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24 Best Free Marketing & Sales Icons for Your Website or App
I’ve abandoned numerous websites that were crammed with excessive text and bulky images due to their challenging navigation and overly bookish appearance.
Being both a marketer and a customer in one, I naturally lean towards using icons. They are visually appealing, convey information and intent instantly, and make clicking effortless.
But not all businesses use icons to their full potential. So, I scrutinized dozens of websites and apps and talked to industry experts who’ve witnessed the “iconicness” of icons to gather their insights.
Explore how to use marketing and sales icons in the best ways possible. We’ll cover:
Why use icons in marketing and sales materials?
5 Examples of Marketing and Sales Icons
7 Best Practices for Using Marketing and Sales Icons
When Not to Use Icons
Free Marketing Icons
Free Sales Icons
Why use icons in marketing and sales materials?
Photography and typography are limited in business communication, and generic stock photos rarely align with the accompanying text. Icons, in turn, make your messaging unique, appealing, and memorable. They facilitate the understanding of ideas and concepts.
Let’s explore icons’ use cases in marketing and sales materials.
1. Icons make stuff easy to understand.
The brain processes graphic symbols much faster than actual words by giving them meaning and turning them into words. When we see an icon, it helps us understand the intended meaning faster — making complex concepts and terms easy to digest.
For instance, a checklist or a chart icon in sales presentations helps visually represent goals achieved and company growth.
2. Icons boost engagement.
Icons encourage and improve engagement. Adding clickable icons on social media, websites, or apps significantly increases users’ interaction with them. Similarly, when you add them to product guides, promotional videos, or sales playbooks, they bring in more responses and encourage readers to interact.
Some icons to use for engagement can be for simply displaying contacts, details, and info icons.
3. Icons help cut down on text.
Icons save space where text is excessively wordy. For example, if you’re listing the nutritional components of a product on a product guide, using icons for stating categories like 🍗 for protein, 🍞 for carbs, and 🍬 for sugar saves space and gets the point across creatively.
4. Icons support the text.
Icons provide additional context quickly and make the message more engaging and interactive. The “envelope” icon, along with the message “Contact us,” adds an inviting touch to an email or a web page.
Likewise, the “checkmark” icon grabs the target audience’s attention when used in pop-ups — see Semrush’s example.
5. Icons break up the text.
Nothing makes a sales or marketing report as boring as long, continuous pages of text. Breaking it up with icons adds a visual appeal and conveys your message better than generic stock photos. They’re also easier on the eyes, which makes them an excellent replacement for heavy images.
Learn how to make sales performance reports in Excel interesting with this video.
6. Icons set your brand apart.
Using branded icons across different platforms and streamlining them with your marketing and sales materials helps you differentiate your brand from competitors and makes your material stand out.
Lavender.ai, an AI-powered tool for enhancing your sales emails, chose the “wizard” icon to be recognizable and memorable. Visit Lavender’s website, and the next time you think of an AI writing assistant, Lavender will pop up in your head. It happened to me at the time Lavender was just taking off.
7. Icons are universally understood.
You don’t need to translate an icon into a bunch of languages. They have a universal appeal and are instantly recognizable. Everyone knows a “bulb” icon means a “good idea.” A “star” icon shows certifications, and the ol’ right arrow button prompts you to keep going.
Get 30 customizable image icons for free.
Why are icons important in branding?
Icons become a part of your brand’s identity, set you apart, and facilitate brand recall. They also provide a consistent visual element across different platforms, reinforcing your brand identity and creating a uniform look and feel.
This also works for personal branding or employee advocacy when used on a large scale.
Roman Pikalenko’s LinkedIn page makes for a great example. He uses the flamingo icon in his marketing materials, name, sales deck, posts, and even on his shirt. If you’ve stumbled upon Roman’s page, chances are high you started associating 🦩with him.
When used on apps and websites, they improve user experience by making navigation and understanding of features and services more intuitive — making your brand user-friendly.
💡Pro Tip: Take the time to design well-structured and high-quality icons. I often associate a company that uses low-quality or poorly designed icons with a lack of authenticity and dedication to quality.
Learn how to design icons for your brand with this video:
5 Examples of Marketing and Sales Icons
Icons are used on websites and apps in a multitude of ways for countless reasons. Explore the prominent five.
