Author: Santosh Ramnani

Conferences offer a constructive platform for consultation, education, exchange of information and discussions in a well organized environment.

With businesses going increasingly digital, you might think: are conferences still that important?

As humans, one-to-one meetings, engagements, and communication always go a long way in building and nurturing relationships. In-person meetings and conferences provide the opportunity to get up close and personal with prospective customers or partners — something the digital world can certainly augment, but can never replace.

Here are some statistics that prove it:

• 91% of professionals stated that customer engagement at events was a company priority
• 31% of event marketers believe that conferences are essential to doing business in their target customer markets
• 69% of marketers consider in-person events to be highly effective

So, how do you generate business opportunities from conferences? We’ve listed our pick of proven tactics that can help.

1. Choose Strategically

Attending a conference is not a cheap affair. You need to budget for hotel reservations, flight tickets, meals, transportation and other associated costs. It is thus imperative that you make the most of your time at the conference.

You must choose your event strategically. The point is not to attend every conference there is, but to focus on the ones that will provide you the maximum returns. A thorough research on the attendees, speakers, guests the forums and the networking opportunities available will help you establish your plan.

Also, try to acquire attendance data from previous years in preparing your plan. This will help you to target the right audience. 

With all the necessary preparation done, all you have to do is ensure that you are at the right place at the right time, addressing the correct set of people.

2. Set Clear Goals

The goal of attending a conference can vary from company to company. For some companies, the yardstick of success could be to network and create thought leadership among other ecosystem players. For others, it may be all about creating more sales opportunities or generating more direct leads.

Goal setting is not something that is defined by the market – it’s something that every company decides based on their own objective.

Therefore, when attending a conference, you must have a clear goal(s) in mind. For example, your primary goal at a conference this year may be to increase your sales leads; the secondary goal may be to network or learn about new technology or business trends. 

Make sure to stay focused on your goal and not get distracted. As Malcolm Forbes puts it, ‘If you don’t know what to do, it’s harder to do it.’ 

3. Estimate the ROI (Return on Investment)

Conferences are not easy to organize or attend. It requires time, effort and money. Justifying the ROI on events has always been a challenge for businesses. In the absence of clearly defined KRAs or KPIs, it can be especially hard to measure ROI. 

Without proper estimation of ROI, attending a conference becomes more or less guesswork, and the results are hard to quantify or even qualify.

Some indicative parameters to estimate an ROI can be:

• Understanding true costs (direct/ indirect expenses)
• On-site effectiveness (conversion rate of scheduled-to-held meetings)
• Generated value (can be tangible, like an MOU, or intangible like a close relationship)

4. Do Not Overlook Additional and Hidden Costs

Apart from your travel, lodging and food, there are going to be additional costs involved in attending a business event or conference. 

For example you’d spend on printing new business cards, or creating marketing collateral such as brochures or flyers specifically for your event. 

You’d also have to spend on renting or buying business card scanners or event badge scanners (if you’re sponsoring). 

Some of these expenses are unavoidable, while others can be managed by planning your resources well. 

Take these costs into consideration when budgeting your event and create your event marketing plan accordingly. More importantly, try to find the best ways to plan your expenses and optimize your resources. 

5. Leverage Technology for Maximum Impact

This is essentially what we mean by planning your expenses well and avoiding additional costs effectively. 

Using marketing technology will not only help you avoid additional costs, but it’ll also maximize your event ROI. For example, automating your key marketing activities, such as email campaigns, social media posts and event lead capture process can increase your conversions significantly. 

For example:

• Business Card Scanning  apps can help you capture all of the lead information from business cards using a simple mobile app
• CRM tools such as Salesforce can help you target your leads effectively
• Email automation tools such as Hubspot can help you nurture your leads

6. Featured Magazines and Journals

Many popular magazines and journals offer advertising opportunities ahead of events. These are great resources for branding and PR. 

With the organizers aiming at maximizing attendance, these promotional materials are distributed far and wide. And so they offer great opportunity to promote your business to a very specific target audience. 

7. Social Media Marketing

Statistics  show, around 800 million people use social media every day for work. 

People who register after hearing about your conference on social media are 3 times more likely to spread the word.

