May 29, 2013
Last week Twitter announced a brand new addition to its suite of Twitter Cards – one designed solely to help brands capture leads and drive purchase.
The Lead Generation Card will now enable brands to push incentives and offers directly to consumers, who by expanding the tweet will see their name, username and email address automatically filled in to a form that requires no more than the click of a button to submit.
In one single click the consumer supplies their data, without having to manually fill anything in or leave the platform. In one single tweet the brand captures a new lead.
Does it work? Well the functionality – currently available to existing Twitter advertisers – is in the process of being beta tested by a number of brands. So time will tell.
It certainly sounds promising and for the willing consumer the user experience couldn’t be simpler; for the unwilling consumer, however, the auto-fill functionality could feel somewhat invasive and uninvited.
Time will tell how effective the Lead Generation Card truly is for driving purchase, but in the meantime the following back-to-basics lead gen tips are worth remembering.
Five tried-and-tested lead generation tips
1) Create scarcity. Limited time and limited stock offers create an exclusiveness and urgency that increases propensity to purchase.
2) Produce customer-centric content. Avoid a one size-fits-all approach and consider the best content format to appeal to your audience. This could be anything from whitepapers and ebooks, to demo requests and webinars.
3) Incorporate visible CTAs. Whether within your Facebook posts or on your website, ensure these are ‘above the fold’ to maximise on impressions.
4) Develop dedicated landing pages. Drive traffic through to dedicated and trackable landing pages with data-capture functionality.
5) Maximise your thank you pages. Once someone downloads a piece of content use the thank you page to push mid-funnel offers such as demo requests.