1. HubSpot Icons
HubSpot offers a range of free icons for you to use as you please. Use them on websites, apps, and marketing and sales materials for the range of benefits they offer.
The clock icon, for instance, can be used to show time sensitivity on a sale, for scheduling meetings and appointments, for different time zones, or even as a loading icon. The “chat typing” icon is widely used on websites and apps for chat options, comments, feedback, sharing, notifications, and, of course, text messages.
2. Sharing Icons
Be it on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest, I find “sharing” icons incredibly convenient. They allow me to effortlessly share enjoyable content (like this post, wink wink 😉).
Add “sharing” icons to your website to allow users to distribute content across their own social networks. Plus, you get valuable data on popular content and platforms where the content is being shared. Use these insights to refine your content strategy.
3. Engagement Icons
These icons are commonly used for signing up, feedback, following, bookmarking, and downloading. They encourage website visitors to express approval, sign up, or ask questions.
For instance, Cognism uses the envelope icon to prompt the newsletter sign-ups.
4. Under Construction Icons
I particularly appreciate it when companies go the extra mile to include an icon when a page or website is under construction. Instead of feeling disappointed, I look forward to when the page goes up again.
5. Storytelling
You can tell a story, or you can show it. Many companies now use icons to show processes and their brand story using icons. It sets you apart and looks appealing. But the best part is that icon usage makes your brand more likable and memorable.
7 Best Practices for Using Marketing and Sales Icons
Regarding branding, communication, navigation, and relatability, icons are used for almost any project from logo designs to CTAs to infographics.
Connor Gillivan, Growth expert and CEO of Trio SEO says, “These seemingly small graphics are communication powerhouses, capable of transcending language barriers and instantly conveying messages in an aesthetically pleasing manner.”
Gillivan notes icons resonate with visual appeal and direct comprehension, making them integral for platforms where brevity and impact are essential.
So, we know icons bring lots of value to your brand, but how do marketing and sales gurus get the best out of them?
Read these tips to find out.
1. Accentuate your services.
Use icons to creatively showcase your services without appearing pushy or overly assertive.
“We utilized marketing icons on our website’s landing page to highlight our core services: AI-Powered Search Marketing, AI-Powered Content Marketing, and AI-Powered CRO. Each icon was designed to resonate with the service it represented,” says Sergey Solonenko, founder and CMO of Algocentric Digital Consultancy.
The use of icons is also a great solution for apps where space is limited. Uber relies on icons to succinctly convey information about its services and features with minimal text on their app. These icons cover a wide range of services while maintaining a simplistic and elegant look.
2. Highlight features on ecommerce websites and apps.
Use icons on your ecommerce website and app to make the shopping experience quick and enjoyable. They provide customers with a one-click solution for giving a rating, viewing their cart, or deciding on a payment method.
eBay uses icons to make their customer shopping experience easy. Customers can add a product to their wishlist or see the available payment options without going anywhere else.
3. Highlight information and services in emails.
Stuffing your emails with text is the fastest way to ensure unsubscriptions. Use icons for supporting links where you don’t want to use excessive text or in your email signature.
But make sure you add icons the right way. Adeline Knight, SEO Content Manager at Icons8, suggests using a special size.
“Maintain the right size. In email marketing, having undersized icons might lead customers to overlook key offers or information,” Knight says. “For better engagement, use distinct sizes like a 48x48px shopping cart icon. If resizing is essential, always scale in multiples, such as from 24x24px to 48x48px, to ensure visual quality.”
Look at this welcome email from Slack. It seamlessly incorporates these strategies to guide the reader without text.
4. Simplify your infographics.
Infographics can be hard on the eyes and confusing when stuffed with text and heavy images. Substitute icons for words or legends when labeling chart columns or bars, as well as for numbers and bullet points.
See the example by Insider Intelligence; they’ve managed to get that balance.
5. Simplify complex concepts.
Icons help you support complex ideas or concepts by linking the outcome (an icon) with supportive text. For example, Fingerprint for Success visualizes their business solutions to facilitate the understanding of each.
6. Show your commitment to a cause.
Small details account for big impacts. Show your commitment to social causes with relevant icons. Organic skin care cosmetics manufacturer Meow Meow Tweet astonishes with the creative use of icons to highlight their core values.
7. Provide structure.
Icons give your information a clear hierarchy, save screen space compared to text labels, and make for a responsive design.
