10 Interactive Forms Builders for Surveys & Lead Generation
A lead is a business or person who is interested in your brand or an unqualified contact who could potentially become your next paying customer.
More leads equal more opportunities for revenue, so their importance can’t be overstated.
But lead management can be tricky; it requires a delicate dance between marketing and sales, which can make the struggle to attract, nurture and convert leads frustrating for your team.
The best place to start is taking an honest look at the type of leads your sales team needs and creating a lead management system that moves your leads from “maybe” to “yes” by successfully completing a purchase.
In this article, we'll walk you through what a lead is, key types to note, how to identify these and an extensive look at how to create a lead management process.
A lead is a person or business that shows interest in your products or services.
Leads can come from various sources such as a website, social media engagement, events, referrals or consultations, to name a few.
A lead is usually gathered or captured with a lead magnet, and then it’s up to you to convert them into a qualified lead and then into a paying customer.
But not all leads will become customers. Some might not make it through your sales or marketing funnel. This can be due to their lack of interest or a poorly optimized lead generation and management process. But we’ll dive further into that later.
Now that we know what a lead is, how does it differ from a prospect?
Well, where a lead is a potential customer, a prospect is a qualified lead. This means that a prospect has a higher likelihood of being converted to a customer.
The transition from lead to prospect happens when a lead is determined to have strong alignment with your specific lead criteria and has both an interest and the ability to purchase your product.
In a traditional lead generation process, leads are usually gathered in the marketing funnel, then, once qualified, they’re passed on to the sales team as prospects to begin the sales cycle. The sales cycle is a series of steps that you go through to pursue a prospect to make a purchase.
Leads are a vital part of any establishment's sales or marketing success.
Capturing quality leads equals profits. Without leads, you’re left with little to no consistent earnings from recurring or new customers to keep your business up and running.
Today, business is far more competitive than it's ever been. The “build it and they will come” model no longer works. In fact, Ruler Analytics found that 91% of marketers say that lead generation is their most important goal because generating quality leads translates to sales for their company.
Managing leads provide companies with a chance to nurture relationships, understand customer needs and measure the effectiveness of their lead generation and management strategies.
By focusing on effectively generating and converting leads, you can improve your marketing and sales funnel, conversion rates and, ultimately, revenue.
As you build out your lead generation and management stages, you’ll begin to attract various types of leads. Leads are categorized based on their level of engagement, where they’ve been captured or found and their readiness to make a purchase.
Here’s a list of the most common types of leads you’ll encounter:
Lead qualification is the process of classifying and qualifying a lead. The lead is assessed on whether it’s a suitable prospect or worth pursuing based on the information collected through lead scoring and nurturing.
From there, leads are usually classified into three main types, MQLs, SQLs or SALs, as mentioned in the section above.
Next to lead generation, you’ll have to learn how to properly qualify leads as they come your way.
Not only does this give you a clear picture of who is most likely to make a purchase, but it also saves you time and resources, helping you to focus on how to effectively close more deals.
In this section, we'll show you five ways to classify and qualify leads in your funnel:
How do you know that you’ve got a good lead or if it’s the kind of lead your business needs? It starts with understanding who your ideal customer is.
By creating a buyer persona based on your ideal customer, you'll be able to quickly identify who is the perfect match for your products and services.
This can also reduce your customer churn rate, as you’re likely to gain prospects that will stay longer rather than going out the door faster than they came in.
A buyer persona is a research-based representation of your ideal customer who will be the most interested in your products or services. You can use market research and real data from your existing customers.
You can also use this to tailor your marketing and sales efforts to attract and convert leads that align with the characteristics of your ideal customers.
If your team already has a buyer persona, be sure to keep it updated annually to match your strategy efforts and growth.
If you don’t have one, don't worry. Visme has a wide library of buyer and customer persona templates you can customize, like this project management software customer persona template below:
Add your brand colors, logos and fonts to your buyer persona manually, or let our AI-powered Brand Wizard do the work for you. Simply add your website URL, and the wizard will not only create a brand kit for you but also suggest templates that match your brand.
Behavioral metrics are actions taken by your leads or customers that can measure interest, user experience or conversions. These can be downloads, shares, website visits, clicks or automatic triggers, to name a few.
Behavioral metrics are usually tracked with analytic tools (i.e Google Analytics), heatmaps, UTM codes, sign-ups, demo booking, discount code usage or other forms of digital and physical engagement.
By tracking behavioral metrics, you can get a practical sense of how to classify leads. But to effectively track behavioral metrics, you’ll need to set up behavioral KPIs (key performance indicators).
