-hand corner of a web page. See how that works in the video below:

It’s also useful to capture leads with OptinMonster’s proven exit-intent® technology. This shows visitors a campaign just before they leave, and it’s converted well for our customers. Ryan Robinson increased subscribers 500% with exit-intent®.

Learn more about unobtrusive ways to capture email leads in our guide.

Social Media and Lead Generation

Sticking with lead generation beyond your website, you can’t ignore the potential of social media. Social media can drive leads directly, and can improve ranking and visibility for SEO.

In this section, we’re going to look at 3 important sites for social media lead generation: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Using Twitter For Lead Generation

Even though Twitter’s user numbers and revenue have been declining, it’s still a great tool for networking and buzz.

People make sales, too. According to Twitter’s statistics, 69% of people have bought something from a business after following it on Twitter. Here are some tips to help you get more from this social media platform.

Write More Engaging Tweets

You can tweet text, images, links, and video, but some tweets get more engagement than others. If you want to encourage your audience to engage and share, use CoSchedule’s Social Message Optimizer to score your tweet and give tips on how to improve it. This tool works for multiple social media platforms.

Choose the Right Hashtags

Hashtags help Twitter users describe and find content, so it’s a good way to highlight tweets that are suitable for particular audiences. You can find the best hashtags and even create and claim your own, on Hashtags.org.

Put a Shareable MonsterLink™ in Your Bio

OptinMonster’s MonsterLinks™ lets you share your campaigns anywhere. That includes the Twitter bio. Just create a campaign then add the link to your bio to create an instant social lead generation opportunity.

Participate in Twitter Chats

You know another great way to generate leads on Twitter? Take part in Twitter chats. They’re discussions, built around particular hashtags, and covering a certain niche or topic. Examples include #Bufferchat and #SEMrushchat.

For best results, use a platform like TwChat or Twitterfall to keep up with conversations since they can get pretty busy! Active participants often pick up retweets, followers, and subscribers.

Search Twitter For Leads

Twitter has pretty good search functions, so you can easily use those to find people tweeting in your niche.

As well as finding people, you can respond to tweets, and build up your expertise. You can also create lists of prospects so you can interact with them later.

Learn more about using Twitter for lead generation.

Using Instagram for Lead Generation

As of June 2018, Instagram reached 1 billion active monthly users and at least 25 million business profiles worldwide.

Even better, Instagram users love interacting with businesses. In fact, at least at least 200 million Instagrammers visit at least one business profile every day. And, 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram. ?

Here are some ways to leverage Instagrammers’ love of business:

Engage With Your Audience

Engaging with your audience doesn’t have to mean long, drawn-out responses to every comment. just keep your response engaging and human. And, sometimes give a little more than just a “Thanks!” There are a lot of ways to do that:

• Use emojis
• Share related images
• Reply with a funny GIF (available in stories only)
• Ask a follow-up question

Share User-Generated Content

User-generated content is any unpaid content put out by fans and it’s huge when it comes to social proof. People just trust what other people tell them about a product or brand, even if those other people are online.

Instagram is a perfect platform for sharing user-generated content to take advantage of both the social proof and the engagement that the content brings.

Here’s a great example of user-generated content from ASOS’s #AsSeenOnMe campaign:

By using this hashtag, ASOS followers can tag themselves with ASOS products, increasing the reach of the ASOS brand.

Go Instagram Live

When you go live on Instagram, the video shows up in your Instagram stories and viewers can interact with you in real time. But, when it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s no going back to watch it later.

And just like that, Instagram has a built-in sense of urgency to their live videos.

Your followers will get a notification on their phone that you’ve started a live video and, if they’re already on Instagram, they’ll be able to see that you’re live in the Instagram Stories section.

Since Instagram live content can’t be saved for later, it’s best used to promote “in the moment” content:

• Big announcements
• New product teasers
• Sneak Peeks
• Social Contests
• Live Q&A

To turn this into a lead generating machine, be sure to include your call to action (“link in bio,” anyone?), encouraging people to act immediately.

Discover even more about using Instagram for lead generation.

Using Facebook For Lead Generation

Even though Facebook engagement has been decreasing, you can’t ignore a site with 2 billion users for lead generation. Increasingly, getting visibility on Facebook has been about paying for ads, but there are still plenty of ways to generate free traffic. We’ll share some of those with you now.

Add a Link to Your Site

One of the simplest ways to drive Facebook traffic to your site is to let your fans know about your site. This is easy if you edit your Facebook profile to include your links. Go to your About tab and hover your mouse till you see the edit link. Then scroll down the page, edit, and save. The clickable link will be live.

Optimize Page Performance With Expert Tips

Sometimes it’s hard to know how to get the most from your Facebook page. Facebook gives tips, but you get so many notifications that you could easily miss them.

That’s where Likealyzer comes in. Plug in your Facebook page URL, and you get detailed tips on what’s working, what’s not, and how to improve.

Grow Your Facebook Audience With a Popup

To get more traffic from Facebook, you need to reach a wider audience. And you can grow that audience on your own site with a “Like Us On Facebook” popup. OptinMonster will let you:

• Use exit-intent® technology to show your popup just before visitors leave your site, so you won’t annoy them
• Run your campaign on a specific page (for example an article about Facebook) with page-level targeting
• Ask every visitor to like your page with a fullscreen welcome mat.