In a nutshell, an advertisement here may be all the promotion that you need for your conference. 

The use of hashtags, videos, and infographics on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram can create enormous exposure for you.

There are many ways in which you can use social media for marketing your brand. For instance, you can create a social media contest to engage interested and prospective customers about what you’re going to do or present at the conference. 

8. Don’t Sell But Offer a Clear Value Proposition

Conferences are a great platform for networking, but trying too hard to sell your product may not always be a great idea. Instead, you should focus on demonstrating value.

‘The only way to advertise is by not focusing on the product.’-  Calvin Klein 

This means understanding customer problems, empathizing, and then offering something that the customer will value is the best way to sell your product without even having to try. You don’t need to focus on your product for that.

The more you do that, the more you will be able to influence people positively, and engage them more effectively in one-on-one conversations. 

9. Engage Your Existing Clients

Your clients can be a great asset when it comes to generating leads at conferences. Existing customers generally have a lot of goodwill, and you can leverage that for your benefit. 

While networking at a conference, your clients can introduce you to additional businesses in the ecosystem. Of course, you can introduce them to others, in turn, exchanging value.

Even a brief in-person introduction at the conference can go a long way in helping new leads warming up to you.

If you are presenting or sponsoring, testimonials such as a recorded video of them sharing how much they like your services, can go a long way in promoting your brand ahead of or at the event. 

Your clients can essentially help you increasing the attendance at your conference.

10. Nurture Your Audience with Email Marketing

Email marketing does not essentially come at the end of the sequence of out top 10 tactics, but it is one of the most key ingredients in your larger marketing campaign ahead of a conference. 

You can start broadcasting your message to your target audience ahead of the event, engage them with relevant updates through the event, and follow up with qualified leads after the event.  

With the rise of data analytics platforms and built-in monitoring tools, you can measure your prospects’, engagement and interest with statistics such as click-through-rate (CTR), open and conversions. These stats can help you draw actionable insights about the current customer wants, even before they come to your conference, and help you adopt a tailor-made strategy for each potential lead or account.

Winding Up

Even in the age of the internet, there is no substitute for personal interaction when it comes to generating leads. The first impression that you make, the bond you develop, and the level of customer engagement that you can provide can go a long way in building relationships.

It opens up a lot of channels, and you make new connections.

Few avenues are as effective for lead generation as conferences. The important thing is to make the most of the connections you make. 

 

Imagine you’ve organized a house-warming party. As the evening approaches, you can’t wait to see your family and friends at the party. It’s 6 pm, you’re anticipating the arrival of your guests. But nobody shows up. 3 hours passed, it’s 9pm, still no guests!

How would you feel if your spouse just told you—Oh, I think I might have forgotten to send the invitations out! You’d be feeling awful now to say the least!

It’s the same thing with your events. Simply renting a space and setting up a booth at an event is not enough. You need to market yourself well ahead of the show and spread awareness amongst the people to want to attract to your event. You need to come up with the perfect plan for maximum visibility.

This is what makes event marketing so crucial. Your event marketing strategy will ultimately decide the footfall you get, and the ultimate success of your event.

What you message you deliversay, how you deliver it, and how far it reaches, can be quite the game-changer.

In the words of Stefanie Grieser, ‘Event marketing is an extension of your content marketing. That’s the backbone to a really successful event’.

So what makes for an effective marketing plan that can lead to high conversions?

Here is our list of the key ingredients of a solid event marketing plan:

1. A Dedicated Event Website

This is the first most crucial step towards getting the people you need to be interested. An event website that is appealing, dazzling, and catches the eye of your leads can go a long way. It may cause even disinterested or semi-interested candidates to sign up for the event. Remember, this is your chance to influence your leads in a positive way.

A considerable investment in terms of time and effort, thus, should be made to design an excellent website for exceptional user experience and an attractive interface. Your brand and logo should not be absent, as ideally, you would want the leads to remember it’s your event and keep it memorable for them.

Most importantly, have a clear Call-To-Action (CTA), e.g., sign up, RSVP, book a spot and so on, so that your website visitors and conversions are tracked and measured.