By setting behavioral KPIs, you can build out a more intentional lead funnel with the appropriate triggers, tools and content. This, in turn, aids you in knowing how to quickly differentiate cold, warm and hot leads from a bird’s eye view. Some behavioral KPIs you can to classify leads include:
With Visme, you can track analytics when you publish and share content with potential leads. Access the number of views, unique visits, average time the user spent on the project or specific pages, if it was viewed completely and so much more.
Manager of Partnership Marketing
The Denver Broncos used Visme’s analytics to get a better understanding of what pages are being looked at and what holds the highest value to their partners. This empowers them to make more thoughtful and data-focused decisions that give them the power to construct better sales approaches, conversations and relationships.
Lead scoring is the process of ranking leads with numerical values based on the likelihood that they'll be converted into customers.
By doing this, sales is able to objectively prioritize their resources on leads that are likely to convert. It also fosters better collaboration between sales and marketing teams, as both have clear initiatives they can work towards.
Studies show lead scoring is a revenue driver. According to a Lenskold Group report, 68% of marketers consider lead scoring a leading revenue generation contributor.
Yet, Clover Mortgage found that around 67% of lost sales are a result of sales reps not properly qualifying potential customers before taking them through the full sales process, and just 44% of companies use lead scoring systems.
What does this mean for you? Lead scoring is simply not a method your team should be skipping or underutilizing.
Lead scoring isn’t as tedious a task as you might think. While it may take some time and brainstorming, once it’s in progress, you simply need to monitor it. All it takes is a few simple steps. If you’re short on time, take a look at our easy to follow MQL to SQL with lead scoring guide below:
If you’ve got time, here’s a more detailed walk-through on how to create a lead scoring system:
1. Start by assigning scores or values to the behavioral metrics we highlighted earlier. For example, a lead visiting the pricing page may receive a higher score than one who only downloads a free lead magnet.
2. Next, set a threshold that differentiates levels of readiness. Leads with a specific score that are deemed MQLs should be passed on to sales for further engagement. Do the same for SQLs that can be turned into prospects.
3. Integrate your lead scoring system in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. This helps you automate or track the process and creates seamless communication between marketing and sales.
4. Align marketing and sales to know when to establish a hand-off when a lead is ready to move from MQL to SQL or SAL. Be sure to use an automated system that can set up triggers to instantly hand over leads. You can also create clear guidelines on when to manually hand off leads.
5. Regularly review and refine your lead scoring system. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it process. Your lead scoring should evolve with your customer behavior, industry, product improvements and company goals.
One of the most important factors for lead scoring success is ensuring that everyone on your team is not only on the same page but collaborating along each stage of the process.
Visme not only offers collaborative features that allow your team to work in, control and share projects within a single workspace, but you can create workflows where you can assign tasks, set due dates and track real-time progress with your marketing and sales team.
Not to mention, Visme also integrates seamlessly with CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier and more to save time spent jumping from tool to tool. Helping your team to qualify, hand off or even educate leads effortlessly without losing momentum.
What is lead management? It’s a framework that will guide leads from interest to valued customers with personalization, data-driven insights, and precision. It’s the roadmap guiding your leads to the purchase finish line.
Whether your company is focused on B2C or B2B lead generation, this is just a fraction of what’s needed to attract and retain quality leads. In the grand scheme of things, you must have a proper lead management system.
When both planned and executed correctly, you’ll create a process that’s built to help sustain the lead-to-customer pipeline without burning out your team, wasting resources, and worse, missing out on a good lead because of a lack of planning.
Every lead management system begins with lead generation. After all, managing leads effectively is what really nudges them to the conversion stage.
Lead generation is where we’ll be attracting leads through various methods, like lead magnets, discounts or webinars. Using lead generating channels like email marketing, social media, content marketing, SEO, events or your website.
Here’s what a traditional lead generation to conversion process looks like:
So, how do we master a beast like lead generation? After all, it’s not one size-fits-all. Not all lead generation ideas are suited to your needs. That’s why it’s crucial for you to map out the path that works best for your product, audience or industry.
Here are a few ways to start generating leads, regardless of where your company currently stands.
We discussed this earlier when it came to classifying and qualifying leads. This simple but sometimes overlooked step can be a time saver or a time waster. Not only should you know your target audience, but you should learn ahead of time if you could be serving more than one type of target audience.
One of the best places to start is by defining an ideal customer profile (ICP). An ICP helps you identify, target and prioritize prospects most valuable to your business.
ICPs are commonly used in sales, who typically get handed off leads to turn into SQLs and then prospects. If marketing passes on leads that don’t match your sales ICP, this provides poor leads and conversions.
Quickly create an ICP template for your team to customize, brainstorm and keep on hand as a company training material. You can use templates like the one below.
