Marketing Automation for Trade Shows: The Easy Way to Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness
Even as technology and digital media are being rapidly adapted to in marketing, physical trade shows continue to remain important in B2B marketers’ strategies. They bring in big business to exhibitors using marketing automation for their trade shows. With increased efficiency in information collection and organization, to consistent lead nurturing and accurate ROI, marketing automation can boost the results for trade show exhibitors.
Statistics on People Who Attend Trade Shows
Each trade show attendee on average goes to 3 or 4 shows each year.
60% of visitors will go to the same amount of events while 23% plan on going to more the next year.
80% of event attendees come to trade shows in search of new products
Lost Chances
Paper-based lead forms continue to be used by 59% of companies despite their inefficiency. This type of form requires tedious, manual data entry and risks the chance of lost data. Another way 70% of exhibitors lose business potential is by not recording the demographic information of their leads. A company that fails to do this makes initial follow up with trade show leads difficult for their sales teams.
Forms on Landing Pages
Dedicate a landing page with a form to collect lead information that is optimized for all desktops, laptops, tablets, and cell phones. Doing so will let you collect information more quickly and follow up immediately with leads.
Cherish Your Leads
After your leads are imported into your marketing automation system, attach them to the specific campaign to know which exhibit they came from. After that, follow up with them immediately or place them onto drip campaigns that will gradually inform them of relevant post-conference content.
What to Do after a Trade Show
Once the trade show has ended, there are still many steps to take. Firstly, ease your leads into a drip campaign by using the trade show as a common ground. The content that you send should be interesting and relevant in order to give more details about your industry. A great method would be to film a video. After that, take the time to inform your leads about your industry with white papers on topics they will see as relevant.
Know Your ROI
For any marketer, it is important to understand ROI (Return on Investment) before following through with a campaign. As your prospects are attached to campaigns in the marketing automation system, your revenue sources can easily be recognized, giving you the insight to see how your trade show presence affects your ROI.
Benefits of ROI Insight
As a result of having more ROI insight, your time and resources can be budgeted more accurately. This will make it easier to plan out future trade shows and events. As you continue with your trade show campaigns, knowing your ROI will allow you to fine tune your strategies to create a higher chance of marketing success after you see what works. In addition, ROI can also help you predict future returns for your business, and the more you understand your ROI, the more accurate your forecast will be.
Making the most of the trade shows you exhibit is detrimental to the success of your business. Use marketing automation to help you strive for victory that will lead digital lead forms, nurturing your leads, following through with a drip campaign. Following these steps will raise the amount of sales you have and you will see a rise in your ROI as you continue to use the strategies above.