The Sales or Marketing department of any company will try to squeeze the company’s budget for managing exhibition costs and to permit a team to exhibit at a exhibition. So if you are a part of a team trying to urge a high budget approved to line up a exhibition booth but face increasing pressure to prove that it’s worth not only the cash, but the time far away from the office, you would like to read on.
No matter which industry you are in, you have likely seen budget restraints over the past five years. Return on Investment for Sales and Marketing and managing exhibition costs is becoming highly important every year. Let’s have a look at how one maximizes ROI for your upcoming exhibition?
To ensure a good ROI you need to plan appropriately and you have to manage your exhibition costs efficiently.
Here are a few tips which will help you increase your ROI.
Pre-Work
You cannot hope that people will turn up to your exhibition booth at the last minute. You must ensure that you plan well in advance to book meetings. You can use various tools available such as phone, email, LinkedIn, Twitter etc to connect with your audience and to set up meetings.
Press Release
Press Release is considered an effective means of your pre-show marketing. You can give them a brief idea about your booth number and confirm your availability at the respective booth, also you will be able to give them an idea about what they can expect from your team. If you have planned to give new product demos or conduct free assessments you will be able to get into the notice of press personnel.
Update Your Website
On the homepage of your website, you will need a noticeable call-to-action (perhaps with a reduction code for attendees) to incentivize anyone attending the exhibition to prevent seeing you out.
Make a wish list (At Least 8 weeks before the exhibition)
You need to go through the list of conference exhibitors and mark the companies you wish to get connected with at the show, you do not have to know anyone there. You should mark those companies which are well fit to work with and also the ones that match your target audience.
Increase Blog Posts
Most of the companies do only promos about the company but Increasing your blog posts will be a better idea. You can firstly note down what the attendees can expect from the exhibition they have been invited for. You can also have a brief idea about the events that have happened within the past. Once you are through with conducting the exhibition, you can make a blog post out of it.
Make Use Of The Videos
If someone from your company is speaking at the event, or if you’ll be interviewing any notable people from your industry, confirm that someone videotapes it. Place the video on your YouTube channel, alongside a link thereto in your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook posts, etc.
Meet Current and Prospective Customers
Schedule time to satisfy together with your current customers at the booth. It’s a good idea to possess prospective customers who meet together with your Sales or Marketing team at an equivalent time. Oftentimes your current happy customers are often great ambassadors of your brand.
Research
For each listed company, identify a contact from that company to succeed in bent for a meeting. First, look within your CRM to ascertain if you have got any existing contacts from that company. If not, LinkedIn may be a great prospecting tool. Find leads that match your target persona by searching the corporate name and searching for workers with relevant job titles. You are probably thinking, great, but how do you buy their email and phone number?
First, see if you have got any mutual connections with the leaders whom you will ask to form an introduction. If there are not any mutual connections, you will always find general phone numbers listed on the corporate website. For email, you will have to look at a few places – the company’s contact page, career page, or news page/press releases – to uncover if not the contact’s exact email address, then the common email format employed by the corporate. (For example, if marketing director John’s email is listed as john.smith@companyseal.com, then you will pretty safely assume that product manager Ms Mary’s email is going to be Mary@companyseal.com.)
Research requires you to take a position and a touch of your time to find contact information, but it will pay off greatly.
Follow-up
You will need to ensure every lead is followed up. Either they are going into a marketing automation system for nurturing, or put directly within the hands of a sales representative. If it’s sales-ready, add them to a follow-up list.
Conclusion
Hope you were able to get an in-depth insight on how to maximize your ROI and manage your exhibition costs. For any further information and support do get in touch with us.
