Know-How : Form Gating 101 - How to generate more inbound leads

Generating leads often relied on form-fills in B2B, here's our top tips.

Forms are a crucial element of B2B lead generation, enabling marketers to capture valuable contact and company information from potential customers. However, form gating – the process of requiring users to provide certain information before accessing content – can be a contentious issue. Here are the different types of form gating and best practices for using forms to standardise data capture for improved targeting and segmentation.

Types of Form Gating

1. No Form Gating: With no form gating, users can access your content without providing any information. This approach is useful for content that is highly valuable or widely available, as it eliminates friction and allows users to consume your content without any barriers.
2. Light Form Gating: Light form gating requires users to provide minimal information, such as their name and email address, before accessing your content. This approach strikes a balance between generating leads and reducing friction for users.
3. Full Form Gating: Full form gating requires users to provide more extensive information, such as job title, company size, and industry, before accessing your content. This approach can generate more detailed information about potential leads, but it can also increase friction and reduce the number of leads generated.

Best Practices for Form Fields

1. Keep it Simple: The more fields you require users to fill out, the more friction you create. Keep your form fields to a minimum to reduce drop-off rates and increase lead generation.
2. Use Progressive Profiling: Progressive profiling enables you to capture additional information about leads over time. Instead of requiring users to fill out a lengthy form upfront, you can gradually collect more information from them as they engage with your content.
3. Prioritize Key Fields: Some fields are more valuable than others. Focus on capturing essential information, such as job title, company size, and industry, before asking for less critical data.

Standardising Data Capture

Standardising your data capture enables you to effectively target and segment your leads. Here are some best practices for standardising data capture:

1. Use Dropdown Menus: Dropdown menus can help to standardize data capture by limiting the available options for certain fields, such as industry or job title.
2. Use Data Validation: Data validation can help to ensure that users provide accurate and consistent information. For example, you can use validation rules to ensure that email addresses are formatted correctly or that phone numbers include the correct number of digits.
3. Integrate with Your CRM: Integrating your form data with your CRM can help to standardize data capture and ensure that all leads are entered into your database consistently.

By using these best practices for form gating, form fields, and data capture standardization, you can improve the quality of your leads and enable more effective targeting and segmentation.