Marketing Automation: Capitalising on Missed Opportunities at Trade Shows

This trade show marketing infographic highlights the missed opportunities at trade shows that you are letting slip away by inefficient management of boost guest data. Trade shows may be an old school; however, they are still very viable marketing tools in the modern age. As long as you adapt technologically, capitalising on this sales medium is made easier and more efficient with automation.

Who Attends Trade Shows?

Trade show attendees are often the decision maker when it comes to purchasing for the company. If not the decision maker, attendees are definitely high up in the buyer decision maker process. Most trade show attendees go to the same event year over year and on average, attend over 3 trade shows each year. Almost every attendee (80%) are in looking to purchase or at least learn about and evaluate new products.

How are You Collecting Trade Show Attendee Contact Information?

Do you collect information on your booth visitors? More than half of companies recently surveyed only have an old fashioned pen and paper based form for collecting data from trade show booth visitors. There are multiple draw backs to this idea, the first of which is incorrect data due to poor or illegible handwriting and no ability to back up the precious data you collected. Consider giving away branded gifts in exchange for completed digital data forms. Giving away something allows you to require that all of the fields of information are filled in completely.

Digitize the Sign Up Process

Automating the data collection process by having a sign up form on tablets and/or laptops (make sure to have enough available) not only helps collect more complete data and avoid missing information, but it allows you to then plug the digital information into automation and sales lead applications to get more bang for your buck.

Keep in Touch

Once your contact data for trade show booth visitors and customers is all compiled and organised, then it is time to keep in touch with your contacts. Invite them to engage in social media, add them (with permission) to your email newsletter, and feed them content that they will find useful. Event recap with reviews and summary of the latest trade show, videos from the event, and white papers with industry relevant educational topics are all content ideas that you can use in addition to sales information. One of the keys to keeping in touch is to engage, not just try to sell to your potential customers.

Benefits of Digital Automation of Data

The graphic illustrates just some of the benefits of collecting digital data. In addition to the points we already made with more efficient collection of data and the ease of automation, collecting data affords you other benefits in calculating return on investment, budgeting, developing strategies, and more accurate predictions of the future. If your business relies on trade shows, consider the investment into digital technology and automation to help improve your business.