Species in Pieces, an educational website dedicated to endangered species, creatively employs icons to inspire exploration and engagement with vital information. Icons make them look sophisticated and minimalistic.
“Prioritize alignment. Aligning icons evenly and spacing them consistently aids in creating a clean, organized layout that’s visually pleasing, making information more accessible and digestible for customers,” adds Adeline.
When Not to Use Icons
Icons have many benefits, yet there are instances where the use of icons may not be the best option.
Using icons without clear text labels may hinder accessibility for blind individuals who rely on screen readers.
In formal documents (like legal contracts or academic research papers), using icons may appear unprofessional or out of place.
In technical or scientific diagrams (where precision and clarity are a must), use technical symbols (not icons) to avoid confusion.
Research the cultural context when targeting a diverse audience. Icons that are innocuous in one culture might carry different meanings or connotations in another.
Icons might come across as insensitive or trivializing when dealing with serious, sensitive, or emotionally charged subjects.
Free Marketing Icons
Designing the perfect marketing and sales icons takes a lot of time and resources; explore free marketing icons from these awesome companies.
Use free marketing icons for websites, social media, email marketing, print materials, apps, presentations, advertising, infographics, product packaging, and marketing collaterals.
Icons8
Flaticon
Smashing Magazine
Iconfinder
Freepik
Iconmonstr
Behance
Font Awesome
Icon Archive
Captain Icon
Icon Scout
Dry Icons
Free Sales Icons
Use free sales icons for presentations, reports, emails, CRM systems, training materials, pitches, invoices and payments, promotions, and sales collaterals.
IconArchive
Flaticons
Noun Project
Font Awesome
Icons8
Iconfinder
Icon Packs
Pngtree
UXwing
Icon Archive
Icons-Icons
Very Icon
Icons Enhance Branding Efforts
Blow away your customers by placing marketing and sales icons strategically and using them to enhance visual appeal, streamline information, and add value to your brand.
Provide a kick-ass user experience and boost engagement with high-quality, creative, and smartly placed icons.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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How to Create a Lead Generation Website: 9 Simple Optimizations
Optimizing your website to generate leads is a no-brainer. However, it’s not as simple as throwing a “Click Here” button on your home page and watching the leads pour in.
Instead, marketers and designers need to take a more strategic approach. In this post, we’ll go over some quick ways that actually work to optimize your website for lead generation.
Table of Contents
How to Create a Lead Generation Website
How to Increase Leads on Your Website
How to Create a Lead Generation Website
To understand how to optimize our website, we’ll have to first gain a basic understanding of the lead generation process.
What components are at play when a casual website visitor turns into a lead?
The lead generation process typically starts when a website visitor clicks on a call-to-action (CTA) located on one of your site pages or blog posts. That CTA leads them to a landing page, which includes a form used to collect the visitor’s contact information.
Once the visitor fills out and submits the form, they are then led to a thank-you page. (Learn about this process in more detail in this post.)
Now that we’ve gone over the basics of lead generation, we can get down to the details. Here are the steps to follow to create a lead generation website from scratch.
1. Start with a goal.
Before you build your lead generation website, consider what your goal for it is. Your main goal is, of course, to generate leads, but get even more specific.
What do you want visitors to do on your website? Do you want to educate the buyer on your product or industry?
Then, you’ll probably want to create a free resource like an ebook or whitepaper that they can download by filling out a form and submitting their contact information.
Or perhaps you want to increase the number of people who sign up for your product. In this case, you’ll need to create compelling landing pages and sign-up forms with strong calls-to-action.
Consider what your lead generation goals are to better plan which elements to look for in your lead generation website.
2. Find a CMS tool.
When creating a lead generation website, you have a clear goal: increase leads to your business. That means you should look for a CMS tool that makes it easy to capture and convert leads.
The best CMS tool for lead generation is one that has built-in optimizations that are geared toward lead generation. It should have forms — sign-up forms, contact forms, and more — email marketing capabilities, live chat, and built-in analytics so you can track and measure your lead generation efforts.
And if you’re not a designer or don’t have access to one on your team, you’ll also want to look for a CMS tool that’s easy to use. Look for one with drag-and-drop capabilities or built-in themes.
These features will make it easy to put together a functional and attractive website without having any website development or coding experience.
3. Build a landing page.
Once you have your lead generation website set up, it’s time to build your first landing page. Your CMS tool should make it easy to set up and optimize a landing page that converts.
