Trade Show Marketing: Are You Using These Lead-Generating Tactics?

You check your badge. Make sure everything in your booth is in place. Run through your pitch one last time in your head. People begin to filter in. You take a deep breath. Now, you wait.

Does your trade show booth get many visitors?

The answer largely depends on how much effort your brand made with its pre-show marketing. People go to trade shows with a purpose. Often, they know who they’re going to visit and what they’re looking for before they even step foot inside the venue.

With the right trade show marketing, you can keep your brand top-of-mind with prospects and foster higher turnout.

Use these digital marketing tactics leading up to the show to increase your booth visits — and leads:

Build Awareness with Targeted Advertising

Display and social media advertising can put your brand in front of key audiences to increase awareness of your brand’s trade show efforts. The best part? Digital ads can easily be targeted to reach your audiences where they’re at, like industry websites and chat forums.

To increase brand recognition, digital ads should feature distinct branding and consistent messaging. When audiences consistently see brand elements like your company logo and colors on their screens, they’ll recognize you more easily at the show. Plus, consistent messaging gives them an idea of what to expect when they visit.

Targeted ads don't have to stop once the show starts, either! Geo-targeted ads deliver ads to people in particular locations — cities, airports, venues — and meet specific criteria such as demographics, behaviors and interests. You can use this tactic to ensure that your brand is top-of-mind with prospects right when they’re at the show and ready to talk shop.

Collect Leads with Smart Landing Pages

Targeted digital ads not only build brand awareness, but can also help generate leads. Your digital ads should drive audiences to key conversion points where you can collect valuable contact information.

Whether you want audiences to register for training sessions at the show or sign up for prizes and giveaways, including contact forms on your landing pages gives you the “in” to keep talking to your audiences.

Feature contact forms on landing pages to gather valuable leads prior to the trade show.[/caption]

Pro-tip: If you wow audiences with beautiful ads and direct them to a lackluster landing page, your conversion rate may suffer. Carry over your brand elements to your landing page design, and keep key conversion points higher up on the page.

Create Content That Demonstrates Industry Know-How

Once you’ve gathered some leads, stay in touch and get them excited to visit you at the show!

People go to trade shows to learn, seeking out the best in the industry. When they’re regularly seeing quality industry insight articles and how-to videos from a brand, they begin to trust them as an expert in the industry.

Your brand can share a steady stream of industry-related content with leads through a few newsletters. Use these newsletters to highlight some of the insights you’ll be offering at the show and demonstrate your industry expertise.

Send out industry-related insights to leads with pre-show newsletters.[/caption]

Also, be sure to keep reminding audiences where to find you at the show in your newsletters!

Generate Some Buzz on Social Media

Audiences use social media to see who’s going to the show, talk about what they’re looking forward to, and scope out event details. So, join the conversation and make sure your brand is part of the buzz!

The key to generating some buzz and engagement on social media is to stay social, not promotional. Share insightful tips and teaser videos to build excitement for the show. Also, make your brand more personal by introducing what representatives will be at the show to chat with.

Take it a step further with a social media contest or giveaway. You can do this several ways:

• Prize Giveaways: Simply ask users to like your content or comment to enter into a giveaway. Then, build some anticipation by announcing the winner at the trade show. This will help build a larger audience for your social content and drive traffic to your booth.
• Photo Contests: Have people to share photos using your products for a chance to win a prize at the show. Require branded hashtags to easily track submissions and create buzz around your brand. This lets others see your product in action from real users.
• Story Shout-Outs: Ask users to give a shout-out to your brand in their stories. This is a great way for audiences to share what they’re looking forward to at the show and let others know you’ll be there.

Adding these digital tactics to your trade show marketing will help drive the right people to your booth and get the conversation started.

Interested in learning how to nurture your trade show leads to convert? Get insights for effective lead-nurturing on our blog:
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