If you don’t feel like using a template, use Visme’s AI Document Generator instead. With a single prompt, generate ready-to-use ICP templates and more in just a few seconds. Prompt and customize it with your own visual assets. You can also create new visuals using the AI image generator or upload your own!
But wait, what’s the difference between an ICP and a buyer persona?
An ICP represents the ideal business that you’d like to sell to. It outlines the characteristics, demographics, or pain points of an ideal business that are most likely to benefit from your products or services.
Whereas a buyer persona provides a more individualized perspective of your ideal customer, diving deeper into specific characteristics, preferences and behaviors of decision-makers within your ideal business. It also helps humanize your target audience.
While they are different, it’s always encouraged to use the two together. Once you’ve created your ICP, it will help guide the creation of your buyer persona.
A lead magnet is an incentive marketers use to attract potential customers in exchange for contact information or purchase.
You can use a myriad of methods and tools to generate leads, the most popular being a lead magnet. But not all lead magenta are the same. Some tend to outperform others.
So what makes a good lead magnet?
It should resonate with the customer, provide value, drive interest, be easy to consume or access, be visually appealing and aligned with their wants and needs. But you’ll also need to provide a lead magnet based on where your lead is in the marketing or sales funnel.
For example, where a cold lead might just want access to an ebook on industry updates, a warm lead might want to join a webinar to learn more about your product features. Both serve the same purpose, but they cater to the type of lead.
If you need help brainstorming some good lead magnet ideas or even creating copy for them, use Visme’s AI Writer. Simply enter a prompt and watch as it quickly generates copy or suggestions for you to choose from. Once you’re satisfied with the results, the AI Writer can also proofread or edit as you add your final touches to the copy.
For more tips on great lead magnet ideas, take a look at the list below. You can use them based on where your leads are in the marketing funnel.
Top-of-Funnel (Tofu) Lead Magnets:
Middle-of-Funnel (Mofu) Lead Magnets:
Bottom-of-Funnel (Bofu) Lead Magnets:
Take your lead magnets from boring to eye-catching with Visme’s professionally designed templates and initiative design features. Add your own visual assets or tap into Visme’s library of professionally made icons and high-resolution stock photos and videos.
Make your lead magnets interactive with hotspots, popups and clickable tables. Add dynamic fields so you can update essential information and access all your lead magnets with just one click.
Or add engaging data visualizations like charts and graphs to your reports or demo videos to grab your leads attention and show off your stats. With Visme, the possibilities are endless. And the best part? No coding or designer needed.
Once you’ve created your lead magnet, it’s time to distribute it. There are multiple ways to distribute your lead magnet using:
One tried and tested method of distributing lead magnets and generating leads is using lead capture forms. They’re so popular that 84% of marketers rely on form submissions for lead generation.
But with 84% of marketers, which could include your competitors, using lead forms to generate leads, how do you stand out and grab your leads attention?
Try Visme Forms. These interactive forms come with animated characters to help boost your conversions and decrease your form abandonment rate.
After testing Visme forms on an organic traffic of 500,000 website visitors using a split test against traditional forms, we found that next to doubling our newsletter sign up, adding animated characters to our lead magnets resulted in:
Unlike other form builders, you don’t need coding skills to access the look and feel of a custom-designed form. You can create newsletter sign ups, email collectors, registration forms and more, all proven to convert at a higher rate.
Choose from a wide range of our expertly designed form templates, and customize our animated characters and forms to match your brand. Plus, our form builder is specifically crafted to ensure that load times on your website won’t be impacted. All this, along with real-time analytics to track your leads and their effectiveness.
Plus, if you’re already using popular platforms like MailChimp, HubSpot, Google Sheets or Zapier, Visme Forms and its design platform seamlessly integrate with them.
A recent ViB report discovered that the two biggest challenges marketers are facing this year are improving lead quality and conversion rates (54%) and generating more leads (41%).
Previously we discussed that in order to improve your conversion, you’ll first need to ensure that you're able to properly qualify leads before they’re passed on to the sales team.
While others might see lead qualification as a bottleneck, it’s not. It’s a practical solution to find gaps in your lead generation.
Overall, it provides a better understanding of your ideal sales ICP opportunities to optimize your sales and marketing funnel or product development.
Now we know that leads can be qualified as MQLs, SQLs, SALs or IQLs. But before you get to that stage, there are a few lead qualifying frameworks you can use.
Lead qualification frameworks help you to create a set criteria for identifying leads and influencing your lead scoring. All your leads aren’t going to be the same person or company; they’ll have different positions, niches, needs and pain points, so having a framework in place helps to generalize these gritty details.
