Lead generation and lead nurturing ranks as the most crucial and difficult aspects of marketing and sales strategy from the smallest start-ups to the largest Fortune 500 companies.
Engaging consumers, capturing leads, qualifying and nurturing prospects is an intricate journey of retargeting individuals and ultimately gaining a return on investment. Unfortunately, the logistics of the journey don't usually feature a well-marked road map to the final destination.
To capture and qualify valuable leads, many marketers strive for a specific type of engagement commonly referred to as a “hand raiser”. Essentially, a “hand raiser” is an individual who has identified themselves as a prospective customer to a specific company by providing contact information.
This definition is important because it involves an individual expressing their interest in a specific brand or product to trigger continued nurturing. Although leads may be difficult to qualify, many marketers believe in the power of “hand raisers” because they are considered “warm”.
They suggest the beginning of a relationship built on mutual interest that can be nurtured and converted into a customer. The following steps ensure you maximize every "hand raiser" opportunity:
Live settings offer an important opportunity to maximize lead collection strategy through personal engagement with consumers. A strategically located on-site event can engage a variety of consumers who are more likely to become hand raisers.
For businesses with physical products, onsite events offer opportunities to showcase and sample your products to increase possible hand raisers. Through this process, the percentage of valuable warm leads rises dramatically. A properly executed live event can generate more and higher quality hand raiser leads than more traditional marketing avenues.
Even if the strategy, location and timing of your event or marketing campaign is ideal, it is important to use digital tools to capture and track leads.
Through the use of live marketing software platform, brands can use websites, emails and onsite applications to eliminate multiple complicated vendor solutions, minimize costs, reduce time and prevent data loss. The use of connected applications offers a seamless data-driven strategy for onsite engagements so every interaction is captured and stored securely.
In a perfect world, marketers consume every possible data point to store and qualify leads. Realistically, data collection is a balancing act between asking the necessary questions to qualify leads and maintaining a short and user-friendly form.
A hand raiser is powered by getting basic information such as someone's name and email. Then, the questions involve a few non-intrusive fields to qualify incoming hand raisers.
The most effective forms use fields that identify valuable qualifier information through association instead of asking personal information. Although an association may not be completely accurate for everyone, more forms are completed because they are user-friendly.
By incorporating social amplification through services such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and e-mail, you can leverage the networks of new prospects.
As consumers share their experience and branded photos or videos from your live events, they are connecting and influencing peers. At the very least, your brand is advertised through social circles. Social amplification can be a valuable tool for hand raisers to become advocates for your brand.
Your leads are only as valuable as the communication and nurturing they receive. Depending on the information submitted, it is important to instantly follow up with hand raisers using automated, personalized and contextual emails to maximize.
These emails can vary based on the specific inputs of each individual consumer, fields such as their name or specific interests. They are effective when accompanied by a promotion that recognizes that information was submitted.
Emails and texts can be created for any type of automatic input trigger, as a standalone notification or as an extended drip campaign which nurtures hand-raisers for the long term. Although many marketers focus on the most immediate results when qualifying leads, the greatest proportion of success is found in the nurturing and return of long-term hand raisers.