May
09

Trade Show Lead Generation, What’s Next

By Alex

Ok so you say you did your part and generated lots of leads at your last show, now what should you do with them so they are the most effective.

For starters lets hope you collected your leads the right way with an electronic lead scanner. The other most common way is collecting business cards in a fish bowl. Did you offer a prize for those business cards? If so you probably have a mix of qualified leads, people that are actually interested in your product and want to learn more along with the others that are just trying to win that iPod you were raffling off.

Take my advice and go the electronic way, you will save yourself a lot of grief and extra expense in the long run if you just collect up business cards. Don’t forget you still have to pay for somebody’s time to type or scan all of that information into your database and more often than not it never gets done.

The main thing is that you have to follow up on those leads as fast as you can, preferably within a week or two after the show or better yet even while the show is still running. If you plan in advance, have a personalized marketing piece ready to send out and you can export your leads daily there is no excuse for not thanking people for visiting your booth the same day they stopped by. Imagine the power of that!

We can be an outsourced arm of your trade show marketing department, train your staff on lead generation best practices and follow up procedures.

You know you spent so much money on getting to the show, in this economy can you really afford to not make sure you get the most return on investment out of it? Take a look at our pricing plans and tell us that our system is not an affordable way to turn your leads into cash compared to the rest of the money you spent going to the show.

2 Comments

2

Alex,

Thanks for calling attention to this crucial issue. So much effort gets put into getting a great exhibit and a team of booth staffers to the showfloor, that once the show is over, “trade show fatigue” sets in and the leads get pushed aside in favor of all the other work that was piling up during show preparations and execution. Now the tide appears to be shifting from just generating leads blindly at trade shows, to focusing on generating quality leads and also having a complete follow up program in place for after the trade show.

Michael Thimmesch
Skyline Exhibits

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When To Follow Up On Leads

How soon after the show should you follow up on your leads? The answer is while your show is still running is the best time to thank them for stopping by your booth.

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