Let’s face it… It can be hard to cut through the noise at trade shows.
When developing your event strategy, it’s not enough to think about what you’re going to exhibit or present. To make your investment worthwhile, you need to get people to your booth or to attend your webinar or to come to your open house. That’s why your communications strategy is just as important.
Ideas for Event Communications
For every event – from webinar to trade show – you need to consider the pre, during, and post event communications. Prior to the event, the goal is to create excitement and engagement with your target audience. During the event, you want to keep people informed. This is especially true for longer events like trade shows where you can let people know about what’s happening at your booth each day. And finally, after the event, you want to keep the conversation going with attendees and non-attendees alike.
Here are a few communications ideas for your next event:
Prior to the Event: Create excitement and engagement
- Send email Invitations and teasers to targeted customers and prospects or attendee lists (if receive event approval) starting at least 4 weeks in advance of the event. A series could include Teaser >> Reminder >> Last Chance emails.
- For webinar registrations connect GoToWebinar, Zoom, or any other conferencing system to your marketing automation solution to automatically include registrants in the database.
- Create specific event landing pages that include detailed information about products/services being highlighted at event.
- Similar to email, create social posts on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to keep the chatter going. Send people back to the event landing pages or create event posts to gauge interest.
During the Event: Keep contacts informed
- For longer duration events, send email to targeted attendees (if have list) to encourage booth visits
- Create event-based landing pages that include a form to capture data – this can be on a laptop or iPad at the event (ensure you have internet availability). Link the form to your marketing automation to capture information directly into your database.
- Post event highlights as often as possible via Twitter directly including tidbits of key info from webinars or photos/video from the trade show
- Share daily wrap ups from trade shows on LinkedIn and Facebook
After the Event: Keeping the conversation going
- For webinars, send an email wrap up along with a video recording of the webinar and/or include PDF of slides
- For trade shows send out a general thank you message to booth visitors specific to what was featured at booth and include tracked content (PDFs, video)
- Execute an automated email campaign (2-3 emails) focusing on key product/service featured at event for warm leads (sales team follow up with hot leads)
- Create a post-event blog or news article featuring video and photos from event
- Schedule “wrap-up” content across all social channels and point to your blog or news article
- Use video from event to create additional future posts or as testimonials (if were able to speak to customers while there)
Maximize Trade Show ROI: Follow-Up with Marketing Automation
The trade show is just a beginning to your relationship with a particular lead. After the show and your final post-show communications end, these contacts need to be constantly nurtured. Marketing automation is the most effective way to turn these leads into customers.
To learn more about marketing automation as a solution to nurture leads after your trade show, please download the Grow Your Sales Online: Tips for Marketing Automation white paper.
