Lead Generation at Events and Trade Shows

Stop Marketing to the Guy Who Wanted the Cool T-shirt
Events are a key component of most marketing programs. They are a great way to build your company brand as well as collect leads. The challenge with trade shows leads is that the "leads" you come back with are in one big list. Everyone is there, including:

"I'm smiling and listening to your pitch so you will give me a free t-shirt."

"My company sent me to this event to collect information to bring back for further review."

"This is interesting, can you send me some information, I don’t want to carry it around?"

And we hope for these –

"My company is looking at purchasing a solution like this, can you have a sales rep follow up with me."

Ok, we all know there's not an overwhelming amount of these, but they are definitely out there.

Your list of "leads" includes those who just wanted the t-shirt, the warm leads and then those you have no idea how you ended up with their name. When looking at the list of "leads" how do you know you have the right buying contacts for your product or service? Or that the person you scanned is even involved in a buying process for your solution?

Most marketers send event leads directly to their sales team for follow up and 90% of tradeshow leads are not followed up with by sales. They pick and choose the companies and titles that look right and trash the rest because they too can't determine why they have these names and don't want to waste their time trying to find out. Knowing this, as marketers, how do we track ROI on an event if we don't know what to make of the 90% of the "leads"?

There is a better way to get more out of your event spend.

Once you return from an event with an attendee list or booth scans, STOP! Do not pass this data directly to sales. Separate out the 'HOT' leads (real conversations you had at the event that are ready for sales follow up) and pass only these on to sales for immediate follow up.

**Remember to stay on top of these leads. If the sales team isn’t able to make contact, these contacts may need to come back to marketing for additional 'warming'.

Turn event data into real marketing leads using the following ReachForce Data Solutions:

ReachForce Insight can help you determine if the contacts you collected at the event are in your target market. Not every visitor is a right fit. Insight uses your current wins history and sales funnel activity to highlight your sweet spot in the market. By comparing your target market profile to the companies that are visiting your website, you are then able to better focus your contact discovery.

Once you know the right companies to market to, use ReachForce Capture to find the right role-based contacts within the company. Even if the person you talked to was a good contact, use Discover to find the rest of the decision making unit.