Discover What’s Working to Drive More Engagement

The best way to get leads from your Facebook audience is to give them content that engages them.

Facebook makes it easy to see your best performing content via Facebook Page Insights. There’s a LOT of data there, including info that’ll help you with customer avatars.

But pay particular attention to post clicks, as that’ll tell you which content drives people back to your site. Once you know, you can create more of the same.

Learn more about getting free Facebook traffic to improve lead generation.

Industry-Specific Lead Generation Strategies

What if you want to generate leads in particular industries? We’ve got you covered with some strategies and tips for eCommerce, real estate, travel, and restaurants.

eCommerce Lead Generation

In eCommerce, you can use many of the techniques we’ve already described, like using exit-intent®, offering free trials, and using gated content. Urgency and FOMO are also useful, especially when you think about how many people flock to holiday sales.

Another strategy to try is using live chat and conversational commerce to nurture visitors who arrive on your site. One company was able to boost conversions by 38% by doing this. With live chat software like Intercom, listed among our lead generation tools below, you could achieve great results.

Guest blogging is another way to generate eCommerce leads. When you know the sites your target customers visit for information, you can reach them there with a guest post that shows your expertise. Then use the bio to send them back to a landing page on your site.

Learn more about eCommerce lead generation.

Real Estate Lead Generation

One way to generate leads in real estate is to start a blog. Blogging is a great way to share information about home staging, local amenities, home improvements and other topics related to real estate. With the right blog, you can generate leads simply by being an authoritative source. Learn how to start a blog in this guide from WPBeginner.

Another real estate lead generation tip is to start an email newsletter. As we saw earlier, email is an excellent way to stay in touch with people who want to buy and sell houses.

For best results, segment your email list so you can send different newsletters to different groups of people. For example, people who are buying homes will want different information from those who are selling them.

Get more real estate lead generation tips here.

How to Generate Travel Industry Leads

The global travel industry generates more than US$7.6 trillion in annual revenue, and there are a lot of industry players. That’s no doubt why email is a key tool for travel industry marketing.

People start planning their trips almost three months out, so email marketing is a great opportunity to get new customers, build brand loyalty, and get your share of the sales.

Here are a couple of ideas you can use. Like real estate, it makes sense to start an email list. If you use OptinMonster, it’s easy to create real estate-themed optin forms. Just follow the steps to create your first campaign, and click on the image to replace it with something more appropriate. Here’s an example of what that might look like:

It’s also a great idea to personalize your marketing. OptinMonster’s Smart Tags feature lets you use the information you already have to personalize your marketing, and it’s proven to win conversions. Expat.com used personalization to grow its membership by 30,000 a month.

Learn more about lead generation for the travel industry.

Lead Generation For Restaurants

When it comes to lead generation for restaurants, email marketing is a major factor. According to The Rail, around one-third of restaurants send email monthly. And 71% focus their emails on upcoming events and offers.

One option you can use to get subscribers is to ask people to sign up when they make a reservation (but make sure you’re GDPR compliant). Here’s an example from The Hardware Store:

You can also generate leads for restaurants by:

• Adding a card with a signup URL to takeout and delivery orders
• Highlighting an offer and signup URL on receipts
• Running a contest

Once you get people onto your email list, don’t just send them offers. You can also help them connect with you by including:

• Menu changes
• Behind the scenes views and stories
• Recipes and tips on food preparation

Learn more about restaurant lead generation here.

57 Lead Generation Tips to Explode Your List

Let’s go ahead and take a look at 57 lead generation ideas to drive email signups every single day…

1. Blog Consistently

You may have heard already that the best thing for inbound marketing is to blog regularly.

You should create a wide variety of content such as special blog series, educational how-to’s, and round-ups that educate your customers. By consistently adding value, you can easily earn the trust of your users and convert them into buyers.

The biggest advantage of having a blog is that it allows you to convert a one-time visitor into repeating users especially if they subscribe to your newsletter.

2. Add Social Buttons to Your Email Newsletter

Want to leverage your network of subscribers? Give them the option to share your newsletters.

This will encourage your email subscribers to follow you, but if they share your message, then it can also help you get new email subscribers.

You don’t have to add a button. It can be a simple call-to-action with a link that that invites the subscriber to share the content.

As always, split-test everything from button shape, to wording, to color. There is always room for improvement!

3. Create a Promo Video

Not everyone learns by reading. Some are more visual and audible learners.

By creating a promo video, you can quickly educate your visitors on your product or service. Not only that, you can use a technology like Wistia to add a call-to-action in the middle of the video to capture an email address.

Videos also allow you to leverage third-party platforms like YouTube (world’s second largest search engine) and the social network Facebook which is poised to give video extra reach in their newsfeed.

A couple things to consider:

• Keep the video short, but not too short. For the first promotional video, try to keep it under a minute and a half.
• Consider having more in-depth videos available to describe various features of your product or service.
• Know your strengths and weaknesses. If you are not great at both creating videos or public speaking, then you should hire someone. Always better to have a good first impression than a cheap bad impression.

4. Add Content Upgrades

One of the best types of lead magnets is content upgrades.

