Whether your company is considering exhibiting at your first-ever trade show or there are many events in your event marketing strategy, creating a trade show marketing plan with specific, measurable goals and implementing a results-focused, data driven digital marketing campaign is critical to your success.
Here are 3 key questions we ask clients and some suggestions to consider when attending any major global trade show.
Does your company have an effective digital presence and content?
With 70% of a B2B buyer’s research being done online before reaching out to a potential vendor, how can you grow your company today without a digital footprint? You could have thousands of prospective buyers stop by and talk to you at your booth, but if they can’t easily find you on the web, understand what you offer, and find a way to reach out to you, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.
Your company’s website, social media content, articles, case studies, videos, and any other digital content all need to quickly communicate your key company information and selling points and allow current and prospective buyers to easily connect with you.
Our suggestions:
- Audit all your digital channels to ensure that the branding, SEO, mobile optimization and user experience are accurately and effectively presenting your company’s key selling points, mission, size and capabilities.
- Consider a website and/or marketing collateral redesign
Has your company planned and created specific trade show focused digital marketing campaigns?
Once your company’s digital footprint is in place, it makes sense to look at how you can leverage digital marketing to achieve your goals for the trade show. Digital marketing campaigns will vary based on your overall business goals and objectives.
While lead generation is often at the top of most company’s list, building brand awareness through your social media following, email subscribers, and web visitors can be equally important for brands and manufacturers that are looking to build long-term engagement – especially for B2B companies that often face very long sales cycles.
Our suggestions:
- Create digital marketing campaigns to build awareness with and strategically target key and aspirational buyers
- Use paid search, paid social, and email marketing to launch lead generation campaigns targeting aspirational buyers attending the show
- Leverage the trade show to build content around your specific event goals and use this content to help improve SEO
Has your company built the necessary reporting & analytics to understand ROI?
It’s estimated that 80% of trade show exhibitors don’t follow up with their show leads. We get it, it’s a lot of work to prepare for and attend a massive trade show, but not having campaigns and strategies to follow up with qualified leads is a missed opportunity.
Compiling and following up with the right leads can be a huge undertaking, but utilizing a CRM and automated campaigns can help you ensure that you are reaching out to the most qualified leads and pushing the less interested leads into nurture campaigns to monitor future engagement.
Our suggestions:
- Implement a CRM to track, monitor, and follow up with leads
- Leverage email automation to follow up with and score multiple leads at once
- Use email marketing and social media to regularly share content and get in front of your trade show leads
