Using Follow-Up To Boost Your Trade Show Booth’s Success

I attend a ton of Trade Show and Business Expo type events, and feel these types of events have lead to my 20 year success story.  Christine OKelly featured this great post that hits on some of the very tactics and strategies that I have used over the years.

Follow up and using promotional products have been two critical components for me.

Using Follow-Up To Boost Your Trade Show Booth’s Success, by Christine OKelly

Many businesses feel their efforts are well rewarded when they are able to complete deals directly from their trade show booths. What they may not be taking into consideration is how a well planned post-event can affect their sales. In addition, businesses should consider how much money they may be losing without a post-event. This element of your business plan can be more of an art than a science. You need to connect with clients that have visited your trade show display in a meaningful way. This will take some planning on your part.

Follow Through With Good Timing

Like most elements of business, the quality of your contact is just as important as the timing of it. It can be a delicate balance between not making the contact too soon where you might appear aggressive yet soon enough so the contact will have your trade show display fresh in their minds. As a general rule of thumb, most experts feel that five days is the optimal time period to wait before contacting attendees. Once contact has been made, you should set up a ‘tickle file’ that reminds you to contact these people again throughout the year several times on a rotating schedule. This gives you the opportunity to remind them how your business can be of service to them.

Follow Up Methods

Get a game plan ahead of time so you know how to work your follow up plan even before your trade show booths start to see attendees. This will give you the opportunity to get organized and gather the necessary contact information. Be sure to ask the client how they prefer to be contacted. Some may opt for email only while others prefer regular mail or a telephone call. The lists can then be organized and leads given to your sales staff for the follow up contact.

A different idea would be to divide the leads into categories according to how ‘hot’ they are. Your marketing plan may call for you to send a card similar to your trade show display to those attendees that were classified as less than ‘hot’ while a personalized phone call could be made to the more serious candidates. Either way, use the contact to reinforce how your company can be of benefit to them.

Get All The Information You Can From Your Trade Show Display

Part of the organization that goes into place when setting up trade show booths is how to handle the number of people you hope will visit. Decide ahead of time what kind of information you will want to get and the best way to get it from the attendees. One popular idea is to have a drawing for a prize that requires attendees to fill out a card with all of their contact information. This contact information can then be used not only to highlight what you are featuring with trade show booths, but to also cross sell products or services that complement them.

If you have cards available to gather contact information, be sure to include a space for suggestions and questions. This is a great way to cement a relationship by following up with an answer to questions someone had while visiting your trade show display. It shows them you are interested in solving their problem with an eye on detail.

Less than 5% of attendees will buy from an initial visit to trade show booths, but 50% are likely to buy with a follow up contact. For Chicago trade show booths and many others throughout the country, this fact alone makes it more than worthwhile to participate in trade show events.

About the Author
Christine O’Kelly is the author for the Chicago trade show booths specialists at Productive Displays. For a lead-generating trade show display, Chicago clients and those throughout the country depend on Productive Displays for the highest quality designs, graphics, rentals, refurbishment, and more.

Here is a great idea for a tradeshow promotion to generate double the traffic to your booth.

Tim Somers
Bizarre Promotions, Inc.