Integrating Lead Retrieval into Your Trade Show Marketing Strategy
By Trevor Bingham
Trade shows and events provide an excellent opportunity for businesses to network, showcase their products and services, and collect leads. However, simply participating in a trade show or event is not enough to maximize its potential. A well-planned and integrated trade show marketing strategy is critical for success. This includes incorporating lead retrieval into your overall plan.
Lead retrieval is the process of collecting and storing lead information from trade shows and events. By integrating lead retrieval into your trade show marketing strategy, you can ensure that you are making the most of your investment and maximizing your return on investment (ROI).
Here are some tips for integrating lead retrieval into your trade show marketing strategy:
Determine Your Lead Collection Goals
Before you can effectively integrate lead retrieval into your trade show marketing strategy, you need to determine your lead collection goals. This could include the number of leads you want to collect, the types of leads you want to target, and the information you want to gather. Having clear lead collection goals will help you determine the best lead retrieval solution for your needs.
Choose the Right Lead Retrieval Solution
There are many lead retrieval solutions available, and it’s important to choose one that meets your specific needs. Consider factors such as cost, ease of use, compatibility with your existing systems, and the ability to collect and store the information you need.
Integrate Lead Retrieval with Your Marketing Automation Platform
Lead retrieval data should easily import into your marketing automation platform. This will allow you to store lead information in one central location and automate follow-up efforts. The integration of lead retrieval data and marketing automation will help you streamline the lead collection process and improve the efficiency of your follow-up efforts.
Train Your Staff on Lead Retrieval
Your staff is critical to the success of your lead retrieval efforts. Ensure that they are trained on the lead retrieval system you choose and understand the importance of collecting accurate and consistent lead information.
Develop a Lead Follow-Up Plan
Having a well-defined lead follow-up plan is essential to maximizing the ROI of your trade show investment. Your lead follow-up plan should include a timeline for following up with leads, a process for prioritizing leads, and a system for tracking lead progress.
In conclusion, integrating lead retrieval into your trade show marketing strategy is essential for success. By determining your lead collection goals, choosing the right lead retrieval solution, integrating lead retrieval with your marketing automation platform, training your staff, and developing a lead follow-up plan, you can maximize the ROI of your trade show investments and achieve your lead collection goals.
Check out our related blog posts
What is Lead Capture, and How Can it Benefit Trade Show Exhibitors?
What Lead Retrieval Will Look Like Post-Pandemic
Triple Play
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10 Tips On How To Attract Exhibitors To Your Event… And Keep Them Coming Back
by Alex Filmer
Are you struggling to attract exhibitors to your event? Do you find it challenging to keep them coming back? If so, you’re not alone. Many event organizers face this dilemma, but with the right strategies, you can turn things around and make your event a must-attend for exhibitors. In this blog, we take a deep dive into how to attract exhibitors to your event via sales and marketing opportunities that you may not have thought of.
The following tips will help your exhibitors get more of the right buyers in their booth, develop higher-quality sales leads, and streamline follow-up. Give your exhibitors the best opportunity to close more deals and get a return on their investment.
Pre-Show Promotion
1. One of the key elements of attracting exhibitors is creating a strong pre-show promotion strategy. This involves using marketing tools that give exhibitors access to the right types of buyers. By providing exhibitors with the ability to identify and target potential attendees based on criteria such as product interest, geographic location, and buying authority, you can help them drive more traffic to their booth and increase their chances of success.
2. Sponsorship opportunities are another effective way to attract exhibitors to your show. Consider offering banner ads on the attendee registration website, dashboard, and confirmation pages. These ads can be tailored to different types of registrants, helping exhibitors reach their target audience more effectively.
Onsite Promotion
Once exhibitors are at your event, it’s essential to provide them with opportunities for onsite promotion.
3. Name badge ads, for example, can be a highly effective way for exhibitors to advertise their products or services to attendees. Also, with on-demand printing, the ads can be highly targeted. Ads can be served dynamically based on buyer type, meaning buyers who are looking for hammers, for example, will only see an ad from a company selling hammers. The number of sponsorships you can sell here is virtually limitless.
4. Digital content distribution applications are another great tool for onsite promotion. By allowing attendees to scan QR codes on exhibitors’ signage around the convention hall, exhibitors can automatically send attendees emails with their content. Exhibitors can also get a list of the attendees who scanned their QR code, giving them more sales opportunities. It’s exposure, content distribution, and lead generation all in one solution.
5. Finally, a New Product Showcase gives exhibitors an excellent way to show off their new product while at the same time creating a fun experience for attendees. You can allow attendees to cast their vote for the best products and then share the results with the respective exhibitors. This can be administered with QR code signage and a barcode scanner. Which in turn provides exhibitors with the contact details of the attendees who voted for their product thus giving exhibitors even more sales opportunities.
