9 Tested Tips to Help Your Team Book Better Meetings at Events
We’re gearing up for the fall conference season over here at SummitSync and thought we’d share the tips on how to book more meetings at conferences and trade shows.
Why are we giving away our secret sauce to scheduling top-tier meetings?
We believe the single largest driver for event success is the number and quality of meetings the sales and marketing teams schedule before the event and we want everyone to achieve the best possible return on events.
Whether you’re attending Hubspot Inbound, B2B Marketing Forum, Dreamforce or any other quickly approaching conference or event, these tested tips will help sales and marketing teams book better meetings at their next even.
1. Find Event Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn
Some event organizers will create groups for the event and other groups will be organically crowdsourced by attendees and sponsors. The Cannes for Cannesseurs group on Facebook was originally created in 2015 and has over 4k members that continue to be very active. We found out about some really cool parties happening at Cannes this year from this group which leads us to our next point…
2. Create a Valuable Piece of Content Around the Event
Having attended Cannes for years, our CEO and COO knew that everyone really comes for the parties and stays for the meetings. With help from the event Facebook groups, we put together a blog post titled “Top Cannes Parties 2017”.
We shared it with these groups and generated over 2,500 views from just two Cannes-themed Facebook groups! Because we engaged with the group on Facebook and discovered other parties happening and then shared it with that community, we were able to generate a ton of views to our blog and convert some of those views to meetings.
Creating content around events is a super easy way to schedule more meetings at conferences and trade shows.
Is a leader at your company speaking? Write about that! Is everyone always confused about the layout of this particular conference hall? Create a map. There are several unique ways to create content around events that will help your team book more meetings.
3. Create an Event PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaign EARLY
Event sponsors have been creating AdWords campaigns against event-based keywords that point to a landing page asking for a meeting for years now.
However, we’ve noticed companies tend to launch these campaigns 2–3 weeks before the event which drive up the cost of the event-based keywords. But, the rise in searches tends to start as far back as eight weeks before the event. Benefit from these early searches by creating a PPC campaign to book more meetings at the event earlier than everyone else. You’ll save money and can retarget the clicks that don’t convert in a few weeks.
4. Use SummitSync’s Meeting Automation Platform
Want to discover which events your prospects are attending so you know where to be? Our platform saves sales and marketing teams time by understanding the relevant people at every conference and trade show that they should talk to. Then, our platform makes it easy to schedule and manage all meetings and integrates directly with your CRM, eliminating the reliance on manual data entry by sales reps.
5. Use Tweetdeck to Discover + Engage with Other Attendees and Sponsors
Don’t get us wrong—There are some really great social media SaaS tools out there. But, we’ve found the best way to keep up with the boom of event hashtags right before the event is with Tweetdeck.
It’s an easy way to see who is attending and reach out to schedule meetings at the B2B events you’re attending. We also highly suggest looking for versions of the official hashtag. For example, people attending Mobile World Congress were using the official #MWC17 tag but also using #mobileworldcongress2017, #mwc, and #mobileworldcongress as well. The unofficial hashtags will have fewer people using them but are great opportunities to filter through the noise.
Don’t forget to use the event hashtag yourself so others will know you’re attending.
6. Ask Your LinkedIn Network if They Know Anyone Attending
We’ve all read (and probably posted) the “I’m attending THIS EVENT. Comment below if you’re attending or click this link to book a meeting with me!” status update on LinkedIn.
But we suggest asking your LinkedIn network if they know anyone attending. By asking if your connections know anyone attending, they’ll let you know if they’re attending while also presenting the opportunity for brand new connections. Warm introductions are the best introductions, so this really pays off.
7. Download the Event App Early
We’ve downloaded pretty much every major event app out there and our biggest critique has nothing to do with the actual event app—It’s when event attendees and sponsors have blank profiles in the app! Stand out from the crowd by uploading a nice headshot, a bio that mentions who you’re interested in meeting at the event, and a clear, correctly sized version of your logo.
Be sure to login to the app at least once per week leading up to the event to make sure you haven’t missed any connections or opportunities.
8. Search LinkedIn for “event name + event sponsors”
For example, Dmexco is quickly approaching. G2Crowd, Domo, InsideSales.com, SalesLoft and LiquidHub are a few of the sponsors of Dmexco.
If you search “dmexco + Appnexus” on LinkedIn, you’ll find posts that mention both the sponsor and the event. Generally, these posts tend to be by those attending the events asking for meetings.
It’s an easy, free way to see exactly which employee is attending an event and schedule a meeting directly with them.
9. Run Facebook Ads Targeted Towards People Who Like the Event Page
People who like the event page are more likely to have either gone in years past or are attending this year. When setting up a Facebook ad for scheduling more meetings at the event, click “narrow audience” and enter the event name. This will narrow your reach to “all other targeting details + must like event page” so you’ll limit reach to only those interested in the event enough to express social signals.
It’s great to promote a piece of content about the event in the ad to show relevancy and hopefully increase virality through social sharing. Paying to book meetings at B2B conferences and trade shows is the last thing your sales and marketing team should implement. Make sure the team is squeezing every drop of juice out of organic, unpaid ways to book more meetings.
Scheduling Better Meetings at Events = Boosted ROI
We believe in helping sales and marketing teams drive more revenue at conferences and trade shows, and believe the number one way to do that is to schedule and manage better meetings. We hope you use these tips before the next event you attend or sponsor!
Questions? Get in touch with us: hello@summitsync.com
