The digital marketing landscape is saturated, and many marketers are increasing their spend on experiential marketing. That’s because it has the potential to be one of the most impactful ways to generate and nurture your B2B leads. With an exhibit presence, a good strategy and careful planning, you can attract many high-quality leads in a single event.
Through my work in marketing and crafting experiences, I’ve gathered these top tips on how to ace your own experiential marketing.
Choose conferences carefully.
A quick Google search will tell you that there’s no shortage of events at which to exhibit. But with such a high cost to exhibit, which ones are the right choices for you?
Start by asking conference organizers for an attendee breakdown. Will your target personas be at this event? What’s the size of the audience you hope to reach? You’ll want to be sure that the opportunity is worth your resource cost.
Just remember that bigger isn’t always better here – you might encounter fewer leads at a smaller event, but they could be of much higher quality.
Have a plan for in-person engagement.
Now that you’re committed to exhibit, how do you make the most out of your presence? A strong visual identity tailored to your audience will attract the right kind of attention. You’ll need plenty of branded items and giveaways. If you have a tabletop, consider a branded tablecloth and roll-up banner. If you have booth space, make sure to create something that's visually captivating from across the exhibition floor.
No matter what, you should also be sure to have some high-quality giveaways to help attract attendees to your exhibit space. Promotional items like battery packs and nice T-shirts are perfect. (It’s harder to get excited about custom pens.)
But your booth alone won’t sell your product. Your people are the best representation of your brand. Make sure your booth or tabletop has enough staff: You’ll need a greeter to attract prospects to the booth and a second staff member to scan badges or do product demos. It’s easy to miss out on leads when your booth staff is overwhelmed.
Engage beyond your booth.
You’ve had a great event and collected some good leads. Now what? Many startups would add those emails to a general mailing list and wait for the prospect to take the next step. But the power of face-to-face marketing means you have a strong touch point to engage with your audience. Make a plan for follow-up that includes three additional email touch points with a strong call to action, such as “book a meeting.”
You might also be able to communicate with your prospects via the conference app for communication. Personal outreach to high-quality leads is a great way to follow up, especially after you’ve sent them an email workflow with no response.
Don’t wait too long – conference apps can go dark after the event. We use Slack for attendee communication at our events. Slack allows sponsors to have more time to directly engage with prospects post-event.
The upfront costs of sponsoring an event can be considerable, but sponsorship can yield considerable ROI in the right circumstances. Like many aspects of marketing, making the most out of your sponsored exhibit presence takes effort and planning. Applying these experiential marketing principles will help you get better leads at events and make sure those leads keep moving through your funnel.