Onsite Sales Tools: Lead Capture
To attract exhibitors to your event, you need to provide them with the right tools to capture leads and follow up effectively.
6. Electronic lead capture products are the modern form of capturing business cards, but offer 10x the value. Be sure your lead capture provider has a complete arsenal of products and services to address the needs of your entire audience: Smartphone app, Tablet rental, Kiosk rental, and API rental. These products allow exhibitors to capture lead information digitally and qualify leads more effectively, increasing their chances of closing deals.
7. Sales lead information (which is provided to the exhibitor when they scan a badge with lead capture or an attendee scans the exhibitor’s QR code) should also include the attendee demographic details, such as product of interest, budget, and buying authority, that are captured during the registration process. This information is invaluable when following up on leads.
8. Leads that are qualified are significantly more likely to close according to Industry studies. Make sure your lead capture products put a premium on lead qualification. Exhibitors need to be able to qualify leads extensively with their own custom action codes (ie, hot lead) or survey questions. Some marketing teams won’t even load a lead into their CRM if it’s not qualified.
9. CRM systems are used by a massive amount of companies these days. Lead capture products should integrate with exhibitors CRMs, allowing sales lead data to flow between the two systems in real time. This allows the exhibitors marketing team to begin the lead analysis, targeting, and follow up process immediately.
10. Most exhibitors follow up on their sales leads via email, but the problem with this is it’s not fast enough, according to industry studies. An email follow up function should be built into the lead capture app so exhibitors can follow up immediately after they have a conversation with the buyer. It’s a known fact that buyers are more likely to purchase from the vendor who makes contact with them first.
Conclusion
In conclusion, attracting exhibitors to your event requires a multi-faceted approach that includes strong pre-show promotion, engaging onsite promotion tactics, and effective onsite sales tools. By providing exhibitors with the right tools and opportunities, you can help them attract more attendees to their booth, generate higher-quality leads, and ultimately, achieve a higher return on investment. So, next time you’re planning an event, remember these tips and watch as exhibitors flock to your event. We hope you found these tips and techniques useful and are able to put some of them into practice for your next event. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at marketing@csireg.com.
Check out our related blog posts
What is Lead Capture, and How Can it Benefit Trade Show Exhibitors?
What Lead Retrieval Will Look Like Post-Pandemic
Triple Play
Stay up to date by connecting with us on social media:
What Is Lead Capture, and How Can It Benefit Trade Show Exhibitors?
by Melissa Ruisz Nazario
Gone are the days of collecting business cards in a fishbowl at events and trade shows. Savvy exhibitors now use lead retrieval, or lead capture, a method for collecting sales leads electronically on and off the show floor using an app that runs on their own smartphone or tablet.
How does it work?
Every attendee is required to wear a name badge while walking on the show floor, and it comes equipped with a QR code containing all of their contact and demographic information. Exhibitors using the lead capture app can scan the attendee’s QR code, giving them instant access to a wealth of data, including:
- That attendee’s name, email address, phone number, and job function
- Valuable demographic information, which may include buying authority and what products and services the attendee is interested in
- Company name, address, business sector, number of employees, and annual contract spend
The fortune is in the follow-up
Did you know that research shows that 50% of buyers choose the vendor who responds first?1 With a lead capture app like CompuLEAD, all of your scanned badge data gets saved to an organized, digital master lead list. This means your sales team can focus on being the first to follow up with hot leads from the show, instead of wasting time keying in contact information and piecing together notes.
Lead capture apps have become so sophisticated that they can now also perform additional functions, such as:
- Viewing full lead contact information in real time, so there’s no need to wait until the show is over to start calling on or marketing to prospective customers
- Sending electronic marketing literature, sell sheets, and videos to attendees directly from the app
- Qualifying leads by adding tags and notes about the type of lead, product interest, and what was discussed at the show, enabling a warmer, more personable follow-up call
- Conducting marketing research with survey questions
Not all lead capture is equal
It’s important to note that although there may be other QR code readers and third-party lead capture apps that can obtain a badge’s ID number and first and last name, in most cases only the official app, selected by show management, will give you the detailed contact, company, and demographic information we mentioned.
That is because the data is usually encrypted by the event registration provider, so you would need to purchase additional lead conversion software or APIs to unlock the rest of the lead information, if that is even available for the show. Oftentimes, this process ends up being more expensive and cumbersome than simply purchasing the show’s official lead capture app.
If given the choice between:
- Scrambling after the show to put together a call list for the sales team from scribbled notes and business cards, or
- Having all of your lead information and notes captured digitally in one, done-for-you organized list so your sales team can follow up as soon as the badge is scanned
Which exhibitor would you rather be?
We hope you found this information useful. If you have any questions or comments about this blog, please send us an email at marketing@csireg.com.
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