At its core, inbound marketing can be boiled down to a few simple truths. Here’s one: if you want your website to convert visitors into leads, you better get the point of conversion right. In other words, your landing page forms better encourage, not detract your audience from signing up and entering your database as a lead.
If you don’t get this part right, your entire inbound marketing strategy can fall apart. But if you do, you have the perfect foundation for a content marketing and lead generation strategy that succeeds consistently.
Fortunately, HubSpot recognizes that fact, and continuously works to improve the ways businesses can use landing page forms to drive conversions. Of course, if you don’t know about your options within the platform, that’s worth little! So let’s change that with today’s edition of HubSpot Tips and Tricks. Consider this your resource guide on optimizing your form fields within HubSpot’s COS.
Most landing page forms on websites across the internet are static. You visit the page, fill out some required fields, and (hopefully) hit the submit button that gets you into the database. The fields don’t change, regardless of whether this is the first time you’ve heard about the business and offer or you’ve been there before.
HubSpot offers the simplest type of form. But it also offers another option, which should be especially enticing for businesses relying on landing pages that go beyond the top of the funnel: smart forms.
As the name suggests, smart forms are dynamic. They change based on a variety of factors, allowing you to better target your form to the individual visitor to the page. For HubSpot, these factors include:
The first three options allow you to change your form based on your visitors’ demographic information. You can, for example, hide some of the fields on mobile devices to shorten the form or show a different form depending on whether your visitor came to your landing page from a Facebook post or an email campaign.
The benefits of this capability are obvious. You may, for example, change the language or example on forms that come from different countries. Mobile device users probably don’t have the patience to fill out long forms, so you can stick with the essentials for this audience group. This guide offers a basic tutorial on how to set up smart form fields within HubSpot.
The last two options among the above factors are more closely related to funnel information. And this is where HubSpot’s smart forms get truly interesting. Professional and enterprise customers, for example, can take advantage of what the system calls progressive profiling. It involves setting up your form so that all fields that ask for information you already have about a visitor in your database are automatically hidden, allowing you to gather more insights without lengthening the form.
Considering just how crucial form length is, that could result in a huge advantage. Offering content below the top of the funnel is only beneficial if it can lead to more information from your leads. Continuously asking for little more than first name, last name, and email will not help you gather the information you need for more segmented and personalized lead nurturing campaigns.
Through smart forms, you can catch two birds with one stone. The length remains the same, but you can ask more in-depth questions (such as job title and company size for B2B companies) at the same time. As a result, you can more effectively fill out your contacts’ profiles and improve your marketing and sales efforts.
Ultimately, your goal for any landing page form is relatively simplistic: you want to generate the maximum possible number of sign-ups. Whether you’re looking to sign up new leads or move existing leads through your funnel, you need to minimize their friction when signing up to accomplish that goal.
For the vast majority of your target audience, the actual sign-up process will be the most inconvenient and unwanted part of the buyer’s journey until the actual sale. Valuable content can help you drive the motivation to take action, but only an effective and relevant form can ensure that the final step is taken.
That’s where HubSpot’s smart forms can in. The more relevant you can make your questions to your audience, the more likely they’ll be to answer them. In addition, the information you’ll receive about your prospects will be more valuable, leading to more successful lead nurturing efforts moving forward.
Inbound marketing has the potential for immense success. But for that to happen, a number of individual tactics and efforts have to work in concert. Your website needs to be optimized for conversions, your content should drive both thought leadership and lead generation, and your marketing offsite should be on point.
And even with all of that, your conversion forms absolutely need to be optimized in order for your inbound marketing efforts to succeed. Accomplishing that isn’t always easy. Fortunately, with tools like HubSpot, you can get one step closer to creating forms that encourage, not detract your visitors from becoming leads or moving along in the funnel.
