Historically, events have proven to be a key marketing activity. In fact, 74% of marketers agree that events were their most important demand generation tactic (Forrester Research).

As we move towards more live events post-pandemic, one of the largest strategic business development and lead generation channels for your organization has undergone a digital transformation.

Despite the effectiveness of events like marketers are only scratching the surface of the possible ROI—both for themselves and their organizations.

Strategies for the New Trade Show Landscape

Measuring satisfaction is a key performance indicator (KPI) for event marketers. And while this qualitative feedback can provide some insight into the success of your events, you must elevate your strategies to clearly demonstrate financial return if you are to maximize the impact of your events—and get recognized for your efforts.

“What gets measured, gets managed,” so the saying goes. Taking your program (and impact) to the next level means harnessing quantitative data, in concert with qualitative feedback, to clearly understand what is working and why, as well as how to optimize.

Now, let’s look at the other KPIs that will help you truly get a full 360-degree view of your trade show.

Essential Trade Show KPIs for the Modern Marketer

We’ve boiled this down to a short list. But tracking and reporting on these KPIs should give you a clearer and more comprehensive view of the effectiveness of your trade shows. And the best part? It’ll allow you to better prove the value of your programs (and demonstrate your personal impact).

• Appointments: the total number of at your trade show is an effective KPI. Why? Because this clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of your pre-event marketing activities, your sales team’s effectiveness, and overall messaging and event strategy.
• Booth Traffic: volume is key here. Check-ins provide clear insights into your booth and sales team effectiveness. We know there are other factors at play (attendance, booth location) but when comparing total check-ins to qualified leads, this helps you understand the quality of the show’s attendee pool.
• MQLs/SQLs: qualified leads are a true marker that help provide insight into the quality of the overall trade show attendees and are the first step in determining your overall ROI.
• Opportunities and Pipeline:  as marketers, we love to show how many opps we’ve generated for the sales team. They provide insight into the business potential of the contacts made as well as the effectiveness of your follow-up.  
• Revenue Generated: a favorite of the C-Suite. This demonstrates the quality of your opportunities and the top-line financial impact of the events. It’s critical to track revenue generated so that you can measure ROI.
• ROI: Return-on-investment is the magic number. The cost of your event compared to the revenue generated. You may also choose to include qualitative insights in your reports (quotes from sales team) to help paint a picture of softer ROI—such as brand awareness.

Using Tech Integrations to Power Your Efforts

Technology integrations act as sort of a super-supplement to your existing tech. Their impact can be all the difference in the world. Companies that integrate their event management, marketing, and sales technologies can potentially see a massive increase in revenue versus those with disconnected technology.

As you review your current set-up regarding the tech you own and integrations, it’s important to invest in and integrate platforms that support key sales and marketing activities — scheduling, promotion, follow-up, etc. — for pre-, during-, and post-show activities. We’ve identified a few key integrations that will support your efforts:

• Customer Relationship Management—CRM: This acts as your key hub for all customer data and enables effective tracking and follow-up.
• Event Management Platform: An integrated, to manage budgets, resources, reporting, content, and beyond.
• Lead Capture: a consistent, easy to use, that is used at all your event ensures all leads are captured and tracked.
• Appointment-Setting: Find a single tool to set and manage This will drastically reduce administration and increases lead volumes.
• Marketing Automation Platform (MAP): in a time of low staffing, automating key marketing activities is critical. This tech also allows for a more personalized, relevant nurture steam that increases opportunities and revenue.

Booth Differentiators

Sometimes, all the booths at a trade show remind us of the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” In a word, “overwhelming” to attendees. But our goal as marketers is to overcome the overwhelming and stand out amongst our rivals on the floor.

Here are a few tips to consider as you plan out your booth strategy:

• Be clear. Clearly tell people what you do and how you help so that they know they should stop and pay attention.
• Be different. In a world where attendees visit only 14% of all booths, standing out and making an impact are the difference between driving traffic in droves and blending in with all the rest.
• Use a theme. In a crowded marketplace, using a theme throughout your communications makes you easier to remember.
• Use storytelling. Stories allow us to experience things without experiencing them. When we use a story to sell, we help people experience the new world they’ll create when they invest in our products and services.
• Create a temporary workspace. The average attendee doesn’t spend much time at any one booth. By turning your booth into a temporary workspace you’ll extend that time and your conversation.
• Have a call to action (CTA). Don’t leave attendees guessing as to how they should interact with you. Have a clear call to action to ensure there is a next step.

