What's the best/unique way for Lead Generation through your website?

This is my answer to What's the best unique way for Lead generation through your website on +Quora

What could be better than providing an eBook? At least that's what most people are doing nowadays.. The How Tos, The Social Media Guides, The Guides to this or that... I'm not such a big advocate of this strategy, however there is an audience which seemingly falls bait for this kind of tactic and it does seem to work. In the longer run, people will realize that it is information which is just compiled off the internet and that same information can be easily available 

However I have some suggestions of my own to ensure that you create a good Lead generation aspect. Maybe unique, maybe something very simple and doable, but whatever it is, they are certainly tried and tested. 

1. Create Applications that drive engagement

In today's day and age, rather than the same old Content Marketing strategy a lot of consumers of the social web or the social era are beginning to be enticed by engagements. They like to interact and not just listen to broadcast messages. So create applications which will empower website owners to 'ask for ' not forcefully capture users data. Of course this means the user agrees himself/herself to share that data. And if the application has an engaging drive and interest, he may also recommend it to relevant users. That takes care of you word of mouth strategy and trying to make it spread faster than you can generally.

2. Create data trends or interesting patterns.

Yes I agree with what Tom Webster says 

"So much of what we see passing as studies, ‘research’ or anything in Mashable that says ‘study’ in brackets, is produced primarily for content marketing. Data that’s produced for the purposes of content marketing is inherently incurious. It is not designed to increase your insight, it is not designed to help your specific business to do better. It is designed to get you to click on a link, to watch a video, to become a lead somehow. So that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, that just means it’s heart is not the same place as your heart is.”

But at the same time if you are looking to generate leads then yes, this is the appropriate way. Only ensure that you give out the disclaimer stating something which affirms this fact and people know whether to actually spend time in looking at those trend patterns and if it is really relevant to them. They'd be your genuine leads.

3. Create Real Value even before they become leads

9 out of 10 times conversions of visitors to leads depends generally on how good the product or the service that you provide is. One of the most interesting ways to really add value even before they become leads is to give them a sneak preview of what your product or service can do? Show case something really interesting or an example of your past work that has worked out before. Heck use Social Tools on your website to get other people give testimonials (Facebook connect/badges) Facebook Recommendations or if it's a product integrate it into the Facebook's Store where if someone uses it on the web he / she will get a prompt to actually rate your product or application on Facebook. This way people will know that your product is really good. Demo these aspects through social integration.

There are a lot more ways that one can understand how leads can be generated through your website, but I'm all up for transparency, creating value through persistent efforts not only in just the content aspect but also making your website as social as possible. Use Social Web as a tool and make the people do the work for you and that won't happen unless you have a really good product or service. So work on that too. Once that's taken care of, everything else will fall in place. A clear six degrees of separation has worked wonders in the past.. So why not now?

Srinivas has been a communications professional for over 10 years, and has been blogging since 2005. He has worked with the likes of Social Wavelength, now Mirum India, (A JWT Group Company) for four years and now Heads Learning and Development & Analytics at Social Kinnect: A Digital Marketing Agency in Mumbai. His passion for Advertising, Creativity, Social & Digital Marketing helps make a difference for the brands they work with.