A few key elements your landing page must have include:
Compelling headline
A few sentences of copy
Bullet points that outline the key benefits
Product image
A strong CTA button
How to Increase Leads on Your Website
Now that you have your lead generation website set up, let’s unpack nine simple ways to increase leads on your website with these optimizations.
1. Add forms to the pages that get the most traffic.
Once you have a website, it’s important to benchmark your current state of lead generation before you begin so you can track your success and determine the areas where you most need improvement.
Some of your pages might make excellent lead generators, and you don’t even realize it.
To start, conduct an audit of where most of your online traffic and outreach comes from — your lead generators. Here are some common places a business might get visitors:
Email marketing. Traffic might come from users who click through to your website from one of your emails.
Social media. Traffic might come from users who engage in a campaign through one of your social media profiles.
Live chat. Traffic might come in the form of users who reach out to your customer service team through a live chat window on your website.
Blog posts. Traffic might come from your highest-performing blog posts.
Once you identify where your leads are coming from, you‘ll want to make sure the pages they’re landing on are doing everything they can to nurture a visitor’s interest.
For example, let’s say you use an analytics tool to track your leads.
If you realize most of your potential leads are clicking on inbound links to your website from your LinkedIn page, your next step is to update the pages they’re visiting with content that keeps them on and engaging with your website.
On your most visited website pages, add long-form content that visitors can access through forms that solicit their contact information.
2. Measure the performance of each lead generator.
Test how each of your existing lead generators is contributing to your business using a tool like Website Grader, which evaluates your lead generation sources (including landing pages and CTAs) and provides feedback on ways to improve your existing content.
You can also compare landing pages that are doing well with landing pages that aren’t doing as well.
For example, let’s say that you get 1,000 visits to Landing Page A, and 10 of those people filled out the form and converted into leads. For Landing Page A, you would have a 1% conversion rate.
Let’s say you have another landing page, Landing Page B, that gets 50 visitors to convert into leads for every 1,000 visits. That would be a 5% conversion rate — which is great.
Your next steps could be to see how Landing Page A differs from Landing Page B, and optimize Landing Page A accordingly.
Finally, you could try running internal reports. Evaluate landing page visits, CTA clicks, and thank-you page shares to determine which offers are performing the best, and then create more like them.
3. Optimize each step of the lead generation process.
If your visitor searched “lawn care tips” and ended up on a blog post you published called “10 Ways To Improve Your Lawn Care Regimen,” you’d better not link that blog post to an offer for a snow-clearing consultation.
Make sure your offers are related to the page they‘re on so you can capitalize on visitors’ interest in a particular subject.
As soon as a visitor lands on your website, you can start learning about their conversion path. This path starts when a visitor visits your site and ends (hopefully) with them filling out a form and becoming a lead.
Sometimes, a visitor‘s path doesn’t end with the desired goal. In those cases, you can optimize the conversion path.
How? If you want to run an A/B test on a landing page, be sure to test four key pieces of the lead gen process:
The CTAs
Use contrasting colors from your site. Keep it simple — and try a tool like Canva to create images easily, quickly, and for free. Read this blog post for ideas for types of calls-to-action (CTAs) you can test on your blog.
The Landing Pages
Inbound traffic to landing pages still works. According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, marketing teams saw inbound leads increase by 6.66% in 2022. For inspiration, here are 15 examples of well-designed landing pages you can learn from.
The Thank-You Pages
Oftentimes, it‘s the landing pages that get all the love in the lead generation process. But the thank-you page, where the visitor is led to once they submit a form on the landing page and convert into a lead, shouldn’t be overlooked.
In a HubSpot study on engagement rates of thank-you emails, these emails generated a 42% open rate and a 14% CTR.
Along with saying thank you, be sure to include a link for your new lead to actually download the offer on your thank-you page. You can also include social sharing buttons and even a form for another, related offer.
The Kickback Email
Once a visitor converts into a lead and their information enters your database, you have the opportunity to send them a kickback email, i.e., a “thank-you” email.
In the HubSpot email study referenced above, kickback emails doubled the engagement rates (opens and click-throughs) of standard marketing emails.
Use kickback emails as opportunities to include super-specific CTA and encourage sharing on email and social media.
