Using Digital Strategies to Boost Your Trade Show Marketing Efforts
On today’s episode of SmartBug on Tap, I’m talking about how you can maximize your trade show marketing efforts by actually incorporating digital strategies. During an era where nearly every marketing innovation is digital, there is still one traditional mainstay I see in B2B marketing — the trade show.
But live event marketing campaigns, such as trade shows, are expensive endeavors. How much of the money allocated to these events is wasted? How could marketers use cost-effective digital marketing campaigns to improve the overall ROI of these efforts?
That’s what we’re talking about today. I’m going to give you 4 tactical tips to help you reduce budget waste, become more efficient, and successfully transition from scanning a live lead at a trade show to converting that lead into a sales opportunity.
Tip #1: Prioritize Your Booth Leads
You should never wait until after the trade show to architect your lead routing strategy.
Based on your ideal customer profile and the marketing persona research that you’ve done, your on-site booth team should easily be able to flag your most qualified sales-ready leads.
Once you’ve flagged those leads, a proven engagement tactic is to provide a reward for scheduling a demo or a sales call. The reward could be something they get on-site or the following week when they’re back in the office.
If providing a reward is not an option, those leads should immediately be assigned to a sales rep so they can be contacted personally.
The bottom line is: You don’t want to send those leads into the CRM abyss.
Tip #2: Immediately Follow Up With All Leads
Within 24 hours of when your lead visited your booth, you need to send a short, non-sales-focused email to remind them who you are.
Keep in mind they probably spoke to hundreds of people the same day they spoke with your team. That’s why you need to remind them who you are and what value you can offer them.
The perfect follow-up email should have the following elements:
- Keep it to four to five sentences. Max. This is not the time to share your mission, your vision, and your values. Think of this initial communication as a no-scroll zone.
- Exude gratitude. Thank your booth visitors for the time they spent with your team. They talked to a lot of people, and had a lot of options — so give them thanks.
- Include a photo. They’ve likely been inundated with sales messages by this point. So, remind them who you are by including a picture of your team at the booth. This will help them recall how much they liked you.
- Incorporate a call to action. Remember this is not a sales email, so consider adding a simple button for them to opt in for a grand prize drawing. Or maybe include an offer of educational value with a free piece of premium content. You want to make a deposit before you make a withdrawal. You want them to click so you can start tracking their engagement on your website. But make sure it’s value first.
Tip #3: Nurture Your Trade Show Leads Uniquely
It’s common for marketers to dump a spreadsheet of hundreds of trade show leads into their CRM or their marketing automation platform. We tend to treat those event leads like any other, except we note the lead source as that trade show.
Avoid this mistake by suppressing those leads from your standard nurture sequences. Instead, enroll them in a more personalized, event-specific workflow, especially as you’re beginning your relationship with them.
The great thing about trade show leads is that you actually know a lot more about them than you probably realize. That information can help support them on their buyer’s journey.
For example, one of the things you know is that their company actually has a budget for professional development. Professional development is, unfortunately, one of the first line items cut in the company’s budget. So, if a company is investing in its people, the company is likely experiencing financial health.
Second, you know that the theme, or purpose, of the conference has resonated with them. The theme of the conference itself should help guide your future communications with those event leads.
Finally, you can find out what their favorite sessions were at the conference. Ask them about this while they’re at the booth and have your team enter that information right into your lead skimming device. This information will provide further insight into their pain points, and it will arm your sales team with relevant references.
Tip #4: Implement Facebook Custom Audiences to Retarget Leads
We tend to rely on email and our SDR team, but those aren’t the only marketing channels we have to engage trade show leads after the event has passed.
Facebook’s Custom Audiences tool allows you to import your trade show lead list, so you can serve those individuals with ads that remind them of your value and speak to the pain they’re experiencing.
The greatest mistake we make as marketers is investing heavily in pre-event and on-site trade show planning but then washing our hands of the event once it’s done and the leads are in our system. Until those leads are qualified or disqualified, and until the qualified leads convert to a sales opportunity, our work is not yet done.
So, what trade show marketing techniques are working at your company? I would love to know! Tweet me or SmartBug at @jenspencer or @smartbugmedia.
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Originally published at www.smartbugmedia.com.