A content upgrade is an additional value that the user can get related to the blog post they read.

For example, if you wrote an article entitled How to Build a Coffee Table, then you can add a downloadable resource like a checklist or even 9 common mistakes you should avoid.

You can add the content upgrade at the bottom of the blog post. OptinMonster helps you do that with the MonsterLinks that open a popup form upon click.

5. Network at Conferences

Have you ever attended an industry conference? If not, then find the big cities near you. You will surely find conferences related to your field.

Attending conferences can help you network with influencers who may promote your product as well as potential customers.

You can also apply to speak at conferences as long as you can add value. Speaking can help you get a lot of exposure.

6. Give Away Licenses to Influencers

The best way to get free promotion and additional leads is by giving away licenses to industry experts.

Sure it may cost you a few dollars but think of this as an advertising expense.

Find bloggers and influencers, contact them, and offer them a free license. If they like your product, there is a very good chance that they will promote it on their social media and even give you a positive review with backlinks.

7. Guest Blog on Other Sites

If you know the other sites your audience visits, then the best way to reach them is get exposure on those sites.

One of the easiest ways to do that is by offering to guest blog.

Remember that your main goal is to add value to the site you are contributing to. The fact that you are getting a backlink and exposure is an additional benefit that you will never get if you don’t meet your main goal.

8. Welcome Guest Bloggers on Your Site

One of the best ways to tap into influencer’s network is to ask them to guest blog on your site (and offer to pay them, either with money or with exposure).

This way you are giving them a backlink, a platform to write on, and possibly monetary benefits. In exchange, you get a quality article and most likely the influencer will share it with their audience.

This is also a great way to build a long-term relationship.

9. Add Exit-Intent Popups

Are you using an exit intent popup? If you aren’t, then you could be losing over 70% of your abandoning visitors, never to return.

An exit intent popup is a lightbox that pops up when someone starts to leave your site. This one last-ditch effort can increase your conversions by 316%!

10. Leverage Twitter Search

Did you know about Twitter’s Search Feature?

It lets you see what people are talking about on Twitter. This is a great way to interact with your potential customers.

Depending on your field, use advanced Twitter search queries to find people’s questions about your topic.

Next, consider writing a blog post that answers their questions. After you write a blog post, respond to them and link them to your article.

Not only will you likely get one view, but a quality response may make the Twitter follower an advocate of your brand.

Lastly, chances are that one question is something that others will ask for as well, so it’s an evergreen source of content.

11. Create Mobile Specific Campaigns and CTAs

More and more web traffic comes from mobile devices. However, due to screen size limitations, your beautiful desktop design may look drastically different on your iPhone.

Therefore, you have to make sure that your calls to action are optimized for the mobile environment, along with any forms that load.

Even more important than your desktop forms, make sure your mobile forms are as short as possible. Cell phones aren’t great for heavy typing. Requiring too much customer effort may prevent a conversion.

12. Add a Highly Visible Floating Bar

Floating bars stick to the top or the bottom of your visitor’s screen and scroll along with them. This makes them highly visible and very effective.

13. Create Query Driven Content

Google Search is a gold-mine for ideas that help you gain leads. Type in the name of your competitors and see what their top pages are. Find out what keywords are being searched and their extended phrases.

Not only that, you can look through your Google Webmaster tools and see which keywords are driving traffic to your website. Either add similar keywords to that article or create new articles to boost your SEO traffic.

If you want more in-depth research, consider tools like SEMRush that can help you research not only how traffic is being driven to your site but also the traffic of your competitors.

This gives you data on exactly what your customers are searching for, so you can create query-driven content.

14. Create a SlideShare Presentation

SlideShare is a community where you can upload and share your presentations.

Since presentations make for great shareable content, a well designed SlideShare has the potential to go viral, which will provide greater exposure to your website.

SlideShare can feature your content on their homepage, bringing you more exposure. They also have premium tools that allow you to embed email optin forms within your presentation.

15. Create a Quiz or Survey

Interaction by definition helps people engage with your website. Higher engagement cultivates an environment where you have a better chance for collecting emails for leads.

You may create a fun quiz regarding your industry to see how much your visitors know and let them compare how they rank against their peers. Then, you may follow up the quiz with a lead magnet on how they can improve their score next time!

A survey can work a little different. Maybe you’re considering adding new features, expanding into new segments of the market, or something else. A survey is a great way to receive feedback and get direct involvement from your visitors.

Even better, you can collect emails directly from the survey because you can ask for their email to follow up if you have any questions about their idea. ?

16. Add a Full-Screen Call to Action

To really grab your visitor’s attention, try adding a fullscreen call to action or squeeze page to your website.

Just be careful not to use traditional welcome gates and interstitials that redirect users to a new page. While these are great for growing your email list, they are terrible for your website SEO, and you could get penalized by Google.

With OptinMonster, we use smart script overlays on your existing page to ensure maximum conversions and SEO benefits.

17. Set up an Affiliate Program

Want the marketing power of a sales team, but don’t want to pay the salary of a sales agent? Then you need an affiliate program.

Affiliate programs can be an easy way to recruit partners in your success. When you succeed, they succeed. That means that by offering the right incentives in your affiliate program, you can begin gaining extra advocates from across the world, all advertising and promoting your product or service.