Post Trade Show Follow-Up

Post show follow-up is where you transform opportunities into dollars. It’s also where many organizations fail to produce the return they deserve. Most leads generated at events are never contacted. What’s worse, most companies wait way too long to make its first attempt to call a lead. Categorizing your leads (A, B, C, etc.) will help you prioritize “hot” vs. “warm” and “cold.”

Categorizing is extremely important as data show that many times the first company to present a solution usually wins the deal. Regardless of other factors. The simple A-B-C three-tiered strategy will help ensure timely, personalized, and relevant follow-up that will help you win more deals.

Conclusion

Optimizing and exhibiting the value of your trade shows has only grown more difficult and complex. By honing your strategies, employing technology solutions, and following the steps outlined above, your marketing efforts will take a giant leap in the right direction.

Because, by clearly demonstrating that your events are driving sales and contributing to the overall business goals, you’ll be in an optimal position to get recognized (and rewarded) for your trade show ROI.

Read more about how to power your trade shows in Cvent’s “.”

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Governmental and self-imposed restrictions related to COVID-19 are affecting our communities and businesses more each day. As the new normal encompasses social distancing, working remotely and elimination of public gatherings for the foreseeable future, it’s time to take a hard look at your business events strategy and make changes immediately.

While shifting to digital across the board may seem like a good plan, our clients—especially our global clients—are taking a measured approach to identify what can convert to digital and what cannot. 

Whether you’re a large company dealing with hundreds of scheduled events on the horizon or a small or mid-sized business with a handful of important events planned, here are five tips for pivoting from an in-person strategy to a digital event strategy.

1. Create an Events Steering Committee

The committee should consist of your core team of go-to marketing events experts and may also include partners or resources from other teams (technology, for example). These leaders can provide guidance to your local and regional marketing folks who are trying to understand what’s happening on a global scale so that they may act in their own markets. The committee can also help streamline processes and communication around changes in strategy, as well as train marketers on how to respond in this unique environment.

2. Evaluate Events Through Q2

Be realistic about what’s absolutely necessary. Solve through the end of the second quarter for now, keeping the following in mind:

What to cancel: Any in-person event scheduled for the upcoming two to three weeks can’t be executed well digitally in this short time frame. Networking-focused events also don’t translate well to virtual meetings. Push or cancel these.

What to convert to digital: For the second quarter, evaluate what can and should be shifted to a digital format, and what can be postponed until the third quarter or beyond. Educational or product-focused events—as well as keynotes and interviews—adapt well virtually. Anything else could probably be pushed out. Think in terms of what your customer and audiences could benefit from now.

Consider consolidation of similar content: Create fewer events and invite bigger, broader audiences.

Identify what success looks like: Conversion of an in-person event to a digital format (even on the same topic) will have vastly different benchmarks of success. As you evaluate what to cancel and what to convert, think about what success would look like—attendance numbers, how long attendees stayed, social media shares, content downloads and so on—and whether the success goals are achievable for this particular event in a virtual environment.

3. Take Inventory

Determine what technology resources, workstreams and team skill sets you have access to.

Consider event platforms: If you need a third-party events platform, do your research on what other companies your size are using. Create a list of best options and compare it to a matrix of features you desire, such as analytics, bandwidth charges, customer support, embedding capabilities and social media integration.

Evaluate workstreams: Do you have access to a studio, video team and professional production team? Or maybe you have a studio, but need to hire professionals to help with recording and production. When considering formats, evaluate which tools and teams you have and which you’ll need, as these could add time and cost.

4. Create a Solid Virtual Experience

Before you craft a single piece of content, strive to understand your audience, their pain points and what they will gain by attending your event. Make sure you’re offering a unique and valuable experience, one they can’t get anywhere else. 

When it comes to content, think like an audience member: How can you help them in their business? What do you have to offer that’s unique?

