The major goal of attending industrial trade shows is to generate leads for businesses. But a lot of organizations attend trade shows without proper research, measurable goals, and practical strategies for maximizing ROI. Several companies don’t realize the power of trade show marketing which is an integrated marketing strategy to help achieve major business goals.
Trade show marketing includes many elements such as landing pages, email campaigns, social media, trade show displays, and post show follow-ups. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some effective ways of incorporating them into your overall marketing strategy to ensure your trade show success.
How to Incorporate Landing Pages for Trade Shows
Landing pages are very crucial as they are one of the best media platforms to collect leads from prospects interested in your calls-to-action. The calls-to-action can range from free trials, offers and discounts, make a purchase to attend webinars, give a feedback, testimonials, etc. Publish the landing pages at least a few weeks before the event.
Here are some tips to incorporate the landing pages of your business website for trade shows.
- Make your landing page unique for each trade show you attend because each of them should have new marketing campaigns. Remember to include all the general information about your company and the event on your landing pages as a lot of prospects first check out your website for relevant information before deciding to attend your booth at a trade show.
- Include some additional calls-to-action such as a free demo or tutorial relevant to your business on the Thank You This can act as a welcoming note for the prospects who respond to your primary call-to-action to continue exploring your products and services. However, avoid including multiple offers in a single landing page as it can lead to confusion among the prospects and they might abandon it.
- Remember to optimize your landing pages for mobiles and tablets. Your prospects could try to sign up via mobile devices and you can lose your valuable prospects if your page isn’t responsive.
How to Leverage Email Campaigns for Trade Shows
If done properly, emails are one of the most effective ways to attract visitors to your trade show booth and generate leads. Focus on creating a nurture campaign to build trust between your business and the prospects. Send out a summary of the event, how you aim at solving their problems, and your call-to-action. Make sure to link your calls-to-action to the intended landing pages. During the event, promote clips from your trade show booth and keep the prospects updated with the programs going on and that are scheduled later via emails. It gives you an opportunity to boost interest among the prospects so that they attend your booth.
How to Use Social Media for Trade Shows
There are several ways to effectively incorporate social media to spread the word and generate leads before, during and after the event.
- Utilize your company blog to create some buzz around your event. Publish your blog posts before, during and after the trade show and then share them across various social media platforms. Besides blogging about your company, make sure to blog on interesting, relevant and trending topics to get your prospects excited.
- Locate on which social media platform majority of your prospects are so that you can emphasize on that particular platform. Choose at least three of the most popular platforms to promote your content. If you choose to promote on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram create a proper strategy for your content promotion.
- Publish reminders and registration deadlines, sponsor highlights, speakers, programs, information about the host city, photos of your trade show booth, the exhibitors, after-parties, contests, etc.
- Find out the official hashtags of the event and include them in your social posts to make monitoring conversations easy both for you and your prospects.
Plan ahead and set realistic goals for your trade shows to achieve your desired results. In the next post, we’ll continue to discuss how to incorporate other integrated marketing elements such as trade show displays, booths, and post event follow-ups.
