Is Lead Capture Really Working in Economic Development?

Aug 8

Person stuck in the middle of a maze without a clear way out.

Web forms. Gated content. Lead Capture.

Whatever you call it, it is almost the only metric investment promotion agencies are using to justify marketing spend under tight budgetary conditions. But just because everyone is doing it, does that make it right? And does that mean everyone is doing it well?

Looking at the broader B2B industry, there is quite a bit of disagreement on whether lead forms are worthwhile anymore. Some authorities on the topic are very much behind the idea of killing gated forms once and for all.

Unfortunately for our industry, there is no direct revenue to generate, so other forms of ROI calculation are ambiguous and not often tangible enough for city governments or boards of directors to judge. Website visits are not seen as valuable enough for stakeholders like leads are.

And there are other challenges like niche target audiences, long buying cycles and a lack of repeat customers (since companies or talents might only make a location decision once) that make other measurement difficult.

Is there any other option?

Which types of lead capture are there?

Let’s start to answer that question by defining what works and what doesn’t. There are four primary types of lead capture used by IPAs and other FDI government organisations. They are:

On-site gated forms promising access to special resources.
Contact us forms to facilitate informational queries.
In-platform gated forms, such as on LinkedIn.
Off-site gated forms via sponsored webinars or content partnerships.

Gated forms that are blocking access to a PDF or other asset on an IPA website have generally lost steam. Web visitors know they’ll likely be hounded by sales calls afterward and the transaction seems forced in this type of scenario.

There’s also a low-trust environment, as this is likely the first or second time someone is visiting the IPA’s website and trust hasn’t fully been formed. We’ve rarely seen quality leads come through in this type of scenario.

However, a simple, finely crafted “Get in touch” prompt or contact form is much more effective. No forced transaction; just helping out. While volume is still often disappointingly low on these, some international cultures prefer this more formal way of initiating contact and the average quality of these website leads is higher.

Going offsite, social media lead capture campaigns are all the rage now, especially on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a “high trust” channel where individuals seem more comfortable exchanging their information, so gating content here is more productive than doing so on a website.

It is something we believe in strongly enough to make it one of our services at C Studios, as it can be highly effective if done right. We’re seeing lead quality in the 80%+ range for some clients, with meeting rates from subsequent follow-up averaging 8%-12%.

There are also media partnerships that offer lead capture as part of their deliverables. This gets very tricky for a channel that generally runs high on cost, so the audience, proposed topic and intent need to be vetted closely.

Some publishers are quite good and worth the spend, while others lack the quality audiences for good ROI.

We’ll stop there, as there are other forums for lead capture, but the above four are the most common, with the off-site options usually more productive and higher volume.

What matters most in capturing digital leads?

Regardless of which lead capture mechanism is used, the biggest predictor of success and quality of leads is – is the audience actually getting something good, insightful and worth exchanging contact information for?

Sadly the answer is often “no” across the B2B industry. With marketing teams simply trying to secure leads to meet a quantity goal, the purpose of educating prospects and furthering brand credibility has gone out the window.

Providing mundane, vague content breaks the psychological contract with the person submitting their information, and the lack of value from that interaction will cloud the opinion of the individual toward your place brand quickly.

As a whole, we’d commend the investment promotion industry for keeping the quality quite high more often than not in these scenarios compared to their B2B peers. Even so, with so many others doing it poorly, consumer trust has eroded and led to inconsistent results.

Should you use lead capture?

There are a few considerations when thinking through incorporating lead capture as a part of the marketing program and judging whether it will work or not. Sometimes it depends on the type of lead mechanism being used.

Regardless of type, the first consideration is expectations. If your team is expecting highly qualified leads that are ready to expand now, there’s no way digital lead generation campaigns will be seen as a success.

The lone exception would be from a “Get in touch” or “Contact us” form, but those are lower volume anyway, so the value is still hard to assess unless there’s a hefty ad budget to scale way up.

In most cases, those filling out forms are expressing an early-stage interest at best and need to be pursued and nurtured toward a more fruitful endgame.

Speaking of pursuing them, we’ve seen too many IPAs give up after an email or two of follow-up. That’s just not enough. Consider the fact that people you know sometimes take multiple emails to get them to respond; someone you don’t know is going to need some work also. Without a commitment to persistence, the performance will suffer.

The next consideration is the type of content you’re offering. Is it a topic that, if someone downloads it, suggests they are in an expansion mindset? If so, that will improve intent and conversion.

Is it something that they can get elsewhere easily? You might be able to use it successfully on LinkedIn or a publisher still, but probably not on your website.

Specifically for gated content on your website, the biggest question is this: is the quality of the leads you are gaining worth all the ones you are likely losing? Almost a decade ago, the stat used to be that only 2% of web visitors would fill out a lead form; the other 98% would abandon. We haven’t seen an official updated state of late, but we’d be shocked if that were any better.

We’ve heard several IPAs say they intentionally block content and force companies to reach out to them. To be candid, we cringe at that approach, mostly because companies and multipliers have told us in the past that they will eliminate a location if they have to work too hard.

It suggests to the company that everything is going to be an effort the rest of the way. We understand the need to show traction, collect leads and track results, but doing so to the point where it hurts the likelihood of a company landing in your city or country is unwise.

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Does lead capture still work? It can, but the returns depend on a mix of quality content, expectations of where responding companies are at in the journey, persistence in developing the leads and which medium you are using.

As part of a larger demand generation program that blends brand marketing through lead generation techniques, these can be incredibly valuable tools for our industry.