Increasing Your Effectiveness at Trade Shows with Good Follow Up Methods and Practices
One of the goals you should have set this year for your trade show marketing is that you were going to be diligent about following up on every single lead the trade show generated. You are no longer going to take a passive stance. The better you are about following up on your leads, the stronger your business is going to be.
Not only does having a solid plan for follow up make good business sense, you will find that it really gives you the edge on your competition. The number of businesses who go to trade shows but don’t bother with any follow up techniques is astonishing.
The way that you are going to follow up on the leads after the trade show has ended is very important.
- Before you even leave for the trade show you need to be thinking about how you plan to go about following up on any leads that you are going to develop. The biggest issue you are going to have to address is how you plan on collecting the contact information of anybody who expresses interest in your company’s services. Writing the information down on a piece of paper isn’t good enough. You should have a formal method for collecting this information. In addition to getting their name and their phone number, you should also be sure to ask for their email address. Once you have selected a method of collecting and recording this information, you need to make sure that every person who will be working in your trade show booth is aware of the correct protocol.
One of the things that many businesses have begun doing is making sure they send out a thank you email to every attendee who filled out contact information. Not only does the email help establish a relationship between your business and the trade show attendee, it also shows that you cared about what they had to say. Make sure that the email includes not just a thank you message but also your company logo and the business name. For hot leads, you might want to think about a more personalized form of follow up, such as a friendly telephone call.
You already know that working trade shows and dealing with the constant deluge of people can be stressful and that your staff is going to require many breaks. There is no reason that your staff person can’t be categorizing the leads they were able to generate during their break time. Not only should your staff person have each lead written down, but they should also make a note about whether or not they think it is going to be a hot or cold lead.
A mistake that many businesses that do follow up on trade show leads often make is that they wait too long to follow up on the lead. Knowing when you should follow up can be tricky, you don’t want to come across as too pushy. The thank you email should be sent within a day or two of meeting the person at the trade show. A week or ten days is usually an appropriate time to make a follow up phone call.
See all of our blog posts for more tips and information on trade show marketing.











