Summary
The Challenges
Trade shows can be good for organizations, but let’s face it … it involves a lot of preparation and expense, so the lead capture strategies must be sound.
It can be difficult to stand out amongst other exhibitors; it’s one thing to attract attention and quite another thing to engage and capture prospects.
Unless it’s something that they’re aware of, and directly in the process of purchasing …your sincere efforts are met with skepticism. People are aware that you’re “trying to sell them something” and their first instinct is to avoid eye contact and pull away if you approach. Often, they want more information, but they don’t want to be subjected to the whole “sales pitch”.
Our Strategies
SMS-based strategies can help here: even though they’re starting a conversation with you, it’s still perceived as arms-length, and they can start and stop the conversation at any point (far easier than for them to try and stop an awkward verbal conversation).
Along with static displays and digital signage, here are some strategies we used to help demonstrate our capabilities and engage people:
- contests with a valuable incentive
- polls
- games (gamification)
Our strategy is to provide value to a prospect (educational/informational) and not to overdo it … so reaching out to them doesn’t turn them off. If they continue to see value, we can continue to reach out to them.
We already have a key piece of the ‘contact’ puzzle … their mobile device. Prospects can ignore emails, but studies have shown that virtually 100% of people will read their text messages within 3 minutes of receiving them.
We broadcasted the winners of the contest at the end of the show to all the entrants, along with a link and encouragement or incentive to continue the conversation.
It can be difficult to stand out amongst other exhibitors; it’s one thing to attract attention and quite another thing to engage and capture prospects.
Strategy #1: Frictionless, Fast & Easy
Having a draw prize is nothing new at trade shows; typically, it’s a pen and paper-based approach that requires printing costs and transcription time and costs to get the data to where it’s usable. It also requires a bit of time from the entrant which becomes a friction point in many cases.
In our case, all they needed to do was send a text to our number. There was no ‘app’ required because SMS/text is native to all smartphones, and because it’s the most-used feature on a smartphone, people already know how to use it.Strategy #2 – Incentives
Strategy #3 - Fun
Along with the draw prize, we also had ‘instant-win’ prizes of pizza gift cards and our own branded battery packs. To have a chance at the instant-win prizes (which had a virtually 100%-win rate!), we were able to demonstrate our digital gaming capability … they would text into our number and receive a ‘SPIN-to-WIN’ game card. It was fun to see the expressions on their faces! We also had a ‘SCRATCH-n-SAVE’ coupon … complete with sound effects. These capabilities are available to our clients.
Strategy #4 - Providing Value
Strategy #5 – Understanding our Solution by Experiencing it
None of the capabilities that we wanted to communicate were theoretical. We were using our own systems to demonstrate our capability. This was powerful; they could see it in action in a real-world environment.
Outcomes
We had excellent engagement, initiated by the prize incentives. Once people entered the contest, instead of moving on to the next exhibitor, we often had them curious about how the system worked; this led to one-on-one conversations on how it could be applied within their business.
At the end of the day, no data entry or transcription was required … we already had all the data that we required to connect with our prospects in the future.
Sector / Industry
- Business-to-Business Trade Show
Needs
- Engage Prospects
Issues
- Difficult to Stand Out
- Difficult to Engage Prospects
- Skepticism
Approach
- Use SMS/Pro to Initiate Contests with Valuable Incentive. Interactive Polls and Games
- Broadcast Results and Contest Winners Via Text Message (SMS/Pro)
Results
- Excellent Engagement
- Polls and Games Let to Inquiries About How the System Worked
- Visitor's Contact Information Collected Electronically/Automatically
