Trade shows are a bustling, tiring, and usually expensive experience. They require months of preparation that includes ordering signs, promotional items and displays. Other costs may include travel, lodging and food. This may cause you to ask yourself “With all of the expenses, is it even worth it?” With Marketing Automation, the answer is yes. With the proper automated tools and strategy, trade shows are no longer an expense, but a place to capture more leads, and ultimately increase your ROI. Here’s how to do it:
Create Location Based Mobile Ads
Trade shows are teeming with potential customers from all over the United States, and even the world. If nurtured right they can become long time customers. You have a limited window to get them to your booth (and as a lead) but with marketing automation, one chance is all you need. Utilizing the mobile aspect of your digital strategy is one of the most effective ways to entice people to your booth. Use marketing automation to send emails to segmented lists, alerting people of your presence at the show. This can also be done in advance to drive up interest, and at the time of the show as a reminder. Create location based ads on social media and in general, targeting the trade show and surrounding locations, such as any hotels or restaurants associated with the event. Share pictures of your booth and the staff you have working it to further this recognition. This helps to plant the tiny seed of awareness in people’s minds, that will only grow bigger the more they are exposed subconsciously to your company.
Draw Them to the Booth
Having planted these seeds, the next step is to draw people to your booth. In these mobile ads, offer up an a prize. The prize can be anything from a giveaway, discount or exclusive offer, it just has to entice people enough to give out their contact details. Once you have these, marketing automation is able to work it’s magic.
Let Marketing Automation Do the Rest
With marketing automation, a person’s email address is all you need. Upon your return from the trade show, add all of the email addresses you received to the platform. From here you can send a follow up emails, that once opened will allow you to see all of the past and future interactions that person has with your site. You will be able to see what pages they visit and how long they spend there, enabling you create an automated drip campaign that will send them an email when they visit your site. You can also use this information to create and send targeted content, further strengthening the bond. With marketing automation all of these interactions are trackable through a feature called the sales funnel, which allows you to watch the progression of the lead from that follow up email, through the sales process. Never again will you have to spend days following up with people you met at the trade show, manually moving them along the sales funnel. Marketing automation takes all of these elements and puts them into one easy to use platform, helping you to more effectively capture leads.
If you are interested in implementing marketing automation before your next trade show, click the banner below to schedule a free 30 minute consultation with us.
