Ensure Your Next Trade Show Pays Off With a Unique Inbound Campaign

Inbound marketing is all about people coming to you. It’s not about spamming people and chasing them away. It’s about creating content that attracts people and makes them want to learn more about your company.

Most trade show booths do the opposite; push the marketing message and hope fora return.

The foundation for making your trade show inbound is creating a unique campaign built around the show itself.

You don’t want to reuse an old marketing campaign; instead, come up with something new and fresh that ties your value proposition into what you’re trying to accomplish at the show.

Consider releasing corresponding ebooks, blog posts, and create social media teasers in the week prior to the event in order to create buzz.

See how creating a unique campaign for your trade show will attract people toward your booth and brand by implementing a little inbound marketing.

Create a Unique Campaign for Your Trade Show

Set Trade Show Goals

When developing a unique campaign for your next trade show, it’s important to clearly identify the goals for the event. What exactly are you looking to get out of it? Previously, you may have just been looking to have a few good conversations and raise awareness.

However, if awareness is what you’re looking for, worry not, as getting lost in an attendees bag full of 50 other pamphlets is every marketers dream.

Get specific. The goals should be measurable, so you can easily track ROI post trade show.

Some goals that you might have are:

• Generate X amount of qualified leads for sales to contact

• Drive people ­– through collateral – back to your website

• Generate buzz throughout event

• Acquire X amount of email contacts

By having specific goals in mind, you’ll have a more definitive game plan for achieving them. If you’re looking to deliver 50 sales ready leads to your sales team, and you know the lead conversion rate is 50%, you need to have around 100 conversations to get your sales team the volume they need.

That’s a lot of conversations, sure. But by having a remarkable campaign and presence, you’ll do a much better job of creating buzz and attracting visitors.

Calls-to-Action

Usually when you think CTA, you’re thinking of that pretty little button giving direction on your website. But how does this translate in person at a trade show?

Simply put, your CTA is every piece of collateral you’re handing out. From a flag item, to any print collateral, they should all include a CTA that displays the link to the corresponding offer you have in place in order to generate leads from the show.

Like your website, if it’s not attractive or interesting, no one will see it or use it.

Landing Page

Prior to the trade show, you need to create a landing page for your offer that matches the theme of your campaign and ties everything together.

Make sure it’s consistent with any print collateral or flag items you’re handing out at the trade show. Start promoting the offer a week prior to the event in order to help create buzz.

Twitter Presence

Like it or not, many attendees are going to be glued to whatever mobile devices tickles their fancy. If they’re not talking with a vendor, chances are they’re engaging social media in some way to get more from the trade show.

Embrace this.

Create a unique hashtag specific to your campaign for the trade show, and start tweeting it several weeks prior to help raise awareness and create buzz.

It’s also important to tweet and use the unique hashtag for the actual event, as chances are many other exhibitors and attendees will be doing the same. Make connections. Develop relationships. Give people a reason to come by your booth.

If you’re simply standing by your booth without being plugged in to the social pipeline of the event, you’re missing a huge opportunity to connect and network more effectively.