2. Email Marketing

Just like the event website, the aim of email marketing is also to pique the interest of the customer ahead of your event. It can go a long way in keeping them engaged by sending them periodic emails about your event’s agenda spread out over a span of time leading up to the event.

You should aim at providing something that the customer needs, which is of value to them. The leads should be appropriately segmented, and emails sent only after the segment fits the desired interest for your product. Instead of trying to sell, you should simply generate intrigue in your event.

Adding a personal touch to the emails is the key here. Yopie Suryadi described, ‘A personalized message is not always about greetings with their first name or full name. It’s about data. Know your users, how they behave, and what their interests are.‘

In short, sell value to the ‘right’ customers.

Be sure to spread out the emails, and don’t send emails too frequently. It may lead to making your recipients feel overwhelmed and unsubscribe you. Always send valuable information.

3. Account-Based Marketing

Many times, you feel you’ve done an excellent job of influencing a business manager but find out later that they haven’t made any purchase. Most of the times, this may be attributed to the fact that the final purchase authority rests with someone else. It is essential to identify the correct individual with the buying power and address and engage them in a targeted manner.

Often, there are 2-5 or more buyers involved in a buying decision, depending on the size of the business. When you’re targeting a specific account, recognizing the people who matter is critical.

4. Videos and Visuals

Videos engage audiences like no other medium. To put this into perspective, consumers are 27 times more likely to click on a video than a standard banner advertisement.

That’s why videos are a must-have in any event marketing plan nowadays, simply because of its sheer impact.

Including videos of previous events, clips of satisfied clients and other forms of video endorsements can positively influence prospective leads and spur them on to attend your event. It will also give them a clear idea about what to expect and how to go about their visit to the event.

As they say, `Actions speak louder than words.’

Include videos, such as videos from your previous year’s display, explainer videos, video testimonials and so on, in your marketing activities can help your target audience get a perspective on how the action unravels on the day of the event.

5. Event Lead Capture Tools

It’s D-Day – the event has started, and you and your team are under extreme pressure. You have to respond to customer questions, fill out forms, collect their business cards or scan their badges, demo your product — it can be overwhelming!

Keeping a tab on all the business cards, and recording the leads in your CRM system for post event follow-up is always a challenge. Using technology ensures all this happens seamlessly.

Using a business card scanner app to capture leads, and automatically export them to your CRM or email marketing system will maximize your lead-capture, and ultimately, conversions.

It’s simple to use and accessible on your smartphone. making it your perfect companion for any B2B event.

6. Social Media

With more than 2 billion social media users in the world, it’s an element that you simply cannot miss when planning your event. With the rise of analytics tools such as Buffer, Google Analytics and Facebook Insights, the use of social media for event marketing has begun to churn out increasingly tangible results.

With these tools, you can accurately measure key insights such as net new followers, conversions, reviews and feedback, what interests your customers the most, what time of the day or week they are most active online and much more.

By segmenting your target audience based on a variety of criteria, you can outline your target market and engage with your prospective buyers more effectively.

How well you communicate and promote your event on social media can make a huge difference in the overall success of your event. Some of the ways to effectively promote your event on social media can be:

• Shareable hashtags
• Short videos
• Catchy images, quotes, infographics
• Contests, gamification, freebies, gift vouchers and so on

52% of event planners opine that Facebook is the most useful channel for event promotion. What social media channel you choose, whether it’s LinkedIn or Instagram or YouTube will largely depend on the nature of your business and your target demographics.

Winding Up

Marketing your event is essential in maximizing your event ROI and increase your revenue. Making sure you reach out to the maximum number of people and to the right target audience is key. After all, the ultimate goal of event marketing is to ensure the maximization of registrations for your event.

To execute the perfect event marketing plan, there must be a sound strategy in place. At the core of it all, the focus must be on ‘customer value.’

All said and done, and in the words of Joe Chernov, “Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart.”

If you think that it’s redundant to spend marketing dollars on trade shows and events, that they’re expensive and time consuming, and that your marketing efforts should exclusively go online, nothing could be further from the truth.  

Statistics show that trade shows and events are important as ever. 50% of attendees at trade shows are new prospects, and 77% of attendees found at least one supplier in the latest trade show they added. 

