Post-Show Marketing Tips: Debrief, Prioritize, and Follow Up
Whew! The trade show is over…what's next?
Great booth, great show, and lots of booth visitors… an all time high! It feels great to know your pre-show efforts brought good results. However, how do you know your exhibition was a success? To measure and maximize the success of your exhibit, follow these easy steps.
- Debrief and analyze - Evaluate what went right and wrong by holding a debriefing meeting immediately after the show ends. Analyze everything about the conference in comparison to your show objectives: your booth location, your booth layout, the conference traffic flow, your booth traffic flow, the leads, the competition, your staff, the message, the sales script, and the quality of your booth visitors. Decide if the activity was a success by critically assessing the actions to the desired goal. Record the successful actions for future use and the disappointing events so they will not happen again.
- Examine and rank - Review your leads and separate them into qualified and non-qualified. If the pre-show activities correctly drew your target audience into your booth, the qualified leads will out-number the non-qualified. Carefully look at your qualified leads and separate them into ranking categories. Frequent gradings used are: Hot!, Warm, Cold, or A, B and Cs. The top grade indicates the customer has an immediate need and interest, the middle ranking indicates they are interested in knowing more about your product for a future purchase, and the last ranking designates they want information but are nowhere close to making a purchasing decision.
- Follow up in real time - An immediate need or Hot! lead means you must follow up immediately. Ideally, that Hot! customer should have something waiting back at the office from you when they return home. Call their office from the show and leave them a voice mail thanking them for stopping by your booth. Let them know you will be contacting them to set an appointment or, if the appointment was set up at the trade show, confirm the meeting date and time in your voicemail message.
- Follow up and more follow up - Follow up with all leads within one week. The sooner you contact your leads, the better they will remember you and your company, and the more likely they will do business with you. Begin with a telephone call and ask them how they are enjoying the gift they received at the show from your company. Schedule a visit where you can personally bring more information for discussion with them. If your leads are too numerous to call, send them each a handwritten card thanking them for their visit to your booth. Follow up with a telephone call, and if you know you will not be able to call them within three weeks, send them an email after the card and then call them. Prospects judge products and services by the relationship they have with the "front-line" company representatives.
- Congratulations! - Good, solid leads generated at tradeshows that turn into short-term sales is a direct measure of a successful show. Sales that come about in three, six, or eight months because of a first encounter at a trade show indicate you have completely maximized your tradeshow. You identified the right audience and message, you got them to your booth with the right teaser and visuals, and you kept their attention focused on your product with continued follow-up. You maximized the opportunities available to you from the tradeshow. Congratulations! Your tradeshow was a success.
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— Posted 07/03/2003