The investment of money and time put into an exhibition event is significant, and with marketing spend being ever more tight, it’s vital to maximise your return on investment.
One of the biggest challenges our clients’ sales teams face is developing a seamless and effective process for exhibition lead capture, and following leads post-event.
To help ensure your exhibition event is a success, we’ve put together an essential guide for collecting leads at your next exhibition or trade show. Sit back, take note, and get ready to boost your ROI!
Exhibition Lead Capture Qualification Criteria
Hold up! Before you even start to think about how to collect a lead, think about ‘what is a lead?’
A traditional way of lead capture is to gather business cards; typically attendees will surrender their business card as entry into a prize draw to win something. This creates volume but not quality. Quality is what converts. So, when you are in the process of creating your exhibition stand plan, also think about lead retrieval.
What qualifies as a lead, and what do you need to know from your lead capture form?
For example:
- Trade show basics: name, company, job title, email & telephone (don’t forget GDPR – get their consent).
- Categories of interest: If you have a lot of products or services, list these into categories, which can be ‘ticked’ as to what’s of interest.
- Commentary: make sure you note the conversation or specific interest that the customer has; this will become useful when you are following leads up. As much as you’d like to think you’ll remember, there will be too many for you to remember everything!
- Budget and timescale: if this is relevant criteria for lead qualification, ask and take note! For example, as an exhibitions company Clip will typically ask a customer when they’re exhibiting and what their budget is.
Use Exhibition Stand Technology
There are various ways you can utilise technologies to help your lead capture at your next exhibition:
- Handheld devices: First, make sure you have a portable and easy-to-use device. This might be a mobile phone, tablet or laptop. If there are a number of you on the stand, you’ll need more than one.
- Exhibition lead capture apps: if you’re going for a hand-held device, there are plenty of good apps to use, most of which are relatively low-cost. Leadr and Onspotsocial are really good lead capture apps, and tend to connect with your CRM.
- Integrated app for your marketing automation system: if you use HubSpot then there’s a really great app that integrates and syncs directly into Hubspot called atEvent. This is a highly recommended way to capture your leads if you have MA software. For larger marketing automation systems, you will find recommended apps that will connect in the same way. Integration is so efficient as it removes any laborious form-filling or uploads, and creates a slick follow-up program. If you wanted to, you could automate an email the very same day!
- Show scanners: many trade shows now offer a scanning device and app. This can help you save time and money but do your research first. If it’s a basic ‘scan of the badge’ then this is the modern version of business card collecting – you’ll end up with a load of unqualified data and no intelligence.
Lead Generation Forms
When technology fails, it’s essential to have a contingency plan in place!
Always ensure you have a backup supply of paper exhibition lead capture forms readily available. These forms should mirror the format of your digital app to streamline the process of data entry later.
This foresight not only helps in maintaining efficiency but also ensures that you don’t miss out on any potential leads due to technical glitches.
Now you’ve collected your leads, you need to follow up…
Following Leads Post Exhibition
Did you know that you have no more than 72 hours before your lead goes cold? In fact, we recommend your team follow up leads the very next day.
Whilst you’re fresh in their mind and before they get back into their day job – remind them about their experience with you. Some of our customers have had success by sending a communication the very same day!
If your show is four days or more, your exhibition leads will be cold from day one. If you can, get your leads back to the office the day you receive them so your team can start working on them.
It’s really important that the hot leads are given priority in the follow-up so we suggest when you take leads you give each one a simple code that shows how hot that lead is.
This can be as simple as A, B and C coding but make sure that all the red hot A leads are given priority in the follow-up.
Also make sure your team are clear on whose responsibility it is to follow up each lead. Make sure the team book the time into their diary to give this vital part of the project the importance it deserves.
Personalise
First, add simple things like sending a photo of you and the team at the stand, on the day that the prospect met you. This will help your prospect connect and remind them of your meeting, which goes a long way to gauging a response, and strengthening your lead.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is a very effective tool for following leads. From gathering the data to marketing to the leads, we give marketing automation a big thumbs up.
Once your lead is stored in a marketing automation system, your drip marketing can begin. Keep your lead warm and reinforce your message, starting with a ‘it was great to see you at the show’ and following with content and value-added material, relevant to the categories of interest they selected at your exhibition stand.
Use Multiple Channels
As much as we love marketing automation, you need to mix up your outbound channel when it comes to follow-up. We find email and telephone are a nice combination. Follow up your email send(s) with a phone call.
Use the insight gathered from the day (e.g. interested in) so that you can relate to the customer and help you achieve your goal of an appointment or sale. Some companies get creative when it comes to channel mix, and even send something in the post – like a gift – to a qualified event lead. But, this will still need a telephone call to maximise the return!
Last of all, don’t forget to measure your leads so you can monitor the success of your event. This will help you to plan better and more efficiently in the future, generating a better ROI each time.
How Can Clip Help?
We help to ensure your live event delivers a great return on investment. As part of our exhibition lead capture service, we work with you to gain an understanding of your event objectives and look at the most appropriate and effective ways of exhibition lead capture that fit with your business.
Whether it’s electronic, manual, interactive or other – we make sure of the right lead capture solution for you so that leads are collected in the right way to achieve your goals.
If you’d like help with your exhibition lead capture for your next event, contact our exhibition team today.
