A fantastic benefit of your Heatseeker experiments is all the leads that come through. These are still real ads after all! (Yet another benefit of market tests instead of recruited users!)

For instance, Heatseeker Thena Johnstone generated 17 early leads for her end-of-life asset management startup Arc Of Life, in addition to great data about her audience.

So what do you do with these leads once they come in? 

It depends on what the purpose of the experiment was. 

If the experiment is aligned to what you are currently offering live in market, you can just feed those leads straight out of your lead generation forms and into your sales and nurture funnel. 

The tests where this is most likely to be the case are:

• Value proposition test
• Benefits test

If your experiment is market testing a product or feature that’s not yet available, you’ll need a plan. 

The tests where this is most likely to be the case are:

• Feature test
• Idea test
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Here are some ideas for how to get the best value out of the leads that have responded to these ads:

• Waitlist the user: Add them to a nurturing email sequence for a waitlist.

• Come clean and pivot to user research: Ask the user for 30 minutes of their time to help you complete product design. Offer the user preference on the waitlist and/or a voucher or free sample, if needed.

• Wizard of Oz: Is there a way that you can offer the product 'by hand' or via a service rather than via your website or software? An example here would be that Heatseeker used to post experiments ‘by hand’ into a user's Campaign Manager before we were hooked into the appropriate APIs to post experiments directly.  We got to learn through the process and users still got the value of the experiments without our software being ready.
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Finally, don’t stress. Sometimes, Heatseeker users feel really uncomfortable about creating a perception in the market that they are not keeping their promises. But bear in mind: 

• Your experiments touch relatively few users in the scheme of your marketing 
• Many folks applaud “co-creation” with users in this way
• Testing and learning in market is becoming increasingly common (hallelujah!) Most of the time, when you click on a product that is sold out and they ask you to let you know when the product is back in stock… it hasn’t been manufactured yet!
• You are still helping that user with your other related great products / services / newsletters whatever else you are sharing with them

So enjoy your double dopamine hit from your Heatseeker experiments in the form of market insights and data backed growth decisions AND leads that you can market to!

Happy Heatseeking!

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