Trade shows clearly continue to provide value and have tremendous potential.

But you need to make sure you are doing the right things to reap the maximum benefits that trade shows and marketing events offer. And for that, you need the right marketing tools at your disposal.

The key thing is to combine your online and offline tactics by making use of the right resources — people, processes, event marketing best-practices and technology tools. 

Here are top ten must-have tools that you can use to get the most out of your events:

1. Event websites

This is something you can control and leverage the year round. Start creating a buzz around your event and use your event website to promote the event in advance. Salesforce does a tremendous job at this with their Dreamforce event.

You could add pictures of your previous events, start talking about your product or service or even offer exciting offers so that your prospective leads know exactly what to expect and feel excited to visit your booth.

Sharing the following from previous events help make a positive impact:

• Names of guest speakers
• Forums or topics
• Presentation slides
• Videos 

2. Flyers

Flyers are a great way to catch the attention of your prospective leads. Small, easy to handle and easy to transport, flyers can be inserted within newspapers and magazines, or can simply be handed out near the event venue just before the event. You could pique the interest of a prospective lead who might like what they see, and end up increasing your sales.

3. Posters

Larger than a flyer, but with essentially the same purpose. Large, life-size posters could be displayed on street corners, at the venue of the event and other busy and prominent streets. 

A large, well-made poster is bound to draw attention, and stir up excitement surrounding the event. With increasing hype around the event, you have a much better chance of reaching out to a larger number of customers.

Colourful and eye-catching posters can increase the visibility of your event and enhance its outreach towards the general audience, with a probable boost in sales.

4. Business card readers

Everyone is going to be extremely busy at an event booth, whether it’s your team or the attendees you meet. People have to do multiple things at once. In such a scenario, business card readers eliminate the need for physical retention of business cards to capture contacts. 

ScanBizCards offers an easy way to capture all of the lead information from business cards digitally. This saves you from the hassle of collecting tonnes of paper cards and manually compiling data after the event.

The app (for both iOS and Android smartphones) can scan multiple cards at once, and allows export to a variety of CRMs directly or via a CSV file. It also doubles as an event badge scanner, letting you scan your visitors’ badge to instantly capture they contact information. 

It’s a must-have tool for sales representatives at trade shows and events to make sure they capture every single lead accurately. And more leads captured means more sales opportunities. 

5. Media publications

Media publications in newspapers and magazines in a targeted way can serve as a very powerful PR tool.

Newspapers and magazines help increase the reach of your marketing campaigns. For instance, tech industry-specific magazines can help propagate information to a very specific tech enthusiast audience. This way, you can target prospects that you would like to turn into customers.

6. Social media

Unarguable, social media is the most powerful tool at your disposal to increase the ROI on events, when combined effectively with other tactics in your marketing mix.

Here you can target 42% of the global population, all at once. You can connect to your guests, track their activities, see their interests and mould your product offerings to suit their interests. 

With the rise of tools like Facebook Insights, you can follow your target audience and discern their usage and social media presence timings and frequencies. It is also a great platform for positive customer engagement and great support.

Social media is a tool that gives you the opportunity to tick all the right boxes, and when you do, the ROI of your event is bound to increase.

7. Email automation tools

Actively engaging your event attendees list which can be both, your prospective leads as well as your existing customers can go a long way in warming up your targeted leads. Involving them in your events, and advertising your products can result in higher conversions. Maybe your product is just the thing one of your leads was looking for.

Email marketing tools allow you to send personalized targeted emails to your lists. You should segment your leads, and then target your core audience for your product. Make them find value in your offer. 

Researchers have found that email marketing has the maximum ROI for every dollar spent with respect to all channels.

But be careful not to spam. Don’t be pushy. Otherwise, they may just unsubscribe you.

8. Event tickets

This another great tactic to boost awareness and improve your visibility at an event.

Apart from online sites, you can create a partnership with local stores, cafes and hangout spots to sell your tickets. 

You can also partner with restaurant chains, bookstores and shop outlets, so that they offer discounts to prospects purchasing your event tickets from them. A partnership like this can help you reach out to many new people.