Here are six lead qualification methods your sales team can use based on the product, services or industry you cater to:
1. BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline):
2. MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, Champion):
3. GPCTBA/C&I (Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget, Authority, Negative Consequences & Positive Implications):
4. ANUM (Authority, Need, Urgency, Money):
5. CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money, Prioritization):
6. FAINT (Funds, Authority, Interest, Need, Timing):
Lead nurturing is the act of fostering meaningful relationships with leads at each stage of their journey through the sales funnel using offers, resources or personalized experiences to successfully secure a purchase.
According to the Annuitas Group, nurtured leads usually make 47% larger purchases than their non-nurtured counterparts. And companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead.
This means that lead nurturing cuts down the time and cost it takes to turn a lead into a prospect, and can lead to bigger purchases.
Lead nurturing, similar to lead generation, needs a strategy and can also be automated to make the process easier for you and your team and ensure that no lead is left behind.
There are various types of lead nurturing strategies you can use, based on your goals. Here are some strategies you can quickly and easily implement to start nurturing your leads:
When it comes to lead nurturing, we know that time is a crucial asset for marketing and sales, especially when managing clients, chasing prospects and completing other tasks. So wouldn’t you want a tool that helps them not only manage but gain more time?
Visme goes beyond simply providing templates; it’s an all-in-one content creation platform that gives your marketing and sales team the confidence to maintain brand integrity, create and store content for lead nurturing and streamlining tasks, all without the need for a professional design or relying heavily on your design team.
But don’t take our word for it. GaggleAMP used Visme to lower their content creation time across their sales and customer success departments by almost 95%.
Director of Marketing
Especially as a small, 100% bootstrapped company, this is a big win for GaggleAMP. So, interested to see what Visme can do for you?
While nurturing your leads, you need to design a lead score system. This can be done manually or automatically using a CRM or lead scoring tools integrated with your current sales tools. Automation is preferred, as it can assign workflows and triggers that can work in favor of your lead nurturing.
When placing lead scores, be sure that there are thresholds or cutoff points to categorize each lead. This makes prepping for follow-ups smoother and allows the sales to move faster once a lead has reached the highest threshold.
Your lead qualification and scoring should go hand-in-hand to ensure a cohesive lead management process. If not, you’ll end up creating confusion and tracking leads that have little to no potential of converting. Always ensure they are aligned!
There are a few main types of lead scoring methods you can use to scour and route a lead to their place in the lead funnel, described below:
We’re almost at the lead funnel finish line. Now that your lead has made it through your entire lead management process, there are three possible outcomes. Your lead will either be handed off to sales as an SQL, SAL or IQL, leave your lead funnel due to a competitor or external factors or still need to be nurtured for further scoring.
How high or low each result is will give you a clear idea of your lead management success. Even if you have a high chance of success with leads, reviewing your lead management success and process is still encouraged to ensure it’s optimized to its fullest.
Here’s a quick run-through on how to measure the success of of your lead management system:
By taking time to review these, you’ll not only be focused on generating leads but ensuring that the prospects converted are long-standing clients rather than just short-lived purchases going through a revolving door.
Leads are potential customers or contacts who have shown interest or might be interested in your products or services, providing an opportunity for conversion and revenue generation.
In marketing, a lead refers to a prospect or individual who is curious about your brand by engaging with your marketing materials. For example, signing up for a lead magnet, clicking an ad campaign, attending a webinar or subscribing to your newsletter.
In sales, a lead is a potential customer, also known as a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), who is in the early stages of the sales cycle. Sales leads typically require further nurturing and qualification before they’re ready to make a purchase.
The best source for leads all depends on your target audience, company goals and industry. However, a mixture of inbound and outbound marketing has been proven to be the best strategy across industries to generate leads.
The fastest way to generate leads varies and is influenced by your business model or industry. However, using lead magnets, providing offers or discounts, hosting events (virtual or in person) as well as targeted ads have been proven to drive quick and effective results.
A lead is a potential customer or prospect interested in your products or services but who may not be fully qualified or ready to purchase. An opportunity, on the other hand, is a lead that has been further qualified and is considered more likely to convert into a sale.
There are five steps to consider when managing leads: generating leads, qualifying their fit, nurturing them, scoring their potential, guiding them through the sales funnel and reviewing success metrics for conversions.
Now you have a clear idea on what a lead is, the main types of leads and how to effectively manage them to drive better conversions for sales. Keep this article bookmarked to refresh your memory or review the tips we shared throughout.
We know that lead management and generation can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. With the right content for educating leads, addressing pain points and building out each stage of your sales funnel, you can create a seamless sale.
Try Visme. From lead generation with Visme Forms to AI content creation with Visme AI Designer, you can use powerful design and content management features to attract, nurture and convert your leads.
Visme empowers thousands of marketing, sales and customer success teams that need an agile tool that works with them, not against them. Click here to see what Visme can do for your team.
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