9 Ways to Maximize Your Trade Show Investment with Digital Marketing

By Kelly Braun, Content Strategist at Marketing Essentials on on October 14, 2019

It’s trade show time, and you want the most bang for your buck. You want customers and potential buyers to stop by your booth. You want sales to connect with new leads. You want attendees to walk out the door remembering your company, product or service. And most importantly, you want them to turn into new sales. How can you maximize the ROI of your trade show? Start by using digital platforms – SMS, websites, email and social media. Your current customers and prospective buyers are using these each and every day. Online digital marketing strategies can be used before, during and after a trade show to help ensure you hit your trade show goals.

9 Digital Marketing Strategies for Trade Shows

Before the Show

1. Promote via social. Use your social channels, especially LinkedIn, to let your current customers and prospects know where to find you at the show. Create a series of videos announcing your trade show booth and why they should stop by. Is your sales team using LinkedIn to make sales connections? Provide them with the information they need to share with their connections. 2. Create a trade show landing page. This is a website page dedicated to your trade show promotion. Include your booth number, dates and times you’ll be there, who will be there, special activities, giveaways, and special promotions. Include a video of the team that will be attending. Include a lead-capturing form they can fill out to sign up for the giveaway or to schedule an appointment to talk with someone at the booth. Drive traffic from your social channels, email and top website pages to this trade show landing page. 3. Get them to the booth via email automation. If you have an e-newsletter or have prospect email lists, send out a series of emails to entice them to stop by your booth. For efficiency, use email automation to remove the manual labor. Schedule the series over a planned period of time and have it include an announcement of the trade show, teasers of special giveaways, and promotions and videos (re-purpose the videos you created for social). Also, use these emails to send prospects to your trade show landing page.

During the Show

4. Scan badges and business cards. Via a mobile app or show-provided scanner, you can easily capture information of sales leads as they stop by your booth. Check to see if your CRM has an app that does this and automatically uploads to your contact lists. This makes it easy for sales to follow up with leads after the show or to automate an email to everyone who stopped by the booth. 5. Use geofencing and targeting. Geofencing is a targeting strategy used to blast out a digital banner ad to a target audience in a specific location. You build a digital perimeter, or ‘geofence,’ based on the trade show location and select the demographics of your target audience. When these attendees enter and access the Internet, they are tagged and your ad is served in real time. Use this ad to promote what’s at your booth and why they should stop by. 6. Encourage digital interactions. This can be a fun way to engage attendees as they walk the trade show floor and to get new followers on your social channels. Take photos with a fun prop at the booth and allow attendees to tag themselves right there. Use Snapchat filters to capture the attention of the millennial crowd or offer incentives for retweeting on Twitter. 7. Go Live! Don’t be afraid of live video. Announce each day that you will be going live throughout the day to build followers. Then use it throughout the show to capture special events at your booth and to show others what they are missing by not stopping by.

After the Show

8. Continue the social conversations. Plan for a robust social calendar after the trade show. If you gained new followers during the show, keep them engaged with posts that continue your company’s message. Also, get your sales team involved. Ensure they comment on any prospect or customer comments. They may also want to personally reach out to key followers via a social messaging app. 9. Nurture them toward a sale with email automation. Plan a series of post-show automated emails. Segment these by the audience or the product or service they were interested in. Start by thanking them for stopping by the booth. Then nurture them by sending additional resources and information, spec sheets, demonstration videos, personal videos from sales and invites for quotes or to schedule a meeting. Need assistance with your digital marketing efforts, email campaigns or website? Stop by the Marketing Essentials booth, A6214, at FABTECH 2019. We are a full-service digital marketing and sales agency based in New Bremen, Ohio.

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