Depending on your brand, industry and marketing strategy your lead generation strategy will likely encounter a major decision. Are you looking for as many names as possible to fill your marketing automation and CRM systems or are you only looking for the most targeted and qualified consumers who are most likely to buy your product. The truth is that the execution of these lead generation strategies is very different. We've assembled a quick guide to help you build the perfect lead generation strategy at your next activation:
Quantity Lead Generation.
When it comes to experiential marketing activations some brands are looking for quantity. They want to generate as many leads as possible. This strategy is all about growing their marketing database for future drip marketing and email blasts. This strategy is extremely prevalent in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and beverage industries where the barriers to purchase a product are fairly low. No major qualifications are needed and the larger goal is to increase awareness, position the brand top of mind and sustain a constantly expanding marketing list. These tips will help you drive more leads at your activations:
This includes offering multiple digital touchpoints to ensure consumers can effortlessly enter their valuable information. Utilizing standalone kiosks, brand ambassador applications and online entry options adds convenience and bandwidth to engage with more consumers and leads on their terms. That doesn't mean you should over saturate activations with digital touch points, but instead remain wary of days when traffic and entries could spike due to higher attendance.
There's always going to be more give when there's more to get out of an experience. It's important to offer your prospective leads a high perceived value contesting opportunity to loosen their minds and let the data flow into your marketing database. The key is to offer multiple offers in order to cover every stage and persona of your marketing funnel. Overall, our industry averages show that contesting is by for the most popular opt-in offering.
A great way to generate mass leads is by rewarding the consumer for providing you their data. Once the data capture is complete, the consumer walks away with a piece of swag, or a bounce-back offer. The consumer doesn’t mind providing their data if it means they get to leave with a free branded keychain. The brand now has increased their database of consumers that they can communicate with. With quantity leads however, brands run the risk of false data. Consumers can fill in false data just to receive the “reward”.
Brands will then measure their spend vs the number of leads they acquired.
Quality Lead Generation.
The other approach to data capture is to target qualified leads. It’s not about collecting as many leads as possible but rather collecting leads that are most likely to lead to a sale or stay engaged as a brand advocate. These leads get added to the database where future communication with this lead is much more tailored and most likely directly from a sales representative. In this scenario a brand would measure their spend vs the number of qualified leads that turned into sales. The “reward” a lead would typically receive in this scenario would be a bounce-back offer towards the purchase.
One of the best strategies to gain deeper insights from your lead generation is by using progressive profiling. Instead of using a single large form progressive profiling entails splitting form content into multiple forms that will be served to a lead over the course of a longer experience. A great example would be to have an introductory form on an event registration website with only 3 or 4 form fields, then an onsite qualification form with 5 more intrusive fields and a final 3 or 4 field post-event survey form with any additional insights that would help you better market and qualify your lead.
When it comes to qualifying leads it's always good to follow up with relevant content for a better chance to convert those leads into a sale.
Regardless of the type of lead the brand is looking for, digital tools are the optimal way to collect leads. Digital tools allow for quick capture and quick data transfer to the brand’s CRM which allows for quick consumer follow-up. Ultimately, this helps you stay top of mind with your consumer.