FUSIONb2b Blog

Finally all the planing, the hard work, and the money spent has paid off! The show is over and I’m sure you accomplished all your trade show objectives, generated leads and sales, increased organic and direct traffic, gained a higher social media following and created publicity. Now it’s time to go back to the office and follow through with the most critical part of the trade show process, your post-show follow up frenzy.

 

Follow Up

• Follow up with EVERY attendee you spoke with within the first two weeks after the show. Remind them of whom your company is and what you have to offer, also what it is that you spoke to them about during the show getting as personal as you can. Wishing you all the best on all your future trade shows!

• Stay visible throughout the rest of the year; capitalize on relationships you’ve made either through social media, direct mailings, e-blasts, or a simple phone call.

• Having a committed and passionate sales leader is essential before, during, and after the show. One who understands your marketing strategies and will follow up with sales leads and yours teams progress.

• Have a lead management process in place to meet post-show revenue goals.

• Collect feedback from your employees and from your social media sites. What did you learn about the experience that you could document for the next show?

• Post-show blogging about what you learned about trade shows or the industry.

• Maintain the BUZZ on all your social media sites.

Trade shows are highly successful marketing methods, but it is up to you and your team to have a plan during, throughout, and after the event to achieve your ROI goals and trade show objectives. How do you measure whether your company trade show was successful?

 

Measuring your Trade Show Success

1. New customers: By looking back and tracking the evolution of the registration forms from your landing page that developed into buying customers and resulted in new sales.
2. New Leads: If you have expanded your database with new leads, that’s great! Take a look at your landing page metrics to measure your visitor-to-submission conversion rate.
3. Direct Traffic & Organic Search: Determining whether your company has caused more brand awareness by checking direct traffic (people who directly typed in your company’s URL in the web browser) and organic traffic (visitors who arrive on your site from a searching your company in a search engine) results will help see if your CTA was effective causing more direct traffic to your site.
4. Social Media Reach: Has the amount of your followers, friends, and fans increased? You can identify which channels are more successful and spend more time on those platforms.

 

Think about:

• Having a trade show theme that ties into your current campaign or newest product focus that is displayed before the show, on your website or social media platforms, during the show, in your booth design and promotion, and after the show in your mailings.  It’s very memorable and effective.

• Getting the best spot on the trade show floor that you can. Unfortunately it does affect your booth traffic if your located right next to the bathrooms. A small spot near a big draw, at an intersection of aisles will allow your booth to have two frontages and more visibility. If your smaller name in the market, planting yourself next to some big guys will defiantly boost your traffic as well.

• The Internet should be expected to be unavailable or slow, so expect to have little or no wireless Internet access. Figure out a way to do it all offline at your booth by using flash drives or wmv files.

Once determining if your trade show objectives and business goals were met, you can decide on whether attending another trade show in the future will benefit your business.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our Trade Show Tips to Treasure series.  We wish you the best of luck on your future trade show events!

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Email Marketing, Event Marketing, Lead Generation, results, Tips, Trade Show