Forms are part of LeadSimple's Marketing Automation add-on. If you aren't familiar with that add-on, check out this article for a brief overview of what it is and how it works before continuing. 

This article will show you how to build a basic form. After you finish learning how to build a basic form go here to learn how to add more customized options to your form for more visual flare and control.

(Note: Building a form is easy. Coming up with a lead magnet for that form isn't so easy. This article explains how to build a basic form, but if you want lead magnet ideas, contact us at support@leadsimple.com and we'll be happy to help.)
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First, click on the settings icon in the upper right corner of your leads page. 

Make sure you have the correct lead type (Owners, Tenants, Etc.) you want this form to import leads into selected in the upper left drop-down menu.

Then select the Forms and Site Tracking page in the left sidebar.

Next, click "Create Form".
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The form builder is split into two parts. The right-hand side contains all the settings for the form. We'll refer to that as the settings panel. The left side shows a preview of how the form will look on your website and we'll call that the preview panel. Note that if you want to change text, colors, fields or button alignment, you can only do that from the settings panel. Nothing can be edited directly from the preview panel.

There are three categories for all the forms settings. Each category is grouped under its own tab. 

It can displayed in the center of the screen (that's the default placement setting), in the bottom right corner or as a full width form floating at the bottom of the screen. 

Now in the Design tab, we'll add a brief title and description, explaining the content that we're offering. You can edit the title and description near the top of the Design settings.

In this example, we're offering prospects a weekly email with information about what property managers do and why they should consider hiring one, so we'll write a title and description which reflects that. 

In this example, we want to capture the lead's name in addition to their email address. To do that, scroll down the Design tab until you get to the Fields section.

Next, click "Add" and select "Name" from the list of options. This adds a name field to the form. Other fields include phone number, address, and comments. Note that all fields you add to the form are required.

Since the purpose of a lead magnet form is to offer and deliver some kind of content to prospects, there needs to be a way to deliver that content to them. In LeadSimple, this should be one of your stages and workflows. Since these forms are designed to capture cold prospects and not warm leads, you should create a stage for this form under the "Prospects" status on the Stages and Workflows page. See this article for instructions on creating stages and workflows. 

In our example, we've created a stage called "Why Choose a Property Manager". Inside that stage we added 6 email steps with templates attached, each template containing info to help prospects answer that question.

To link our form to this stage, we'll click on the Actions tab (the third one) in the settings panel. The first dropdown is the one we'll need to change. 

If you are creating a new form, you'll notice this dropdown is highlighted red, indicating that it's a required field to create the form (you can't save a form until a stage is selected). 

Next, we'll click the dropdown and select the "Why Choose a PM" stage from the list. 

Finally, click "Save" in the bottom right corner and you're done building your first form. For instructions on embedding the form on your website, see this article. 

Now that you've learned how to build a basic form, check out this article to customize it even more, allowing you to choose when and where it is displayed, as well as font, color, and image options to give your form more flare.
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