Identifying Potential Buyers Among
Trade Show Exhibit Visitors

Use Touch Technology to Increase Trade Show Exhibit Results

Trade shows are an effective way of engaging prospects and existing customers. However, it is often difficult to mine booth visitors in a relevant and efficient manner to ensure that you are communicating with the right people.

As a result, measuring how well you did at an event is difficult to quantify and usually based on a gut feeling from team members who staffed your trade show exhibit booth. To better quantify your return on investment, consider the following.

Increase Traffic to Your Display Area

In the past, handing out lots of free stuff at your trade show exhibit could help draw a large, steady crowd. However, this approach makes it difficult to mine for viable prospects – and it can get expensive. Reserve your giveaways and selectively hand them out to the individuals who represent potential buyers.

Now, with the availability of touch-screen and hand-held technologies, you can create fun, interactive promotions to drive traffic into your display area.

During your pre-marketing activities, secure (likely at a cost) the attendee list from the show sponsor. Then, send an email or letter to attendees who represent high-opportunity prospects. Invite them to stop by your booth (give them the booth number and/or location) for a chance to win a [meaningful] prize.

Have prospects use an iPad, computer or similar that is in the display area to provide their name, contact information, and answer a few questions that are relevant for your post-show-follow-up.

Identify the Right People

Dynamic surveys within your touch screen applications are an opportunistic way to filter and pre-qualify your audience at trade shows. Depending how people answer a particular survey question will dictate the type of questions that follow.

For example, ask each participant, at the beginning of the survey, if they currently use your products, your competitors’ products, or do not use these types of products at all, Then, ask subsequent questions according to how they answered. Examples are:

Customer

How satisfied are you with our offering?
How can it be improved?
How long have you been a customer?
What other products might you be interested in?
Would you like one of our team members to reach out?

Conquest Opportunity

How much do you purchase annually / monthly?
What type of products are you purchasing?
How often do you purchase?
What features are most important to you?

Contest Chaser

Survey would end – allowing you to spend more time on your target audience

Create Profiles of New Prospects and Existing Customers

Dynamic surveys allow you to identify who is coming into your trade show exhibit booth and helps build profiles of all of the participants with whom you want to interact.

As a result, you get a better understanding of your prospects, benefit from enhanced profiles of existing customers, and save time that would otherwise be wasted on people who are simply looking for free stuff or a chance to win a prize.

By filtering your booth traffic, you are better able to spend time with the people that matter most.

The information gathered can then be used for post-event marketing, with timely and relevant communications that can help influence their purchase decision when they are ready to buy.

Convert Your Trade Show Exhibit Traffic Into New Business

You make a significant investment to participate in trade shows. You want to make sure you are talking to the right people and that you’re money is being well spent. You want to be able to correlate how many sales are a direct result of being at each show.

By applying these basic interactive marketing steps, you can be one step closer to converting your event traffic into loyal customers.

This article was written by Dennis Pitselis of Zone Marketing Group, an interactive event marketing company that specializes in capturing prospect data on-site at events. For more information, visit www.ZoneMarketingGroup.ca.