The best part is that you only pay them when they bring you a sale. So you have nothing to lose!

18. Create Twitter Lead Cards

Twitter is a huge social network. Did you know they have a special feature just for lead generation? It’s called Lead Cards.

Twitter Lead Cards allow you to collect user’s email in exchange for an offer. This one-click signup can definitely boost your conversions.

19. Add a Slide-In Scroll Box

Want to generate more leads without being too pushy? Slide-in scroll boxes are a polite way of capturing email addresses on your site.

They appear at the bottom right-hand corner as the user scrolls down the page, so they are highly visible without being too “in your face”.

With OptinMonster, you can also show highly targeted messages with your scroll boxes by displaying a different one depending on which blog post or page the visitor is viewing.

20. Split-Test your Call to Action

The first thing to ask is, “Do I have a call to action (CTA) that prompts users to give me their name and email address?” If not, then you need to create a button and optin form that clearly identifies what you want your visitors to do.

While you may have a few different CTAs on a page, you need to know which one works best. The only way to find out is by running a split-test on your CTA and your optin.

Sometimes the smallest change can end up with staggering results.

For instance, have you split-test with different button colors yet? While most people encourage red buttons, perhaps your website will convert better with a green button. The color that converts best is the one that stands out!

Another way to split-test is to add different locations of your call to action buttons. It’s perfectly fine to have a call to action at the bottom of the page, but sometimes your readers may not make it down there.

Follow the basic principle of ABT (Always Be Testing), and you’ll continue to see improvement.

21. Add “Safe” Language to Boost Trust

The 2 biggest concerns when subscribing to a product or service are:

• Will I be charged?
• Will they share my data?

By adding “safe” language, you can boost your trustworthiness.

For example, if you have a free newsletter, make sure to communicate that it’s free because that adds confidence. Or, consider using phrases like, “You can be 100% confident that your information will not be shared.”

Adding safe language often boosts your signups due to increased confidence.

Syed Balkhi does a great job at this.

22. Add Security Seals

Security is a huge trust factor in digital marketing. This is why adding trust symbols to your site can go a long way for your lead generation.

This includes having an SSL certificate and trust seals such as Verisign and Better Business Bureau.

A Blue Fountain Media experiment showed that adding the trust seals increased conversions and sales by 42%. ?

Trust badges are usually used for things like anti-virus programs, HTTPS technology, secure checkout features, and certifications. However, studies show that you can even create your own trust badge and it will still be effective! All you need is a logo to advertise your guarantee.

23. Reduce White Space to Help Your Form Appear Smaller

Depending on your business or product, you may require more information than Name and Email. However, it’s known that the shorter a form is, the better your conversions will be.

Therefore, consider changing the spacing however you can to minimize the overall length of the form by reducing the white space.

24. Use Animations to Catch the Eye

To really grab your visitor’s attention, add animations to your popups.

With OptinMonster, you can choose one of our awesome animation effects to draw attention to your optin forms and generate more email subscribers.

25. Match your CTA Wording to the Title of Your Landing Page

Have you ever searched for something on Google and clicked a link only to find that what you are looking for isn’t actually on the page?

What did you do? You probably left the page and never looked back.

Due to our short attention span, we don’t really look through everything on a site. This causes an increase in bounce rate if the promised information isn’t readily available.

To help lower your bounce rate, make sure that your primary call to action on your page matches your page title.

When the content on your page matches the user’s search their confidence in you grows and they’re more likely to see you as an authority and begin to come to you for information first in the future.

26. Simplify Your Landing Page

An effective landing page is one where you have a clear call to action. There is one goal, one reason why a visitor is on that page.

Because of the focused goal, it is clear to your page’s visitor what it is they should do while there.

This focused goal helps to achieve your desired result, which in this case is gaining a lead or making a sale. Review your page, determine how many CTAs you have, and eliminate the lower priority CTAs.

Look at your landing page. How many different links are there? If possible, reduce them.

27. Display Testimonials and Reviews

Nothing adds more trust than positive testimonials from existing customers and industry experts.

Once you have customers, you should reach out to them and ask for a short testimonial that you can post on your website.

A simple way to do that is by including testimonials below your optin form. Or, you could state how many people have already subscribed.

28. Use the Element of Scarcity

Scarcity is when something appears (or actually is) limited. The limitation can be time, quantity, or something else.

How you implement scarcity depends on your product or service. Often people use this for discount codes during holidays, but you can use this tactic to advertise the number of items left in stock, items ready for shipping, etc.

The idea that something a customer desires could be gone before they can get it may encourage them to act rather than wait. The urge to act before the offer expires can encourage a conversion where other tactics may fail.

29. Encourage Your Visitors to “Join the Bandwagon!”

No one likes being the first to take the risk. However, if you can add social proof that others are doing the same thing, it can boost your conversions.

Use your current statistics and list them on your landing page, including something like, “Over 50,000 people have already downloaded!”

This helps build trust and will help with your signups.

