Much has been written about trade show marketing and how to not only fill your booth with visitors but also how to follow up with prospects after the show closes. In fact, we’ve written three recent posts specifically on marketing your exhibit/event before, during, and after trade show events.
This being said, sometimes technology comes along that can not only help to simplify a process, but also make it more effective. Enter “marketing automation”. And for our purposes here, how it can be used to make your trade show marketing program more successful!
What is “Marketing Automation” in the first place?
By Wikipedia’s definition, marketing automation is “software platforms designed for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks.”
While this definition helps to tell part of the story (a bit dryly, I might add) – it really doesn’t paint a complete picture of what marketing automation is and does.
In practice, marketing automation does include software services like those provided by Act-On, Pardot, SharpSpring or Marketo. These online services (and others like them) help you, as the marketer, nurture leads through automated campaigns – with a huge emphasis on email and content strategy.
So, you might ask – how does that help me to market my company at trade show events?
Well, read on!
Marketing Automation Before Your Trade Show Event
As we described in our article, “Pre-Trade Show Marketing Strategy – Fill Your Booth with Attendees“, roughly 76% of trade show attendees come to the event with a planned agenda. In other words, they know which booths they will visit before they ever get to the show. So, you had better get your company in front of these prospects BEFORE their schedule is spoken for!
Marketing automation can assist, when you make email an important component in attracting prospects to pre-book appointments prior to the event date. By sending your email blasts through your automation tool, you’ll not only be able to track and quantify the basic stats of emails received, opened and clicked – but you’ll be able to add those who opt to receive special offers to your automated campaigns.
Of course, be sure to include your booth number, any special events or promos you’re offering, and your unique value proposition. Give attendees a GREAT reason to visit your booth once at the show, AND an incentive to set an appointment.
Marketing Automation During Your Trade Show Event
We believe the real power of marketing automation kicks in once the show has actually begun.
Today, it’s common-place to capture lead information at trade shows, either through badge scanners (which can be purchased or rented) or the old-fashioned way – business cards (stacks of them) and of course paper/pencil.
Unfortunately, these all leave you with lots of contacts that then need to be added to your CRM (customer relationship management) tool of choice. Often manually. Difficult to manage and impossible to track/quantify.
To leverage marketing automation to help perform these tasks, your company would create a landing page (in your website, most likely hidden) and add a lead capture form from the automation tool to the page. Now you can use iPads or a computer station in your booth for visitors to fill out that contact form.
When a booth visitor enters and submits their contact information, they are immediately added directly to your marketing automation leads and can be subscribed to automated campaign emails – including one sent right away thanking them for visiting you at the show!
Pretty cool, huh?
Marketing Automation After Your Trade Show Event Has Ended
Once your trade show ends, your marketing work is far from over. Now is the time when all of your leads need to make their way into your marketing automation system and CRM (if you’re using a separate piece like SalesForce.com).
Of course, any contacts added directly to your marketing automation tool via your iPad landing page will already be in the system and possibly already assigned to drip email campaigns.
Any leads captured outside of that system, say by attendee badge scanners, will need to be exported from that service, as a spreadsheet, and imported into your automation tool. This is typically a simple but necessary step in the process.
Once all of your leads are in your marketing automation system, these leads can be added to a drip campaign alerting prospects to upcoming events, promos, white papers or webinars your company is offering. Or to a special offer – available only to those that visited your booth during the show!
In other words, you’ll be able to easily keep marketing to these prospects with minimal manual work. A beautiful thing, right?!?
Yes, but don’t forget to compile any notes on the contacts you’ve made and assign each to the appropriate sales representative on your team! Marketing automation doesn’t replace your sales team – it supports them and helps to build more qualified, “warmer” leads!
Hope you find this helpful and a place to get your mind turning. Marketing automation can be used in a number of ways….get creative and let it do some of the work for you.
Like to learn more about marketing your company through trade show events? ColorCraft has the team and expertise to help make you the success of the show floor…. Contact us today!
