You might find yourself thinking: "Landing pages are a turnoff. I hate providing information simply to get access to a white paper or content that is of interest. I like to shop around before making a decision and definitely don’t want a pushy salesperson bugging me if I inquire about a webinar. Just let me have the content and I will tell if I want to talk. OK?" I think this myself when grabbing content from the Internet.
Marketing organizations today spend millions of dollars annually creating great content describing their company’s products and services as a means to educate customers, entice prospects, and streamline the sales process. The effort and creativity I have seen produced by our customers' is amazing. But all of those departments suffer from the same fundamental challenges:
- How can I articulate the true value of these efforts and make sure that gets back to my organization?
- How much revenue did I generate for my company based on this content or campaign, and how can I get credit for this effort?
As we all know, marketing budgets have a tendency to be the first ones cut due to these challenges.
Sales perspective
I have been the recipient of leads for many years as a direct sales contributor and have also managed a large sales team of lead recipients. Through this experience, I know firsthand the frustration Sales has in following up on leads who visited your trade show exhibit or downloaded a white paper only to find out eight touches later that those leads were interested in the squishy ball or just curious about the white paper topic.
It's a strange problem: the respondent, marketer, and lead recipient all experience frustration with regards to landing pages. Sales wants good leads, Marketing wants the credit they deserve for their great content, and the respondent wants to be treated in a specific manner. What should you do?
Ask.
Ask appropriately, though, given your goals and objectives. You are doing yourself and the respondent a favor by enabling them to tell you how they want to be treated. If your campaign goal is to build a mailing list, keep your form clean, simple, and inviting. Always include an opt-out. You’ll be amazed at how many people will complete a form when given an opportunity to tell you they are just curious and don’t want to be bothered. Also, if they tell you on their form submission that they don't want to be bothered, don’t incubate them. This will build trust in your community.
There is a tremendous value to organizations in asking.
"Drive Higher Sales Conversions: Ask the Right questions during Lead Capture" There is also an art to it. We’ll be publishing a white paper soon on this topic. Stay tuned.