TrustPulse is an amazing tool that makes social proof easy. Increase site conversions by up to 15% using social proof to instantly increase trust by showing off real-time activity from your actual customers live on your site:

30. Use Interest-Based Targeting

Present your visitors with an interest-based offer you know they’ll love. You can target campaigns to people viewing specific pages or blog posts on your site, and offer them something based on the interest they’ve already expressed by browsing those pages.

For example, a home improvement website might have a category on their blog for “Gardening Tips.” They could create a campaign specifically for visitors who are interested in gardening by showing it only on blog posts containing the URL slug, “garden-tips.”

With OptinMonster, you can create an interest-based optin with our intuitive Display Rules Engine. Just set a rule condition to show your optin if current URL path matches/doesn’t match/contains/doesn’t contain the specific blog post, page or category that you want to target.

31. Direct the Eye

Is your optin form attention-grabbing enough? If not, you can draw the viewer’s eye right to it with one simple tweak:

Add an arrow pointing toward the optin or the subscribe button. Or better yet, use an image of a person looking towards the optin like these great examples from Caroline White Photography.

Our brains are hardwired to naturally follow the gaze of the subject’s eyes in a photo, so your viewers simply won’t be able to help but look at your optin form.

32. Hire a Ghostwriter

How many blog posts do you publish in a week? According to Neil Patel, publishing just one extra blog post per week can increase your traffic by as much as 18.6%. That’s a lot of extra traffic that can be converted into leads!

Don’t have the time to write another article every week? Hire a ghostwriter. Getting those extra leads will make it well worth your while.

33. Eliminate Choices

The more choices a person has to make on your website, the less likely they’ll convert. That’s because choices require decision making, which takes up a lot of mental bandwidth, and makes taking any action a whole lot harder.

The key to lead generation is eliminating as many choices as possible on your website. Instead of letting the user decide where to go, decide for them! For example, you could remove the navigation bar on your homepage with all the choices of where to go, and replace it with one choice to either download your lead magnet or read your blog posts.

34. Try the Squint Test

You should be able to clearly see any page’s main call to action when you squint your eyes. If you can’t, then something needs to be re-optimized.

You may need a bigger button, a brighter color, or a larger font size.

35. Don’t Stress Over Your Homepage

Your homepage is by far the most important part of your website, right? Wrong!

Think about it: how many people actually find you via your homepage? Most people landing on your site for the first time will be reading one of your blog posts, or visiting a landing page you promoted, not your homepage.

Instead of spending all your time tweaking your homepage to perfection, put your efforts into optimizing your blog post pages and your optin landing pages.

36. Don’t Give Too Much Information

It may seem counter-intuitive, but less information is more when it comes to your optin forms.

Those long descriptions of all the benefits of your lead magnet? Most people don’t read those. Instead, people scan to quickly assess (in just a few seconds) whether or not this is something they want to give their email address for.

So, keep your descriptions super short and to-the-point, using bullet points to make them more scannable. And never ask the user for too much information: just stick to first name and email address whenever possible.

37. Create an Explainer Video

You can greatly enhance your optin pages by adding an explainer video. An explainer video is an educational video or a tutorial video that provides value before the visitor opts in.

Don’t just talk about your optin bribe: teach something of value in the video. What’s especially great about explainer videos is that they are extremely effective when used as a Facebook ad that has been optimized for conversions.

38. Make it a Game

People simply can’t resist a good game, especially when there is some competition involved. Turn your optin into a game, and you’ll have no trouble drumming up attention!

A contest is a great way to gamify your optin. Plus, people are used to submitting information in exchange for being entered into a contest, so this makes handing over the email address feel more natural.

39. Tweak Your Colors

Did you know that colors can have a direct impact on your conversion rates? But not in the way you might think.

Most people assume that it’s all about the psychology of color, and the emotions that different colors can convey.

However, while the psychology of color does have an impact on your brand, what’s most important for conversions is whether or not you are using color contrast effectively.

To learn more about how to tweak your colors for a boost in optins, check out our post on which color button converts best.

40. Give, Don’t Take, on Social Media

Contrary to what you may believe, social media is not designed to be a mouthpiece for your brand. In order to extract value from networks like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter, you need to give more than you take. ?

Social media is intended for conversations, not monologues. Instead of making it all about you and trying to get attention, make it about them: see where you can be useful and offer up advice where it is needed, without asking for anything in return. That is how you build real relationships with your leads, and your efforts will be rewarded with their loyalty.

41. Offer Free + Shipping

Do you have a book that you could give away for free? Or maybe you have extra samples of your product that you don’t know what to do with? Offer it for free, plus shipping.

Not only do physical products being offered for free convert really well, but you’ll also be gaining the most qualified leads possible: these are the people who actually took out their credit cards.

42. Replace Text With Images

As they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words… well, actually 60,000 words to be exact. You see, the brain processes images60,000 times faster than it does text.

So if you really want your optin to stand out, say more in fewer words. If you can say something with an image, do it.

43. Post at the Right Time of Day

There are good and bad times to post on social media. If you want to increase traffic, and thereby enhance your chances of attracting qualified leads, only post during timeframes that make sense.

According to the research, the best time to post to Facebook (for B2C businesses) is 12PM Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday:

And the best times to tweet (for B2C) are 12-1PM Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday:

44. Use Statistics and Data Points

Statistics and data points are something else that people tend to put a lot of stock in. Wherever possible, use facts and figures to prove a point.

