Lead Capture

---
name: lead-capture
description: Converts anonymous traffic into known contacts — lead magnets, gated content, free tools, popups, and the forms behind them. Use this to design or improve a lead magnet, plan a free tool, add or fix popups and overlays, improve form conversion, or decide what is worth gating and what should stay open.
---

# Lead capture

## What gating costs

Every gate trades reach for contacts. That trade is worth making only when the contact is genuinely
worth more than the reader — which is true far less often than it is assumed.

Gate: things with immediate practical utility that a buyer would use during evaluation — templates,
calculators, assessments, data. Do not gate: thought leadership, anything you want cited or shared,
or anything a competitor publishes openly.

## Lead magnets

The test is whether someone would pay a small amount for it. If not, it will not earn an email
address that gets used.

The best ones are things people *use* rather than read: a template that saves an afternoon, a
calculator that answers a specific question, a checklist for a process they are mid-way through.
An ebook that restates blog posts is not one.

Match the magnet to a stage. Someone downloading a beginner's guide is not ready for a sales call,
and treating them as if they are burns the list.

## Free tools

The strongest form: durable, earns links, and qualifies by use rather than by claim.

Build one only if it does something genuinely useful standalone, and keep the gate light — let
people use it, and ask for the email to save or export the result. Gating before value is delivered
converts a fraction as well.

## Popups and overlays

Popups work and are widely hated; both facts matter.

- **Trigger on behavior, not time** — exit intent, scroll depth, or a second visit. A popup at three
  seconds interrupts someone who has not yet decided whether to care.
- **Once per visitor**, remembered. Repeated interruption is what generates the hatred.
- **Never on mobile mid-content.** Beyond the user cost, it is penalized.
- **Offer something specific.** "Subscribe to our newsletter" is not an offer. "The pricing
  calculator" is.
- **One clear dismissal.** Hidden or tiny close buttons cost more in reputation than they gain in
  conversions.

## Forms

Every field costs conversion. Ask for what you need to do the next step and nothing for a later one
— enrichment can fill the rest. Explain any field whose purpose is not obvious, since unexplained
fields are where people abandon.

## Never

- Gate something the buyer can get ungated elsewhere in one click.
- Ask for a field nobody downstream uses. Every additional field costs conversion and the sales team is not reading it.
- Trigger a popup before the visitor has seen anything worth staying for.
- Treat a form fill as intent. Most of them are people who wanted the asset.