9. Postcards

It’s always a great practice to maintain a list of all attendees from your previous events, and segment them. After you’ve identified the core audience for your product, sending them personalised postcards can be a great tactic to make the customers feel important and valued.

Sending your loyal customers and high-value targets associated delighters like a personalized discount, or free tickets to the event can be a great way to build rapport

Rather than send a single postcard, send a series of 3-4 cards, since there is a greater chance the customers will remember you.

10. Brochures

An innocuous way to showcase your brand, brochures can be kept in local dispensaries, clinics, supermarkets and theaters. Interested people can pick up a copy and browse through the pages. It doesn’t entail a huge cost, and can end up igniting interest of new leads above and beyond your target audience, who then visit your event.

Wrap Up

It goes without saying that trade shows are costly affairs. 

It’s critical to have a solid plan and the right tools at hand to make sure to get the most out of your dollars spent.

Combining some of the tools we’ve talked about can help you plan and execute your event efficiently.  

Even in the age of digitalization and social media, trade shows and events marketing continues to grow strong. And there are statistics to prove it.

92% of event attendees go to events to find out a new product. 77% of decision-makers found at least one new supplier at the last event they attended. Clearly, there is potential and a lot of opportunities.

We talked about some of these facts in a previous blog post. The point is, are you ready to take advantage of it?

Businesses now need to differentiate themselves in this era of cut-throat competition. They are constantly on the move to find an edge.

And events can provide you with that edge – helping you to build your brand image and awareness.

Here’s a precise statistic displaying the simple cost advantage of events: the cost of a face-to-face meeting a prospect at an event is $142; it’s $259 when the meeting is at their office.

Here are the top five reasons why events are essential in your B2B marketing:

1. Lead generation

During an event, things can get hectic and fast-paced. A lot of prospective leads that will be visiting your booth. You have to impress them within a limited time, get their contact details, and also provide a brief overview of your product.

Leveraging technology to help you can go a long way in doing this right. For instance, with the use of business card scanning apps, you don’t have to manually enter contacts details from business cards into an Excel spreadsheets anymore. You can simply snap photos of business cards and save the data on your phone’s address book, export all your leads as a CSV file and much more. All this means more leads to target.

ScanBizCards, one of the most popular business card scanning apps, can capture B2B leads in real-time with accurate business card and conference badge scanning. It allows direct CRM export, email introductions, contact capture from email signature blocks and much more. It helps streamline lead generation at a trade show booth or at an event, so that you can concentrate on meeting new prospects, making demos and maximizing the number of potential leads to target.

2. Making a personal connection with some face time

There are a lot of businesses and a lot of clients, and people may get confused as to where to look for what they want. Events are a great way to get face time with the prospective leads and showcase your products.

Your prospective buyers can get to know your offerings first hand, and decide how it might add value to their business. It may be just the exact thing they need. They may develop an intimate business relationship with you, which may be mutually beneficial in the long run.

Relationships at personal physical levels are something that email marketing or social media, unfortunately, cannot provide.

3. Getting feedback

Real-time feedback is something unique that will give you precious insights other methods may never provide. Customer feedback helps you identify how your product benefited the client, in what ways it added value, what are its drawbacks and shortcomings, and what improvements can benefit the customer.

It makes you rethink your strategy and reassess your position from the point of view of the market. It helps you favorably position yourself against your competition in the market. And ultimately, it only helps you get better and better at what you do.

Face-to-face feedback is one of the advantages of attending events.

4. Improving brand visibility

With businesses across industries spending millions on marketing, brand leaders are constantly looking at new ways to stand out and build a lasting brand impression. . Every business is advertising on social media these days. There are too many messages to notice.

So what can you do to increase your brand visibility and stand out?

Physically attend events and get into one-on-one conversations. Furthermore, make sure to engage with your leads and have a chat. Understand their business challenges and try to add value to their businesses.

As Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day, people won’t remember what you said or did: they will remember how you made them feel.” One could easily apply this to brand experiences.

And events are a great platform for an engaging conversation with your customers or prospects.

5. Understanding competition

An event provides you a platform to get out of your office and rub shoulders with the best in your industry.

You get to explore their employee-management skills, customer engagement tactics, advertising initiatives, lead generation schemes, and product displays first-hand.