You can use them to make your blog posts more interesting to read, or you could even use a compilation of statistics or an infographic as a lead magnet.

45. Don’t Mention Spam

You may think it makes sense to include a little snippet at the bottom of your signup forms that reads, “100% privacy – we will never spam you!” However, research from Michael Aagard shows this actually reduces conversions by as much as 18%.

Instead of using the word “spam,” the winning privacy policy said, “We guarantee 100% privacy. Your information will not be shared.”

46. Offer a Discount

Who doesn’t enjoy a good coupon or discount? You can generate leads from an entirely different subset of your target market simply by presenting a discount as your lead magnet.

But be careful: offering too many discounts can train your visitors into thinking that they don’t ever need to pay the full price. When you offer a discount, make sure there is an element of real urgency (e.g. a limited time coupon).

47. Join Communities

To take your list growth to the next level, it’s important that you position yourself as a person of authority in your industry. One great option is to join communities (like messages boards and social media groups) and comment frequently, suggesting your lead magnet when appropriate. ?

A great platform to start with is Quora. Simply check for a question related to your expertise, and offer up an answer.

48. Segment Offers by Interest

Not all leads have the exact same interests. You should develop content for each of your different buyer personas.

You can accomplish this using OptinMonster’s page level targeting to display specific optin forms to visitors based on their behavior on your site. You can also simply ask your visitors what they want with a multiple choice optin form.

49. Offer a Course

One way to accelerate your lead generation is to offer educational content that enlightens them in some area and helps them to achieve a quick win.

One of the best ways to do this is with a free mini-course as your lead magnet. Simply create an email autoresponder to drip out the lessons.

50. Post in Comment Sections

You can extract a lot of value from mining blogs in your niche and posting in the comment sections.

Don’t be someone that spams comment sections, but do add value. Often, there will be a place to include your website URL so that your name will be linked to it. To really master the art of blog commenting, check out this ultimate guide.

51. Launch a Twitter Poll

Twitter polls are a great way to collect information that can then be used to improve your lead generation efforts.

Try launching polls and see what kind of valuable data you can collect that can help you to tweak your optins. You can learn more about Twitter polls here.

52. Offer a Free Trial

Free trials, samples, and giveaways are perfect for getting people excited and allowing them to see what your products and services are all about.

Plus, these are the most highly qualified leads because they have actually raised their hands to let you know that they are interested in your product.

53. Show Your Face

Believe it or not, people really want to see your face. Research shows that photos with faces are 38% more likely to receive Likes and 32% more likely to receive comments on Instagram than photos without faces. That’s because our brain is wired to automatically process the emotions in a face.

Include your own face and the faces of the friendly people who work for your company on your website – it’ll put your leads at ease.

54. Craft Compelling Headlines

One of the single most important aspects of any blog post or lead magnet is the headline. The biggest mistake people make is to spend very little time crafting their headline.

Make sure you’re spending time creating a headline that generates interest in your topic and encourages visitors to click and keep reading. They should not be an afterthought!

55. Syndicate Blog Posts

If you’re going to take the time to write a blog post, you might as well get maximum value from it. Try syndicating blog posts through third-party publishers whenever possible.

This way, you’ll get double, or even triple the traffic, and double or triple the leads.

56. Promote Your Tweets

Twitter can be a valuable social media resource, but things move quickly. One option for staying at the top of the newsfeed is to promote your best tweets.

You can also use Twitter lead generation cards to make the most of the boost in exposure.

57. Present Irresistible Offers

Finally, the absolute best thing you can do in order to enhance online lead generation is present an irresistible offer. If you make an offer that they can’t refuse, then you will really stand out among the competition.

So how do you do that? By talking with your existing customers. Get on the phone with them. Get face-to-face with them whenever you can. Ask them questions that will help you to present them with an offer they simply can’t resist.

Now that you have 57 awesome lead generation tips to try, let’s close out this monster post with a look at 36 of the best lead generation tools we’ve found to make lead generation easy.

36 Best Lead Generation Tools to Get More Targeted Leads

Lead generation isn’t just about getting people to visit your site in the first place. It’s also about collecting their info so you can contact those visitors, and nurture them into becoming loyal customers and raving fans. To guide them through that journey, you need to use the right lead generation tools.

This section has our picks for tools that’ll help you nail every aspect of web-based lead generation. Choose your favorites, and you’ll soon be generating more leads and making more sales.

Here’s a table of contents to help you explore the list.

• Our Top Pick For Lead Generation
• Email Marketing Tools
• Email Address Finders
• Prospecting and Outreach Tools
• CRM Tools
• Sales Tools
• Communication Tools
• Advertising Tools
• Other Lead Generation Tools

1. OptinMonster: Our Top Pick For Lead Generation

Let’s start with OptinMonster’s online lead generation software. OptinMonster integrates with all major email marketing and CRM platforms, making it easy to capture, share, and manage leads.

In fact, our customers have had amazing success using OptinMonster as a lead capture tool.

