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Despite the rapid embrace of technology and digital media in business, physical trade shows remain an essential element of B2B marketers' plans.
While trade shows are usually an important opportunity for both exhibitors and visitors, utilizing marketing automation for your trade shows can result in significant income. Using marketing automation to boost efficiency in information gathering and management, as well as constant lead nurturing and accurate Rol, can provide significant results for trade show exhibitors.
Despite the fact that trade shows are extremely popular, digital marketers still rely on traditional techniques to gather data from booth visitors.
With the continued rise of internet-connected devices and an increasing number of clients to cater for, most business owners are still relying on paper-based lead forms and business cards to gather information from trade show visitors. This necessitates a lot of time-consuming data entry and the risk of destroyed information.
According to a recent poll, more than half (55%) of exhibitors fail to collect vital lead qualifier data from their visitors, making the initial follow-up with trade show leads more challenging for your sales staff.
Create a dedicated landing page to collect date from trade show leads. Plus, use an online form builder and email marketing tool to consolidate and automate the data collection process. On average you can expect:
Better Data: Capture both basic company information and very specific demographic information such as seniority level and job function, so your sales team knows exactly who to target.
Better Follow-up: Send an automated, personalized follow-up email within 24 hours of the trade show. This starts what will hopefully be a long and mutually beneficial relationship with your visitor before they even step foot back in their office.
Better Engagement: Capture social media profile information so you can engage them on relevant social media channels, including LinkedIn.
This way you get to know your leads before they can even say no. By doing this you increase your chances of converting the leads into purchase because by dedicating time and effort into landing page design and capturing vital data.
Event Recaps : The day after the event, send a recap email with a video or blog post to congratulate them on making it through the show and thank them for stopping by your booth.
Event Reminders: A reminder a few days before the event starts to remind your visitors that they still have time to register if they haven't already.
Before Event Pitches: Send content that speaks to the issues your target audience will be looking for at the event. Increase engagement by including a link to pre-event webinars or videos you have created surrounding the upcoming topics of discussion.
Follow Up Content : After they've returned from the event, send an email with more useful follow up pieces of content on the same topics that were discussed at the event.
Event Surveys: At the end of the trade show send an email with a link to a quick survey where you can ask for feedback. The key will be to keep it short and sweet so they actually fill it out!
Luckily, there are now solutions available to help marketers manage trade shows successfully. These tools include:
Hubspot - Event management and registration pages to capture data and run marketing campaigns before, during and after the event. They also provide live blogging services for events!
Pipe drive - Create a landing page that allows people to sign up to your email list as they enter the event hall. You can then send targeted and automated follow up emails and track event leads in the Salesbox CRM.
Zip whip - Collect phone numbers by using an interactive SMS form on your trade show registration page. This will allow you to pre-populate outbound emails and broadcast messages right after the event.
Understand your ROI:- Hubspot has a great tool to help you calculate your ROI. All you have to do is input your costs and leads, then they will crunch the numbers for you!
Budget More Accurately :- Knowing your ROI will allow you to make future budgets more accurately. If you know from previous campaigns that a trade show only generates 25 leads, but costs $10,000 in people's time and marketing materials, you can plan next year's budget accordingly.
Predict Future Returns :- You'll be in a much better position to forecast the future and know when you should expand and cut back once you've succeeded in establishing a system that measures Expenses vs Revenue as an investment.
Marketing automation is a powerful tool that can help you streamline your trade show marketing efforts.
By automating tasks like email marketing, lead capture, and lead routing, you can free up time and resources to focus on other aspects of your trade show strategy.
If you’re looking to improve your exhibit booth rentals, consider implementing some form of marketing automation into your plan. Need help getting started? Contact our team today for more information!
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