4. Start with a basic CTA on your homepage.
If your homepage‘s design is what catches a person’s attention, the CTA is what keeps it. However, don’t bombard your visitors with an invitation to see the longest or most complex content you have.
Your homepage sits at the top of the marketing funnel and should, therefore, offer either a free trial or subscription to a recurring campaign. Consider including one of the following CTAs on the front of your website.
“Subscribe to Updates”
In general, consumers want their browsing experience to be as non-invasive as their buying experience. Oftentimes, they’re not ready to make a purchase when they first find your website.
To teach them about you with no effort or commitment on their part, invite them to subscribe to an email that notifies them of industry trends and product updates.
Personally follow up with the ones who opt to stay on this mailing list to gauge their interest and eventually turn them into marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
“Try Us for Free”
Free trials and demos are a growing company’s bread and butter. They allow you to generate demand in your business and create a contact list of leads who are currently piloting your product.
On your homepage, have your product available to try for free for a limited time using a CTA and form where you can collect their names and email addresses. At the end of each active product demo, follow up with the user to see what they thought of it.
5. Offer ebooks for download on specific blog posts.
Another non-invasive way to generate interest in your business is to create blog content that promotes an ebook or whitepaper, wherein your website visitors can learn more about the same topic they just read about on your blog.
This is where lead generation meets search engine optimization (SEO).
Blog content is your way of developing the page authority needed to rank your website on Google.
Organic visitors who come from Google are often more intent on finding solutions to a problem you can solve — making this form of lead generation quite valuable.
To start, conduct keyword research on a topic that’s relevant to your industry. Create a group of blog posts around this topic. Then, draft a report that delves much deeper into this topic.
Package this report into a PDF that your blog readers can download using their name, company, and email address.
Using the three-part conversion path described above, email each person their downloaded resource, following up with them through a kickback email that retains each lead‘s interest in the content you’ve provided them.
6. Develop a live chat service for your website.
Live chat services are increasing not just in their sophistication but in how many people expect them when learning about vendors they might want to buy from. This means you could be missing out on a major lead generator.
According to a recent HubSpot survey on live chat consumer behavior, 26% of respondents prefer using live chat over other customer service methods.
To generate leads through live chat, audit your website to see which pages your visitors spend most of their time on.
With the right development resources, you can install a live chat tool on the pages where customers need the most assistance or information.
This allows you to casually collect and log insight into their product needs while answering their questions.
Depending on who starts the chat and the questions your visitors have, you can even integrate your customer service team with your live chat feature. This ensures every website visitor has their needs addressed no matter where the conversation goes.
7. Personalize your CTAs.
Dynamic content lets you cater the experience of visiting your website to each unique web visitor.
People who land on your site will see images, buttons, and product options that are specifically tailored to their interests, the pages they‘ve viewed, or items they’ve purchased before.
Better yet, personalized calls-to-action perform 202% better than basic calls-to-action. In other words, dynamic content and on-page personalization help you generate more leads.
How does it work? Here’s an example of what your homepage may look like to a stranger:
And here’s what it would look like to a customer:
Notice the “Welcome Back” header? Visitors who see website pages that remember them from an earlier date are more inclined to stick around and start a conversation with you.
To get dynamic content (or “smart content”) on your site, you’ll need to use a tool like CMS Hub.
8. Test, test, test.
We can’t stress this part of the process enough. A/B testing can do wonders for your click-through rates.
For example, when friendbuy tried a simple A/B test on their calls-to-action, they found a 211% improvement in click-throughs on those CTAs.
Something as simple as testing out the wording of your CTA, the layout of your landing page, or the images you’re using can have a huge impact, like the one friendbuy saw. (This free e-book has fantastic tips for getting started with A/B testing.)
9. Nurture your leads.
Remember: No lead is going to magically turn into a customer. Leads are only as good as your nurturing efforts.
Place leads into a workflow once they fill out a form on your landing page so they don’t forget about you, and deliver them valuable content that matches their interest.
Lead nurturing should start with relevant follow-up emails that include great content. As you nurture them, learn as much as you can about them — and then tailor all future sends accordingly.
Here’s an example of a lead nurturing email:
This email offers the recipient some great content, guides them down the funnel, and gets to the point.
Go Forth, and Capture Leads
You depend on leads to close sales and grow your business. Using the tips above, you can take advantage of every opportunity without letting unsatisfied website visitors slip away.
Editor’s note: This post was originally written in May 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.