What’s Hot, What’s Not? How to Identify and Capture the Right Leads at Your Live Events

For many organizations, live events (like trade shows) represent a large share of their overall marketing spend. In fact, many companies allocate anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of their budgets for brand experiences, with the predominant portion going to these live events. Many marketers believe that, after a company website, events are the most effective channel in their “marketing mix,” given the power of live experiences and the ability to forge one-on-one connections. That’s why event marketing is critical. From promoting your events to utilizing events as part of your marketing strategy, events are powerful. And expensive. That’s why it’s critical to make the most of them.

So, while meetings and events are a powerful marketing channel, because of the large investment in them, they are also under a great deal of scrutiny. For marketers, justifying the spend and measuring its true impact can be tricky. One of the best ways to do this is by capturing “hot” leads, buying signals and quickly accelerate the sales funnel. Challenging, yes, but also an attainable goal. Learn to harness digital breadcrumbs to build robust prospect profiles and transform event leads from net-new to sales-ready in 24-hours or less.

Check out our new eBook: The B2B Marketer’s Guide to Identifying Hot Leads at Live Events

Live events present an opportunity to learn more about your prospects than any other channel—they key to getting hot leads. The average event attendee travels 500 miles, spends more than $1,000, and invests two to three days of their time, yet when they leave, we often know little more than when they arrived. If that happens at your events, you’re probably not taking full advantage of the opportunities that lie in front of you as a marketer. Getting to know the wants and needs of your attendees, and capturing them, is obviously key to success.

It’s a pretty straightforward formula:

1. Capture attendee journey data throughout your event.
2. Build a complete picture of your attendees and rapidly transform that info into value-added, personal exchanges.
3. Prioritize leads for follow-up by the time your event is over

So how do you get there? The opportunity lies in capturing digital breadcrumbs. As your attendees navigate through your events, they are giving you “signals.” When they interact with your mobile event app, check-in kiosks, even the sessions they attend—they are telling you what they’re interested in, what their pains are, their aspirations and above all, their buying preferences. All this data is available with the details you need to prioritize your follow-up, and deliver personalized, highly relevant marketing.

For more information, download our free eBook: The B2B Marketer’s Guide to Identifying Hot Leads at Live Events

Technology can help you do that. Using a tech on-site means being able to quickly capture data with little friction. I.e. attendees scan badges when visiting booths. This allows you, as well as exhibitors and sponsors, to capture leads onsite and immediately sync them with your CRM for follow-up. All notes, specific products of interest, and time spent are captured directly in the system. And that’s just the beginning. The on-site data helps you build a more robust buyer profile, enabling you to get the complete picture.

How can you identify the hottest of hot leads? Capture these seven powerful digital breadcrumbs:

1. Registration Forms. Capture a complete and comprehensive contact profile including name, company, title, and mailing address.
2. Check-In. Take advantage of a reliable, real-time record of who attended the event and learn more about your prospects by gathering additional information.
3. Sessions attended. Just like a whitepaper download tells you what your prospects are interested, so too do the sessions they attend.
4. RFID Tracking. Track attendee behavior as they navigate through your event so you know what they like, what their interests are, and how you can build more impactful events.
5. In-Session Questions. Analyze the questions that prospects ask within the mobile event app Live Q&A feature to gain deeper insights into their pains and aspirations.
6. Surveys. Use in-app surveys to get feedback on the event and also gain explicit permission to contact prospects about the content or solutions that are relevant to them. (This is highly effective. It drives thousands of leads for us every year).
7. Exhibitors Hall. Record the booths and products your attendees explore so that you can deliver more value to sponsors and prioritize your sales team’s follow-up.

Using digital to enhance and augment personal relationships between your sales team and your market is a golden opportunity. In our eBook, we’ll show you how to use digital tools to enable more powerful connections at your live events. Allowing you to build out complete prospect profiles the same day as your event, quickly prioritize hot leads, and dramatically increase the impact and ROI of every marketing dollar you invest.

Download “The B2B Marketer’s Guide to Identifying Hot Leads at Live Events” today.