Lead generation with web calculators (Guide)

Interactive calculators are great sales lead generation tools because they address the most common customer questions. Let's take a quick look at Google Trends. You can find millions of searches starting with "How much.., how many, what is the ROI” and more.

If you've heard similar questions about your business, or at least want to increase your website's conversion rate, then this guide should be of particular interest to you. Let's take a closer look at how an interactive calculator can help generate leads.

What we’ll cover in this post:

• How can interactive calculators generate leads?
• Why calculators work better than other lead gen tools?
• Calculator types
• Typical lead form elements
• Example
• Qualified Leads vs. Unqualified Leads

How can interactive calculators generate leads?

As you already understand, interactive calculators are widgets that you can add to your website and let customers get or count personalized answers to their questions about pricing, quantities, ROI, and much more. These are questions that are crucial in the decision-making process and may result in a purchase or an end of the customer journey.

To generate leads interactive calculators can include order forms or simply a mail results element that lets your customer move forward in their customer journey. After getting the answers to their questions they can show interest in consultation with you, get calculator results sent to their email, or place the final order.

In all cases leaving you with qualified leads in your database.

Why do calculators work better than other lead gen tools?

Unlike many other lead generation tools, web calculators provide real value by answering the most important customer questions related to sales instantly. That in return creates trust in your brand, builds authority, and distinguishes you from competitors.

There are no cheap tricks with a 5% discount in return for contact details, or the need to boast about why you’re the best. Interactive calculators can generate traffic and as a bonus, you get a qualified lead actually interested in your product or service.

Check out our ROI calculator for Calconic.

Calculator types

The calculator types for lead generation vary, however, the most important factor here is the value that the calculator provides.

This means the calculator should solve an important pain point leading the customer closer to conversion.

Most popular lead generation calculators are:

Instant quote or cost calculators

These are probably the most obvious and to-the-point props you can reference while building a potential client’s interest. A quick click here and a few inputs there, and voila! You have an instant cost estimate. This gives customers real-time answers to important questions like, “How much should I be paying for this particular service?” and “How much will the cost increase/decrease after I add/remove a few extras?” Also, it might be a good option for B2B lead generation.

ROI calculators

“What kind of Return On Investment can I expect from your product?” That’s a question every marketing and salesperson needs to answer – customers want the exact numbers related to your value proposition. There are several factors at work in being able to deliver those numbers, which makes ROI estimators among the top converting calculators. Works great for both B2C and B2B lead generation.

Savings or comparison calculators

How do your prices compare to the competition, and how much can your customers save by choosing your product or service? Or maybe you offer different price scales; how much might a customer save by paying an annual fee as opposed to 12 monthly fees? Can you save your customers time and headaches, or offer discounts for bulk purchases? Having a tool that illustrates how much your service or product can save a customer can go a long way in convincing them they’ve found what they're looking for with you.

Quantity and price combination calculators

A must for e-commerce solutions or businesses that sell products where customers need to calculate material output, like the area of carpeting or wallpaper needed to renovate a room, how many boxes of tiles are needed for a particular bathroom, the number of square meters of concrete required for a foundation, etc. Area and size inputs can produce outputs via a calculator that end up directly in a shopping cart.

Typical lead form elements:

• Name
• Surname
• Email address
• Phone number
• Date and time (for booking meetings or consultations)

Calculator with a lead form example

This wedding budget calculator is a perfect tool that lets a wedding planner generate not just any, but qualified leads.

A prospect that comes to your website and fills out your form without any idea of how much your service would cost or evaluating their own capabilities in many cases only wastes precious time.

A calculator like this helps such a visitor count the budget, set the right expectations, and book a consultation on a serious note.

Qualified Leads vs. Unqualified Leads

There’s a lot of talk about lead generation but a very important thing is to understand what kind of leads you are dealing with.

Unqualified leads: prospects who collided with your product or service but are not yet sure whether they need it, what would be the appropriate budget they could spend on it, etc. They haven’t thought about it much didn't do any research on alternatives and probably haven't defined the specific problem they’re trying to solve. If you collect such kinds of leads, you cannot expect them to convert very quickly

Qualified leads: These are the prospects that you want to focus on. Qualified leads are the ones who are almost ready for conversion. They are already in the decision-making stage, so they probably know their alternatives and either want a final consultation that would help them decide or maybe know that they want to buy from you. The problem is clear to them so what you need to focus on is top-notch customer support, instant answers to their questions and making their user experience as smooth as possible.

Qualified Sales Leads with interactive calculators

I would suggest winning user trust by giving them free results and pushing them to subscribe for additional benefits like discounts, insights, support, etc. It works and makes for leads that are based on quality, not just quantity.

It’s clear that we build and add calculators to our websites mostly to generate more sales leads or increase conversion rates. But this is just a tool and the idea is to get more customers, achieve exceptional customer success, get customers to become brand ambassadors, etc. Ultimately, this is what will make for a more sustainable business model.

In this regard, calculators as lead-generating tools should improve the customer experience, and under no circumstances should they be building barriers.

So consider offering uncertain or even fearful customers a fair trade: you give them upfront answers and they will return the favor by adding their email or filling out a submission form.

Takeaways

Lead generation is a broad topic and highly relevant to all businesses. And of course, there are many tools in many forms that can help you reach your goals.

Choose interactive calculators as YOUR lead generation tool if you:

• Don’t have a big budget for an all-in-one tool
• Need a quick setup
• Need automatization
• Your customers need personalized calculations
• You want to save time on customer consultations