For example:

• Snack Nation earns 1200 new leads each week by using OptinMonster to deliver content upgrades
• Guido’s, a St. Louis restaurant, used MonsterLinks™ to trigger an offer for a free appetizer, getting 1000 new leads in less than 4 months
• Wholesale Suite gets 6500 qualified leads a year by combining 2 step optins with continuous split testing, which is built into OptinMonster
• Woodside Communities was able to increase their leads by 476% and shorten their average lead-to-sale time from 3-6 months to just under two weeks.
• Check out the rest of our case studies for even more examples!

You can also use OptinMonster to jumpstart lead growth with advanced targeting rules for marketing campaigns. These include:

• Page-level targeting, so you can easily run campaigns on different pages, targeted to the page content
• Exit-Intent® technology, a proven trigger that gets visitors’ attention just before they leave your site
• OnSite Retargeting® so you can create special offers and promotions for returning visitors.
• Lead Sharing features to easily share leads with joint venture and co-marketing partners.

There’s more. You can quickly deliver lead magnets with our range of success actions. Plus you can target campaigns by location, activity or inactivity, device, and much more.

Click here to explode your lead generation with OptinMonster today.

Now, let’s look at the rest of our lead generation software.

Email Marketing Tools

When it comes to online lead generation, you can’t beat email marketing. The stats show that most people welcome emails from the companies they want to connect with. That makes email marketing software among the best lead gen tools. Here are some email marketing services we recommend.

2. Constant Contact

If you have a bigger list, or simply prefer a Mailchimp alternative, try Constant Contact. You’ll get lots of support to use this lead generation tool. Constant Contact rates highly for world-class support, extensive online training, and webinars to help you achieve success.

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp always ranks high on any list of lead capture tools. That’s partly because it’s got an excellent free plan. If you’re sending fewer than 12,000 emails a month or your list is under 2000 subscribers, this is a great starting point. Mailchimp also includes templates, guided newsletter creation, email subject line testing, and a useful knowledge base.

4. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a complete marketing automation software that combines both email marketing services as well as SMS messages. They offer a drag & drop builder that you can use to create highly-engaging emails, build automated workflows, and segment users.

Once you’ve chosen your email marketing tool, check out our email marketing guide to get started with email lead generation.

Email Address Finders

Sometimes you’re going to need to connect with people who aren’t on your email list. That means finding their email address and contact details. This next batch of tools will help with that.

5. Hunter

If you want to do a quick email search, Hunter is a useful tool. Just type in the domain, and it’ll find the email address pattern. Hunter also includes a confidence rating so you know if the email is likely to be right.

6. AeroLeads

AeroLeads provides a Google Chrome plugin to help you search LinkedIn, AngelList, and other networks for leads. Add those to your AeroLeads account, and this lead generation tool will find their business email addresses and other contact details. Then you’re ready to start reaching out.

7. Voila Norbert

Voila Norbert promises to help you find and verify business email addresses. You can search in bulk for prospects with a CSV file. The tool also integrates with a wide range of CRM software. That makes it easy to keep track of your lead generation efforts.

Prospecting and Outreach Tools

Want to turn more of those contacts into leads and sales? These (mostly) automated lead generation tools will help with that process.

8. OutreachPlus

OutreachPlus is one of several multi-purpose lead generation tools in this roundup. It lets you create and send personalized emails while still benefiting from automation. And it helps you find your best prospects for future outreach based on responses to your past or current campaigns.

9. Hoovers

Hoovers says it’s the world’s largest commercial database. You can use it to build targeted lists of new prospects. Hoovers includes company information to help you have more relevant conversations with those prospects. That helps you turn more prospects into leads and sales.

10. Datanyze

If you’re in the business of technology, you can find leads based on data about the technology your target customers are already using. That’s what Datanyze promises. It includes a prospecting tool to help you find contact details fast. Then you can export those to your CRM software for management and follow-up.

11. Lead Forensics

Sometimes you can miss out on good leads just because you don’t know everyone who visits your site. Lead Forensics aims to solve that problem by getting contact details for anonymous website visitors. You can also score those prospects so you spend your time on those most likely to convert.

12. Growbots

Know the market you want to target? Growbots will choose your best prospects from a database of more than 200 million contacts. You can easily get in touch with the right decision makers and follow up automatically. Growbots also includes testing so you can check which approaches are most effective.

13. Prospect.io

Prospect.io handles both prospecting and outreach. It helps you find and verify emails for your prospects. Then you can reach out to them via a range of templates. And you can easily track data on all interactions. Best of all, it integrates with a range of services to get contact information automatically.

CRM Tools

You can’t do a roundup of lead generation tools without including tools for customer relationship management (CRM). These tools help you connect and keep track of prospects and leads throughout the sales pipeline. Here are our picks.

14. Hubspot

Hubspot has a suite of free tools, and Hubspot CRM is just one of them. But it’s a great way to organize, track and nurture leads. It tracks interactions automatically and helps you and your sales team keep on top of what’s happening.

15. Pardot

Pardot is a well-known lead generation tool that helps you manage and qualify leads. That ensures that you’re always talking to the best leads. Pardot includes fine-grained segmentation and automation for better communication with your future customers.

16. SharpSpring

In addition to its own built-in CRM, SharpSpring integrates with all the top CRM lead management tools. That allows you to manage lead data across multiple platforms. SharpSpring includes custom deal stages and a useful pipeline overview, as well as other marketing tools.

