Lead Generation
Lead Generation tests how anonymous visitors become known contacts and how those contacts are qualified before sales. Expect offers, landing pages, forms, CTAs, lead scoring, and lifecycle stages.
Core rules
- The offer must be valuable enough to justify contact data. Match its depth to the journey stage; do not gate a top-of-funnel explainer that should earn reach.
- A landing page has one purpose: one offer, one CTA, minimal navigation, and a thank-you page or state that delivers the asset.
- Form fields are a trade: each added field lowers completion but can improve qualification. Use progressive profiling to collect data over several visits.
- Lead scoring combines fit (company size, role, industry) and engagement (email opens, page views, demo requests). Negative scores matter for poor fit.
- Lifecycle stages (subscriber, lead, MQL, SQL, opportunity, customer) show progression. A raw download is not automatically sales-ready.
Worked example
A template download page offers a budget calculator. Version A asks for email only and converts at 12%. Version B asks for email, company size, and role and converts at 7%. The team tests both. Version B produces fewer contacts but more qualified MQLs, so it wins for pipeline, not vanity conversion. After the first download, progressive profiling adds company revenue on the next form.
Traps
- Putting a demo CTA on awareness content.
- Judging a form only by conversion rate, ignoring lead quality.
- Sending every download to sales.
- Missing consent language and relying on purchased lists.
- Confusing a landing page with a homepage that has many links.