Moreover, you get a chance to educate yourself on how they make their sales pitch, and what makes them successful. On top of that, you can uncover their brand promise and mantra, and at the same time discover new things that they are doing and things they are doing differently. All of this can also help you get better at what you’re doing, and help you prepare for your next event.

Events give you a great opportunity to watch and learn.

Conclusion

Events have certain advantages that are extremely hard to replicate online, e.g., via email or social media. Undoubtedly, social media and online marketing can help you reach out to a vast number of customers. But events can provide you with that physical and interpersonal bonding opportunity that may result in long-term, profitable partnerships.

 

Contrary to popular opinion, trade shows are not on a downhill journey due to the rise of online marketing. As a matter of fact, marketing technology and online marketing tactics complement offline marketing tactics when done right. Trade shows have managed to retain their importance over the years.

Still in doubt? 

Well, here are some statistics to prove it: 

77% of executive decision-makers found at least one supplier that they hired, from their last trade show visit. 

A calculation by spingo.com found that the cost of a face-to-face meeting with a prospective buyer at a trade show is $142. The cost of a face-to-face meeting at a prospective buyer’s office is $259. By taking advantage of a trade show, and correctly identifying and engaging with potential buyers, you can reap large monetary benefits.

Trade shows are clearly still important. So how do you create a solid trade show marketing plan?

Well, Alice Heiman, the founder of TradeShowMakeover, summed up the essence of creating the perfect show in one word: ‘preparation.’

So here are 5 tips to prepare and create a solid trade show marketing strategy:

1. Set up advance appointments

At the start of a successful strategy, you must have advance appointments. People value their time, and they like to do business with people who value theirs. A lot can depend up your attitude. What’s more, most of the attendees at trade shows would have already picked about 75% of the booths they are going to visit at the show.

You should, ideally, start taking appointments 4-8 weeks ahead of  trade show. 

According to FranklinCovey, the largest time management company in the world, people tend to remember appointment at weird timings. For example, a person is more likely to remember a meeting at 11:05 AM, than one at 12 O’ clock.

The advantage of these small things that no one else is thinking about, and you’re good to go.

An excellent practice is to maintain a CRM database to access all the appointments on a particular day so that you’re sure you don’t miss out.

2. First impression is the last impression

This age-old adage still stands the test of time, and so you have got to make sure that you have got a catchy, appealing and eyeball-grabbing booth in the first place.

This is Celgene’s booth at a trade show by Celgene:

Celgene attends a lot of trade shows despite being a very profitable and renowned company. This is because it wants to, and has succeeded in, aligning consumer opinion with their brand imagery. 

They have succeeded in getting the public to think of them as a brand for the mass – in short, a people’s company. And a large part of it is due to the booths they display at trade shows.

A trade show booth should be warm, inviting, and appealing to the attendees. The attendees should feel the urge to walk up to it. A good booth creates an opportunity for the company representatives to engage with the attendees in a meaningful conversation, which can be followed up in the future.

A variety of different display options to appeal to different people is a good idea. Flyers, pamphlets, and reading materials are some of the commonest options you should have in your booth. 

Some attendees may like to see an HD video demo, and you should ideally have allowances for that as well. It not only displays your professionalism but also your commitment to your product.

3. Do extensive research

In the words of Charles F. Kettering, ‘Research means that you don’t know, but are willing to find out.’ 

And in trade shows that involve a huge amount of money, you simply can’t afford not willing to find out.

A thoroughly performed market research is a method that can pay rich dividends at a trade show. 

You can use it to your strategic advantage. An ideal market research about the industry you cater to should start well in advance, four to eight weeks before a trade show. An insightful research about the current product offerings, latest technologies, industry requirements and needs, and the current industry gaps and opportunities can provide you with the current market scenario. It can also tell you about the market trend of the industry, and gaps that are there to be filled. 

Aligning your product offerings based on the exact industry needs, in this case, can prove to be a masterstroke. This will help you remain a step ahead of your competitors, by offering exactly what the market requires, which can ultimately create all the difference at the trade show.

After all, 92% of all trade show attendees come to look at new products and offerings to see their value, and how they can fit in their business. Market research is the perfect way to take advantage of and fulfill their expectations.

