The majority of marketers are happy to see the revival of live trade exhibitions. Few marketing strategies build relationships and produce more qualified leads than trade shows. Now that we’re talking about these events again, you might be wondering how to get the most out of them and make sure your money is well spent.
An introduction to common traps for the return to in-person
To approach trade exhibitions in 2022 in the best possible way, evaluate your organization’s performance. Are you just starting over with your pre-pandemic procedures? Or are you adopting a contemporary strategy? While trade exhibitions offer numerous distinctive networking possibilities, most businesses just skim the surface of their ROI potential due to antiquated thinking.
The standard business card is one illustration. These business cards were either still in the hands of their sales personnel when the show ended or hastily entered into an excel file that is awaiting upload into the CRM. Thinking from the past isn’t quite relevant in the modern, digital environment. Here are a few of the issues that trade show marketers frequently encounter following an event:
- Data that is inconsistently uploaded to the CRM
- Slow follow-ups make warm and scorching leads cool off
- Due to conflicting data, the ROI analysis was inaccurate.
- dealing with many new lead retrieval companies
- demonstrating the event’s overall influence and success
Since there is a large chance of human mistake and missing important information anytime data is submitted manually, leading marketers are increasingly saying goodbye to manual methods. What can be done, then, to stop trade show marketers from having to start from scratch every time? By focusing on the three stages of the trade show marketing process, improving strategy, and embracing more digital solutions.
Enhancing your approach for more ROI
Data were briefly discussed above. In order to demonstrate the value of your trade show, it is essential to improve data visibility. Let’s delve a little more into this. With the correct technology today, discussions may simply be transferred from the floor to your sales team at the touch of a button.
Whether you need assistance with pre-event meetings, on-site lead capture, post-event reporting, or off-site networking activities following the show, you require trade show solutions. Let’s examine how to make the most of your trade show approach throughout these stages:
Before the trade show
- Draw knowledgeable booth visitors: Planners and marketers invest a significant sum of money setting up their booths with the ideal lighting, furniture, and setting in order to draw customers. Dependence on foot traffic is risky. Get a head start on the competition and plan appointments with specific time windows before the event to attract qualified attendance.
- Schedule your own appointments: Giving participants the option to self-schedule appointments in advance of the event via a shareable link for promotions is another approach to drive more visitors to your booth. The ability to create and amend meetings on someone else’s behalf, see them by location, and control approvals for executive-level meetings, lodging reservations, and email sending are all features of appointment scheduling systems.
The trade show’s duration
- Instant lead capture The first part of the struggle is making the appointments. For your event ROI, tracking and collecting leads on the spot is essential. The main criteria here is speed and efficiency. Giving your sales professionals and SMEs at the trade show the ability to use lead capture devices on the show floor to immediately gather and manage leads is one approach to accomplish this. They will be able to qualify leads, check-in attendance, view meetings, take notes, and share e-literature right away.
- Three techniques for obtaining leads: You may quickly collect leads using the aforementioned lead capturing technology in three different ways: by scanning business cards, QR codes, and bar codes, and by manually entering them into the app. It only takes a few minutes to scan badges or business cards with your smartphone, email them directly to the sales staff, and finish the process. Still hot leads, please.
After the trade show
- Technology integration for marketing: Disparate, or “point solutions,” can occasionally undermine all the effort you’ve put into digitising your lead generation and automating your business operations. To ensure that your data flows smoothly across your tech stack, trade show technology with an integration hub can assist you in creating the MarTech integrations that are acceptable for your company or organisation. Data that cannot be located has no value.
- Actionable insights after the show: A post-mortem is required after the performance is finished. Asking yourself the following questions can help you get ready: Why was a particular meeting significant? What was the attendee’s area of interest? Why should they be advanced to the following pipeline stage? You may compare the revenue made from attending or organising multiple trade shows using trade show solutions that include event reporting and insights, which will help you find the answers to these questions and future-proof your plan.
Conclusion
Streamline your processes to be fully prepared and keep one step ahead as you plan and strategy for future in-person and hybrid events. The shift to a digital-first society has had a big impact on both online and offline events.
