English
100 Trade Show Lead Generation Ideas
May 1, 2010
By Mike Thimmesch
For most exhibitors, lead generation is their #1 reason for exhibiting at trade shows.Exhibit marketers want leads to replenish their sales pipeline, bring in new and repeat customers, and generate sales revenue.
So to help stoke the lead generation fires, here are 100 ideas to get you more leads at your upcoming trade shows, divvied up among 5 main areas:
Get more trade show leads by how you select shows
1. Go to more trade shows outside your local region
2. Go to more trade shows, in your best vertical markets
3. Go to more trade shows, in foreign countries
4. Go to fewer trade shows, but put more effort into booth staff preparation and promotions for each remaining show
5. Exhibit at trade shows where your buyers are
6. Track leads to determine and expand in the shows with the best ROI
7. Evolve show selection to match changes in company’s best vertical markets
Get more trade show leads with your exhibit design
8. Get a bigger booth
9. Get a booth space closer to the hub of traffic, or by a bigger competitor
10. Get a corner booth space
11. Backlight your trade show display graphics
12. Design your exhibit to more boldly and clearly say why attendees will benefit from working with you
13. Put fewer elements on your exhibit, but make the remaining images and messages bigger and more concise
14. Use graphics with images and benefits that appeal more directly to attendees at your vertical market shows
15. Put benefit statements on your trade show exhibit graphics
16. Replace your tired old display with a new trade show exhibit
17. Make your exhibit architecture more inviting to enter
18. Pick more exciting colors on your exhibit
19. Bring fewer products, such as only your most popular products, to minimize clutter
20. Get a taller exhibit
21. Add more lighting
22. Put messages on your flooring
23. Avoid an exhibit that looks like everyone else
24. Keep your booth neat and clean throughout the show
25. Move interesting equipment and technology to the outside of the booth
26. Use a theme that gets attention and memorably ties into your competitive advantage or offering
27. Match your exhibit message to your other marketing materials
Get more trade show leads with pre-show promotions
28. Send an inexpensive postcard offering a free gift in your trade show booth
29. Run a banner ad on the show website
30. Send a pre-show email blast to your clients and top prospects located close to the show location
31. Put stickers with booth location and show info on all outgoing mail
32. Email invitation to a pre-show microsite with targeted messages and offers
33. Have your sales people invite their prospects to visit your booth and set up meetings in advance
34. Send an email invitation to the show’s pre-registered attendee list for this year, and the registered attendee list from last year
35. Use social media to reach more attendees
36. Send half of something of value to attendees before the show, and promise to give the other half in your booth
37. Contact your industry press and tell them about the innovative new product you will be introducing at the show
38. Put your booth number on all your pre-show promotions: email, mail, ads, website
39. Design more creative and compelling pre-show promotions to cut through the mailbox clutter
40. Invite top prospects to lunch or dinner at the show
41. Send a pre-show promotion offering a more valuable gift in the booth, but not to the entire list, but only to the subset of show attendees that match your target audience
42. Send free tickets to the trade show to clients and best prospects
43. Post your trade show schedule on your website with a link to sign up for appointments
44. Ask the show for additional promotional opportunities
Get more trade show leads with at-show promotions and activities
45. Introduce a new product at the trade show
46. Add motion to your exhibit
47. Offer food, especially if it smells good, like baking cookies
48. Offer drinks to your booth visitors
49. Give your attendees something entertaining and fun to do
50. Do an engaging demo in your booth
51. Get your client to hold your product
52. Go beyond sight to appeal to attendees’ sense of smell, sound, taste, and touch
53. Add interactivity
54. Run presentations or video loops on large video monitors
55. Offer healthy food, not just candy
56. Put out a candy or chocolate dish to slow down attendees long enough to engage them
57. Offer in-booth massages
58. Give a free sample of your product
59. Give a free sample of a product made with your product
60. Hire a celebrity for your booth, where the celebrity is popular with your target audience at the show
61. Hire a celebrity lookalike for your booth, where the celebrity is popular with your target audience at the show
62. Giveaway something useful to your target audience
63. Hire a performer, such as a magician, to attract attention to your booth
64. Have a raffle, sweepstakes, money machine or a game
65. Hold a press conference if you have newsworthy news
66. Sponsor something highly visible at the show
67. Have a contest for attendees in your booth
68. Get signage in the show hall promoting your booth presence
69. Offer a show special or discount
70. Get someone from your company to be a speaker at the show
71. Give presentations or educational sessions in your booth
72. Do door drops that target only show attendees at their hotel rooms
73. Pay to include an invite or a gift in the official show bag each attendee gets
74. Put an ad in the show book
75. Brand your staffers with outfits or similar attire
76. Offer one really big prize (worth thousands of dollars) to get more attention
Get more trade show leads with better booth staffing
77. Bring more booth staffers
78. Bring booth staffers who actually want to be there
79. Hold a contest to reward the staffers who take the highest quantity of qualified leads
80. Leave your wallflowers at home
81. Train your booth staff how to work a trade show booth
82. Communicate to your staff the company’s goals and your expectations of them in the booth
83. Don’t use booth staffing as a training ground for brand-new employees
84. Ask visitors open-ended questions and listen to their answers
85. Get faster at recording each lead by not writing down every visitor’s name and address, but instead using a badge scanner
86. Have enough badge scanners to avoid lines with your booth staffers in busy times
87. Bring crowd gatherers (not booth babes)
88. Smile
89. Keep your booth staffers fresh by giving them regular breaks
90. Learn to more quickly disengage with unqualified attendees
91. Thoroughly train your booth staffers on the new products you are introducing at the show or just introduced recently
92. Make friends with your neighboring exhibitors, and refer attendees back and forth
93. Bring your top management to booth staff, and tell attendees they will be there
94. Get staffers out of the bowels of your booth and out to the edge of the aisle
95. Don’t sit down in your booth, unless you are talking with visitors
96. Don’t hide behind tables
97. Instead of giving away literature, offer to mail it to attendees, and get their contact info
98. Prepare your booth staffers with several good engaging questions
99. Arm your booth staffers with answers to common objections
100. Train your booth staffers to know your products and how they solve your clients’ problems
Which of these 100 ideas will you choose? Perhaps you are already doing several yourselves. Some can be combined to be used simultaneously. It’s a long list, and there’s no way anyone can do all 100. Some of them even contradict each other.
Yet as Bob Milam advises, while knowing a lot of tactics is useful, knowing which tactics to use and when to use them is even more useful. Determine your strategy first, then choose among these trade show tactics the most appropriate ones to support your strategy and generate more leads.
Also, while I’ve listed many tactics to get more leads, of course you need to also strive for getting higher quality leads. And if you can do both, go to the head of the class.
FREE BOOK: TRADE SHOW TIPS FOR THE ISLAND EXHIBITOR
Request this free book that contains 26 articles previously published in the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog, so you can be better prepared for the unique challenges faced by island exhibitors like you.