4. Use business card and trade show badge scanners

It is quite astonishing that despite the demonstrated benefits of trade shows, 70% of the generated leads never receive any follow-up.

And that is a shame because 4 out of every 5 persons at a trade show have buying authority. You manage to influence them, and your job is done.

So how to go about doing that effectively?

Make sure to leverage technology and respond as fast as you can. The quicker you follow-up and get in contact with the prospective lead over email, phone call or direct visit, the more likely they are to remember you.

At a trade show, businesses collect hundreds of cards from prospective leads. 

It is well-nigh impossible to sort them out in time to make a meaningful approach again. That is why, you should use business card scanners to your advantage. These offer superior performance and a cutting-edge technological advantage over traditional methods. 

Business card scanners like ScanBizCards (which is an easy to use mobile app) allow users to directly scan the business cards collected at  the trade show, export the contacts to a CRM, or save to a CSV file. It also doubles as a badge scanner, and helps scan trade show badges, find the contact’s email, phone, company address and social media profiles and much more. All this is packed into a mobile app that you can use on your iPhone or iPad. 

This will help you sort out and rank the prospective leads and take a more targeted approach to effectively pursue them. 

Over 10 billion business cards are printed every year in the US alone, and over 88% of them are thrown out within a week of exchange. 

The online platform offered by the business card readers takes away the physical space and effort involved in rummaging through the cards and delivers you all the information you would require from them digitally.

With all your leads at your disposal instantly, after a trade show, you can engage with your leads while they’re still hot, which gives you a far better chance of making a sale.

5. Follow-up to nurture your leads

Proper follow-up and lead nurturing after a trade show is of paramount importance if you want to seal the deal. 

It’s crucial to identify the leads that are most likely to make a purchase, and focus on them much more than the others. This can be a difficult step, due to lack of clarity on which leads were actually interested.

The faster you approach the prospective customer after the trade show, the more likely they are to remember you and revert.

A good practice is sending them emails, messages or an invite to follow your business blogs. Adding a personal touch to it serves to have a more lasting impression on leads. 

However, trusting only emails to get the job done is something that is very difficult to happen. According to a survey, 24% of sales emails are ignored. 

In this case, a video is a much better bet, since 72% of B2B buyers watch videos at some point in time during the buying cycle, and you’ve got a better chance to influence them.

Carefully nurturing and following up on your leads is the quintessential step, since this ultimately brings conversions.

Wrap-Up

How you present yourself on the day of the trade show is also essential.

But prior planning, avoiding common mistakes, focusing on strengths, and having a solid plan for your trade show are imperative to your success.

An average attendee spends about 8 hours at a trade show. It’s a huge window for you to be able to prepare, execute, and influence prospective attendees and make a sale. 

All you need is the perfect strategy!

Between 1976 to 1993, the average workweek for people aged between 25 to 54 years, increased by nearly 2 hours. Fast forward 25 years, and the average work week now is around 72 hours.

The end result is that employees are frustrated and business owners are crestfallen at rising lack of productivity. But what’s behind this astronomical rise in working hours?

Changing job roles and descriptions are part of the problem, but a big contribution is from poor planning and excessive meetings.

And when you get down to calculating what the cost of meetings are, chances are you’re in for a rude shock. The average salary cost of a meeting is around $338 on an average, and as much as 63% of them are unplanned, according to a recent survey.

The truth is, ineffective meetings that literally serve no purpose have become prevalent all over the US, causing a frightful waste of time and money. To put this into perspective, US companies lose up to $238 billion every year, just on meetings that could have been averted.

Here are 5 best meeting practices for every business leader to follow to avoid losing money on redundant meetings:

1. Make a Positive Shift in the Company Culture

To have highly effective meetings, your company’s official stance on meetings should show a positive shift towards respect. Meetings are serious affairs and should be treated as such.

Creation of an environment where attendants are expected to be on time every time, and contribute in all capacities, is a step in the right direction. Employees should look forward to getting involved in meetings, and latecomers should never be entertained. Neither should things discussed in meetings be repeated. This fosters a culture where you value everyone’s time and try to make a positive difference, which is all the change that is needed.