17. Contactually

It only takes a click to start managing your Google or Office365 contacts with Contactually. Once they’re connected, it’s easy to organize and segment contacts. You can also optimize workflow and schedule communication with Contactually’s AI tools.

18. Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft helps you keep customer information in one location. That lets you track interactions and responsiveness to guide future campaigns. It’s a multi-functional lead generation tool that’s definitely worth exploring.

19. Marketo

The lead management solution from Marketo helps businesses form relationships with prospective customers before they talk to sales reps. It helps you attract leads via inbound and outbound marketing, and improve the quality of the leads you get.

20. Nimble

Nimble pulls in information from a number of online sources, so you always have the latest data on potential leads. It makes it easy to identify and nurture key contacts without having to do any data entry. It’s available for major browsers, email programs, and mobile platforms.

21. OnePageCRM

Looking for another simple piece of lead generation software? OnePageCRM grabs leads from Gmail, social media sites, and business networking sites to integrate them into your CRM. This software focuses on “next action sales,” so making sales is as simple as checking off your to-do list.

Sales Tools

For businesses, the goal of using lead generation tools is turning those leads into sales. And since the best source of repeat business is existing customers, it makes sense to use tools that both make sales and nurture your customers. Here are some tools to help with that.

22. Salesforce

Salesforce is among the world’s top sales and lead management software. It includes tools to help you manage leads, customers, sales teams and more. It integrates with a wide range of sales and marketing software to help businesses sell more and deliver better customer service.

23. Hubspot Sales

Hubspot Sales is part of Hubspot’s suite of free tools for small businesses. It helps you save time on generating new leads. Hubspot Sales includes tools and templates for outreach and follow-up, so you can interact more efficiently with prospective customers.

24. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Business networking site LinkedIn has huge amounts of company information in its databases. You can access that info via LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This lead generation tool provides advanced lead searches and recommendations. It also includes CRM integrations and sales updates.

25. Pipedrive

Pipedrive prides itself on simplicity and it really is easy to use. This piece of automatic lead generation software tracks all interactions with leads easily. Then you can see all the data in one unified dashboard whenever you check-in. It also makes it easy to know what action to take next.

Communication Tools

As we mentioned in our article on checkout page optimization, talking to people who land on your site can help you win them as customers. That applies to leads, too. This next batch of lead generation tools will help with communication.

First, let’s look at a few live chat tools.

26. Drift

Drift helps you deliver a helpful and personal service to customers by having a conversation with them. According to Drift, conversation drives half of all online sales, so this is crucial. This lead generation tool can help you wow your customers, and it includes a free level.

27. Intercom

Need a modern messaging service to fully engage site visitors? Intercom could be the answer. As well as being one of the best lead capture tools around, Intercom can help with customer support and onboarding.

28. Bontact

Thinking of using Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp Business to contact your leads? What about another platform? When you use Bontact, you don’t have to choose. This lead generation app brings all your messaging under one roof to give you and your customers a unified, but cross-platform, experience.

29. Callpage

CallPage promises a 5-minute setup. After that, you can immediately start talking to visitors. Once they enter their phone number in the onscreen widget, they can be connected to you within seconds, no matter where they’re located. That lets you answer their question so you can win their business.

Advertising Tools

If you want to get leads by promoting your business you’ll need some lead generation tools to advertise your products and services. In addition to using social ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and others, here are some more lead generation services to try.

30. AdWords

Google’s AdWords service puts ads in front of people when they search for related terms. That makes the ads relevant and increases the chances that searchers will visit your website or call your business. One great feature is that setting up campaigns is free. You only pay for advertising when people click your ad.

31. AdRoll

AdRoll helps display ads, social ads, and email work together to promote your business. It includes automation and rich insights so you can tweak campaigns for more growth.

32. AdEspresso

Hootsuite’s AdEspresso is an optimization tool for Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads. It lets you create and test multiple ad variants with only a few clicks. You can run ads with various audiences, too, and measure what’s most effective with in-depth analytics.

Related Content: What’s a Good CTR for Google Ads + How to Improve Yours

Other Lead Generation Tools

Finally, let’s complete our roundup with a few other lead generation tools.

33. Extole

Word of mouth is a powerful lead generation tool. Extole harnesses that by being an advocacy marketing platform. It helps you turn customers into advocates, who then help you generate more leads.

34. ReferralCandy

ReferralCandy helps eCommerce stores generate leads and sales by offering customers discounts for referring new business. You can easily customize a referral program for your business, and collect data on how the program is working.

35. WPForms

One way to get more leads from website visitors is to find out what they want. You can use WPForms to create a poll or survey that gets this important information. Or simply integrate their simple drag and drop forms with other lead capture tools.

36. Zapier

If you’re wondering what Zapier’s doing on a list of lead generation tools, the answer’s simple. Zapier‘s here because it allows you to connect multiple business services together, including some of the lead generation software in our roundup.

That’s it! We’ve covered a massive amount of information in this epic lead generation guide. Don’t forget to download the free ebook so you’ll always have easy access to this incredibly valuable info!

You may also want to check out this article for more B2B lead generation strategies.

For more excellent marketing tips and advice be sure to follow OptinMonster on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.