In the lead-capture business, the formula for success is straightforward on the surface: an offer strategy that your target market finds relevant, engaging ad content in a format that grabs the consumer and an effective landing page that compels those consumers to take action.

Driving high conversion begins with a realistic understanding of what type of action your consumers are most realistically willing to take at that point in their buying journey.

If it’s a complex B2B sale, that action may not be a request for a meeting. Instead, it might be to provide contact information that allows for a white paper download. The key is not to expect more than is realistic – meeting consumers where they are.

Regarding your offer strategy, while there isn’t one specific type of downloadable offer that dramatically outperforms others, generally speaking, white papers, case studies and e-books outperform webinar or demo offers.

When it comes to ad format, assuming lead generation is your goal, text ads generally outperform standard display ads – the latter of which are often more effective for brand building.

While offer strategy and ad format are important, neither matter much if your landing page is ineffective.

So what makes for a strong-performing landing page?

It starts with highly customized landing page content that aligns well with your digital ad campaign. Driving consumers to your homepage or a generic page on your site that isn’t tailored to your offer and ad campaign is a mistake.

Last year, SmartBrief conducted a study of nearly 300 lead-capture campaigns. These campaigns resulted in more than 53,000 form submissions with a conversion rate of 33 percent. Here are some key findings from this research.

When a consumer clicks on your ad, directing them to your landing page, they are demonstrating enough interest in your product that a lengthy explanation on your landing page is likely overkill. In fact, the longer the copy, the lower the conversion rate – with the ideal character count being in the 200 to 300 range – or roughly half the length of this column to put it into perspective.

Next, if the action you are asking consumers to take is to provide contact information, consider the number of fields displayed. Pages with four or fewer form fields converted nearly 50 percent of clicks. That conversion percentage drops notably to 35 percent with the addition of just one additional field.

Specifically which fields you include is equally important. For example, omitting a phone number field can increase conversions as much as 25 percent according to this study. Beyond the form fields, the actual design of the landing page matters little if it is user-friendly and professional.

Leverage these best practices for your next digital lead-generation campaign, but by all means, test with every outing, as results can vary dramatically by industry.

Lori Turner-Wilson is an award-winning columnist and managing partner of RedRover Sales & Marketing, www.redrovercompany.com, with offices in Memphis and Nashville. You can follow RedRover on Twitter (@redrovercompany and @loriturner) and Facebook (facebook.com/redrovercompany).