The key to marketing after an exhibition is to create an effective follow up plan. This is essentially the only way to get the leads you’ve captured interested in your business (if they aren’t already) and encourage people to engage with your products or services.
Having a follow–up strategy that clearly meets your goals and encourages customers down the buying journey is the best way to market after an event or exhibition.
So, how can you develop your follow–up strategy?
Social Media Methods
Being active on your social media is a fantastic way to subtly follow up your leads. Following them on social media and sending them a message or a tweet is a great way to instantly make contact and display a public relationship.
It will remind the lead who you are and establish a direct point of contact immediately after the exhibition.
You can continue to share posts about the show (e.g. photos of your stand) on social media after the show which will also encourage the leads you didn’t pursue to get in contact by continuing the conversation online, giving you the chance to follow up even the people who weren’t necessarily ‘leads’.
Email Marketing Methods
Email marketing remains one of the classic and most effective follow up methods from an exhibition. In order to make this as effective as possible, you should collate your leads into groups – hot, warm and cold leads.
In doing so, you can direct the right emails to the right group to encourage the action you desire wherever these people are in the buying journey.
Hot leads will be closer to the purchase stage, so it might be better to target them with sales based emails, whereas your colder leads may not be as ready to buy, so focusing on nurturing these leads by providing them with valuable information might work better.
Multi-channel Marketing
The one thing that’s absolutely crucial in a follow up plan is to use a variety of channels to direct your marketing through. Whether your leads are hot, warm or cold, different people respond better to different forms of marketing.
Avoid delivering your marketing through the one channel to give yourself the best chance at appealing to people’s individual preferences and buying behaviours.
You could combine email and social, print and email, or any number of tactics that could result in an effective campaign that will convert the most customers.
Calls to Action
Making it incredibly obvious to the lead what you want them to do is always going to produce results. Do this by including Call To Action points in your follow ups, whether this is a direction to sign up to a mailing list through your social media, or to download some content on your website via an email link.
Whatever this Call To Action is, ensure it is thoughtful and directly addresses the action you need each customer to take to nudge them further towards purchase.
Personalisation
This can make all the difference when it comes to your follow up strategy. Consumers are 4 times more likely to respond to marketing that is personalised, so it really isn’t something you can skimp on.
Including a first name in an email instead of any generic ‘Sir/Madam’ or ‘Mr/Mrs’ greeting is all you need to do to make an impact.
It’s even better though, if you can include some notes or discuss what you spoke about at the exhibition in your follow–up – his will help the lead remember you and does wonders in terms of building customer relationships from the get-go.
That’s it, you now have a complete strategy to help guide you through your exhibition marketing, from start to finish.
If you’re a newcomer to the exhibition scene, this is a great place to start you off, or if you consider yourself a veteran it can never hurt to be up to date with how to best reach your leads.
Now you’re prepared, shop our stands to find the best fit for you and your exhibition.
