Are You Selling AND Marketing At Your Events?

When was the last time you had a booth at an event? Did you work it to its fullest potential? Did you market your booth properly, and did you get all of the sales possible? Chances are you left some resources on the table.

Creating and implementing a successful strategy requires more than attending the show. It takes full involvement by everyone within your company to make it work. You need to:

• Promote your company’s attendance at the show to motivate attendees to visit you at your booth. If it’s a local event, send invitations to your entire customer list to tell them you will be in attendance, and what type of specials you will be running. Ask your contact with the event and see if you can get a mailing list of attendees. If so, mail out postcards before the event, offering a special if they return the postcard to your booth.
• Have the right personnel on location to fully capture every potential lead. This is a sales event. If you don’t like to sell, get a salesperson to man the booth for you. Your goal is to get names and contact information for everyone interested in your company, and that stopped by your booth. Follow up is very important, because sales contacts will be very short at an event.
• Train every exhibit worker to know exactly what they’re mission is, why they are there, and what they do with every contact they meet.
• Establish a lead generating system that captures the right information, and puts it into the proper pipeline. How are you going to contact people after the event? Email? Phone? Mailing? Capture the right information you will need for promotions. It’s also a good idea to have your postcards, emails or phone scripts ready, so you can begin the very day after the event.
• Support the show to its fullest extent, and require all exhibit personnel to be on the floor at all times, network at all possible functions, and be fully engaged with the entire event. What can you do to volunteer? Can you help run the fashion show? Can you help stuff the bags to be handed out to attendees? Get in there and help – it’ll help you in the long run.

• 80% of the leads generated at a show or event are not followed-up; and
• Of the 20% of the leads that are followed-up, more than 50% have already made a purchase decision by the time they receive the follow-up.
  Having a good solid plan is what separates most exhibiting companies from their competition. Make your people aware of why you are there, and what you want to accomplish. If you establish realistic goals upfront, there will be less chance of failure in the overall marketing strategy of attendance at major events.