2. Always Have Action Oriented Meetings

Showing vigour and purpose before and during a meeting can send out the right signals. Before a meeting, you could email a reminder to all those expected to attend it, outlining the agenda for the day.

Expect employees to be thoroughly prepared with their inputs, and have a fast-paced action-oriented meeting. Someone who is not contributing enough is probably not needed in the subsequent meetings.

Perpetuation of this sends out a strong message to employees, reminding them of company expectations from them. Rather than walking into a meeting aimlessly, it makes employees buckle up and become more dynamic.

3. Always Be Solving a Clear Problem

Meetings are a great way to clear muddled heads and look into new perspective. It offers refreshingly different ideas, and one of them might just prove useful to you. Meetings to brainstorm are quite useful in their own way.

However, the aim of the meeting and brainstorming should be clear, and oriented towards a particular result. You should not try to solve too many problems at the same time, or else you will end up just wasting precious time.

In these meetings, the floor should be open to all for radical ideas from any employee in attendance, and inputs should be jotted down. With all the proposals lined up in front of you, you will probably utilise your time better and even reach a conclusion sooner rather than later.

4. Propagate Positivity in The Meetings

Most meetings take place between members of a particular team. Sometimes, a sense of workplace friction comes into play between two or more team members. This hampers their ability to work at their best, and makes them reluctant to share their ideas. Such recalcitrance does not bode well for a meeting, or any organisation, as potential ideas are kept pent up.

In these cases, you should create and nurture a culture of positivity in meetings. This helps to alleviate any tension or misgivings that a team member may have, and helps them to come out in the open with their ideas. You also shouldn’t criticize people in front of everyone. The repercussions of such actions can be felt in the subsequent meetings, where people become reluctant to opine. Instead, you must encourage them to share and venture forward. Who knows, it may turn out to be just the spark your company needs.

5. Don’t Set a Meeting For Everything, Use Technology

Technology has become all-pervasive today. Leveraging technology and new martech trends , you can cut down on your need to have face to face meetings, drastically. With a lot of options like webinars and video conferences, physical meetings can be avoided, especially if you’re working from remote areas. Technology can negate travel time, cost to company and allow you to work on your own project, while attending a mobile meeting through your device.

Especially in sales and marketing, latest technology like marketing automation systems and business card reading apps can save precious time for sales and marketing teams. Business card reading apps can solve the need for time-consuming meetings, in order to acquire contact details of prospective business leads. A business card reading app like ScanBizCard pools all the customer information onto a single platform, that is accessible on the go, so that you can directly access contacts and leads for effective customer engagement and sales prospecting. You no longer need to have prolix meetings over customer details. This can free up time for your sales executives to do what they do best — sell, sell and sell!

Wrap Up

In a recent study of the US and European companies, the Boston Consulting Group found that over the past fifteen years, the amount of procedures, vertical layers, interface structures, coordination bodies, and decision approvals needed in a business organisation has increased by anywhere from 50 to 350 percent.

Attending ineffective meetings are quite akin to such barriers. It creates redundancy in work procedures and apathy sets in.

Meetings, with their increased frequency, start to lose their objective and purpose. Employees stop taking them seriously. What you should look for in meetings, is the creation of value, in exchange for your valuable time. If there is no value creation, the meeting probably should have been avoided.

Once you and your company starts thinking on these terms, following the five best practices become easy, and meetings start to bring out the best in you.

See What’s New With ScanBizCards

ScanBizCards Salesforce Managed Package 

• You can now create Tasks & Notes in Salesforce for all of your scanned cards to map with their respective Leads or Contacts
• You can now filter a list of accounts using Account Record types
• We’ve made a few bug fixes to improve the overall user experience

ScanBizCards iOS App 

• We’ve created a new, intuitive user experience for our Quick Scan feature
• We’ve introduced a new Onboarding experience 
• We now support multiple foreign languages for card scanning
• We’ve added additional utilities for saving scanned cards including ‘Assign to a Folder’ and ‘Send Quick Intro’ message.
• You can now send multiple intro messages to your newly added contacts from scanned business cards
• We’ve made a few bug fixes to improve the app experience