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And in the context of B2B marketing, ROI on the trade show needs to focus not merely on lead counts, but on both immediate dollar successes and strategic successes that may take years to unfold.
You want to warm up these events using digital tactics before the event, and throughout the onsite experience. A company that produces earth-moving equipment, for instance, might host a webinar about trends in the industry a week before its trade show.
Collect Contact Information
A good B2B lead list will always serve as the fulcrum of a strong marketing strategy for B2B organisation – from email blasts and social media outreach to cold calling, quality will significantly add to the responsiveness of your prospecting efforts. An effective business contact database will also let you discern candidate leads through their job titles, duties and sector interests. This in turn will let you craft messages and content for an individual prospect, boosting engagement and conversions. A quick search of the web reveals a host of online directories and sales intelligence tools holding vast databases of business contacts at the ready. Venerable services such as Dun Bradstreet, ReferenceUSA and InfoUSA, for starters, each purporting to offer contact data that can be filtered by industry or job title – if you know the correct keyword to search on – or by human-verified precision, as is the case with Dun Bradstreet’s License to Contact solution. Alternatively, for a fee, users can access more detailed, first-party data on ZoomInfo. The issue with all kinds of contact data, however, is that it’s uneven, in terms of compliance, freshness, expense and compliance – a problem that modern AI-powered data platforms such as Cognism address in providing verified emails and direct mobile phone numbers on demand.
Develop a Content Strategy
Developing a content strategy is the best way to maximise the ROI of your presence; start by defining your objectives (greater awareness of the brand? Dozens of leads? Lots of orders?). B2B audiences are made up of a variety of different buyer personas each with different informational needs and interests, so it’s important to understand the potential variety of buying journeys and content needs so we can ensure the content addresses these. And for business audiences, stories that are surprising and disorienting in terms of their conclusions that provide new insight for step-changing how they think about a particular challenge and engage audiences’ emotions through stories they can relate to are a good bet. Research on buyer personas, checking metrics on content that’s performing well or not, and content audits to identify areas where new content is needed, or for areas where gaps exist, can all be helpful steps in determining what would make a good content strategy for production and distribution.
Optimize Your Booth
It is not enough for your trade show booth alone to attract attendees; they also need to be captured – their contact details acquired – and follow up carried out in a timely manner, in order to convert attendees to leads, prospects and customers. By integrating momencio into your pre- and post-show marketing, you will boost ROI by enhancing lead capture, engagement and follow up. Leverage digital marketing tactics at an event to be top-of-mind back at the office, and drive homepage and booth traffic. LinkedIn Ads enable you to target titles and track activity back to your site. Make sure your staff is specially trained to handle an influx of visitors and demonstrating products and experiences. Remind your sales staff that your products are their focus, not the diminishing of experience space. Lastly, gather feedback from staff about what ran well and what could have gone better operationally and use that feedback to improve your next show.
Track Your Results
By definition, B2B marketers must be able to hit a small target directly. In very niche, highly technical domains (eg, life sciences or contract manufacturing), you can’t throw a wide net into the deep end of the digital pond.
Trade shows can be invaluable resources in gathering an audience-ready group under one roof.
They can also be hugely effective at boosting brand awareness and new lead generation, but to achieve these successfully too takes far more than a simple measuring stick of attendance and leads.
Pay particular attention to a few key indicators that will clearly demonstrate just how valuable your participation in the expo really was, for example, the average arrangement size. If closing deals is what you want, then this information will clearly show which of your prospects you really wanted to be your buyer – and didn’t have the bunting and cakes on the stand for them – and will also allow your sales team to not burn all of their hard-won and precious time chasing low-value leads. With once your goals have been set, you will be well-equipped to learn how to double your ROI every time you do the show again.
