Hands up, baby hands up,
Gimme your heart, gimme, gimme your heart
Gimme gimme…

Surely I'm not the only one who remembers that from school discos in the early 80s?

Ancient history aside, getting people to put their hands up to say they're interested in something is an amazingly useful technique in marketing.

It's most obvious use is online of course.

Offer a free report that helps people with a problem: then market your full solution to the problem to the people who sign up for it.

That way you're focusing your efforts on the people you know have a problem you can help with rather than wasting time and money on people who don't. And probably annoying them in the process.

But the same principle works in so many different situations.

Have something to sell at the end of a live workshop?

Instead of an embarrassed pitch to the whole room,  ask people who are interested to stay behind for lunch or a coffee with you where you share more details and can discuss properly.

End result: you get much more interaction with the people who are interested and more sales. And you don't annoy the people who aren't interested (yet).

Do follow-up meetings with people you meet at networking events?

Instead of meeting to “see how we can help each other” (secret code for “I'm hoping you'll need my services once I explain them, but I'm scared to say”) – be direct. Offer to meet to share some ideas about a topic you're an expert on that's a problem for many of your clients.

Who will say yes to such a meeting?

People who would value those ideas – ie they have the problem.

End result: you only have meetings with people you can actually help and you get straight down to talking about the real issue.

Send emails with useful content about a variety of different topics?

Send an initial email asking if they're interested in the topic first. Then only send the content to people who raise their hand.

End result: you can send more emails and promote your services to the people who say yes because you know they're interested. And you don't annoy the people who aren't interested in that particular issue but might be in others.

The marketing pros call it segmentation. But I prefer “hands up, baby hands up…” :)