The interesting thing about using this methodology is to exploit its ways to generate attraction and maximize conversions at these events. Before the fair, it is key to exploit all the promotional channels or paths; as well as to prospect potential clients . During the fair, we must exploit our ingenuity and offer strategic CTAs to prevent visitors from passing by our stand. You can certainly do much more than just give away a corporate pen! At the end, it is crucial to track the actions carried out during the fair and the contacts generated. This is where strategies such as social selling and all the loyalty actions exploited by Inbound come into play .
Now, you might be thinking that all this work requires a lot of resources for your company. Forget this idea! With a good methodology, the Internet will offer you the opportunity to attract more visitors to your stand, as well as increase the options to convert your new contacts into clients. At Connext we invite you to collect the following ideas and implement them at your next fair. Do you accept the challenge?
Some ideas to improve results at your fairs
1. What to do before the fair?
Prioritize substance over form. You won't necessarily sell more by having a bigger, prettier or more colorful stand. It may be more effective to define objectives and a strategy for your sales team than to invest a lot of money in the design of your display cases and promotional brochures.
Analyze the visitor profile in depth. Take a snapshot of the types of visitors you might encounter at the fair. Knowing the buyer personas you will encounter well will allow you to define different resources or actions that help to capture the attention of all of them. As you record these contacts in a table, it is interesting to also include information that supports your social selling efforts, such as which social networks they use, which LinkedIn groups they participate in, what their LinkedIn Pulse profile is, etc.
Make the most of your promotional channels
- Send a short email to your contacts informing them about your presence at the fair. The most important thing is to make it clear what new product you are going to present above all else. Use this communication to offer the possibility of making an appointment at your stand.
- Include a banner about the fair in your email signature. How many emails do you send per day? Don't forget to include information about your stand and an invitation to attend or make an appointment here.
- Give the fair a leading role on your website. Publish an article with details of your stand and create, as far as possible, a landing page. This way we can:
Improve your visibility through search engine positioning. Let's study the keywords that generate traffic to the fair. Let's focus on those that are more specific to our activity. For example, if my company manufactures electric motors and we go to a robotics fair in Madrid, let's prioritize positioning ourselves for keywords like "Madrid automation fair" and not for Madrid industrial fair. We are interested in capturing quality traffic and avoiding noise.
You will define a new way to capture quality leads. To do this, use business mailing lists poland a form that you can use to schedule appointments or offer live consulting during the fair.
- Put your social selling strategy into action. Do you have an active sales team on LinkedIn? They probably have hundreds of potential contacts who have already heard about your company. Try contacting them via InMail and letting them know you're attending the leading trade fair in their sector. Why not treat the most strategic ones to an invitation?
- Send press releases to media outlets that are highly specialized in your sector. Don't neglect public relations . Think about portals of interest to your buyer personas and the visitor profile of each fair and, if you have some important innovation to present to them, subtly anticipate it in a press release.
With all these ideas we seek to generate interest and begin to build a relationship of trust that will allow us to improve sales opportunities.
2. What to do during the fair?
Use resources or offers to feed your database. Don't forget the importance of CTAs on your stand. For example, and following the strategic lines of Inbound Marketing, you can promote some of your guides, eBooks or webinars with registration on your website; this way you will get the contact details of your visitors.
Another idea could be to launch small incentives such as raffles. Imagine that you develop software for process management in the industry. A good strategy here would be to raffle off a 3-month demo on your website. On the one hand, you will be opening up the possibility for visitors to your stand to learn about your website and your services and, on the other hand, you will be capturing leads through registration. Create campaigns for your raffles with attractive landing pages and registration forms.