• For big-picture topics, one strategy might be to create either very short, prerecorded video content or a TED Talk-style presentation of 15 minutes or less that’s engaging and inspirational. 
• For educational topics, break them out into smaller pieces, perhaps more of a video on demand, where the content is prerecorded and can be consumed as needed.

Innovate: Try different engagement approaches. Use pre- and post-digital event surveys to learn what consumers are looking for and how you can incorporate topics into your digital event, whether it’s an inspirational message, a product announcement or a demo.

Use the right format: Provide experiences that allow customers to consume content in the best way possible. Should content be provided in video format? Or would a blog post, an email or some other format be better? And if it’s video, should it be a livestream or would prerecorded content be sufficient, such as video on demand?

5. Double Down on Your Promotional Strategy

Think about your audience—where they spend their time and key messages that might spark their interest.

Consider user behavior and platforms: Whether the mode of communication is Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or email, think through how much to promote and when.

Communicate creatively: In the current environment, customers will be receiving a multitude of emails and communications each day with a link to a virtual experience. Yours need to stand out.

Highlight and differentiate your content: Why should your audience care about the content you’re presenting? How do they benefit? And why now?

Once you map out what form this new landscape of events, operations and processes is going to take, measure your results. Are your customers feeling satisfied and getting what they need through virtual formats? Depending on the answer, pivot or iterate to offer the best experiences possible.

There’s no doubt we’re in the midst of something likely none of us has experienced before. But now is the time to lean in to evaluate how you need to invest—in terms of both time and resources—in a virtual event strategy. The endgame is to ensure your customers know that you are a leader in innovation and technology, and that you have their best interests at heart, presenting content and experiences that speak to their needs.

Photo by Simon Abrams on .

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One of the world’s largest ad buyers plans to lower its forecast for global ad spending after it originally predicted a 4.3% increase for 2020. The decision to lower the prediction is a response to companies reducing their spending as concerns grow over how the coronavirus will affect consumer spending. Some travel companies have already started to reduce their ad spend.

Read more:

Live events are getting canceled or postponed as companies decide to curtail nonessential trips in the wake of the coronavirus’ spread. Fox News canceled an upfront pitch to advertisers in New York, Disney called off a launch event in London to promote Disney+ and Google’s I/O conference for developers was called off. And while SXSW is still on, TikTok, , and others have pulled out.

Read more:

Google and Facebook ads that include language associated with the LGBT+ community—such as “lesbian,” “bisexual” and “drag queens”—are encountering issues in avoiding online censors. Online ads that use those terms are being labeled as “brand unsafe” at a disproportionate rate as compared to sexually or violently explicit lingo, which means a significant loss of ad sales and brand reach. Many of these brands have turned to alternatives outlets for advertising, including the new media outlet Brand Advance, and incorporated more LGBT+ positive messaging.

Read more:

The meatless trend in dining hits outside the bun. While Taco Bell has always been regarded as a vegetarian-friendly fast food choice for its ease in substituting beans or potatoes for its meat, the company is more publicly promoting this option. Its in-store kiosks will now allow diners to easily swipe to “Veggie Mode,” which pushes a 50-plus item menu to the foreground. This not only saves vegetarians time in scanning the full menu for the correct options but allows Taco Bell to easily slip new items into its selection without overwhelming the full list. Taco Bell also announced a vegan, plant-based menu is forthcoming.

Read more:

Should the coronavirus outbreak worsen and extend beyond community to worldwide spread, a trickle down effect could contribute to a modest slowdown in healthcare marketing. Curtailed corporate travel and major conference cancellations portend a loss of millions in sponsorship, hospitality and product revenue. But some experts are optimistic about the industry’s ability to adapt.

Read more:

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This is.  

Event professionals often find themselves dragged down with an endless list of tasks that would only draw attention if they »ćŸ±»ćČÔ’t happen. The stress, turmoil, and mental weight that event pros must endure are buried behind the scenes. It is these manual processes, these Invisible Workloads that keep event planners from being more strategic, more impactful, and most importantly, more well-rested.  

Meet Your New BFF, Zoe 

You’re not alone – Zoe feels your pain and she’s got your back. With Zoe as your guide, we’ll explore the Invisible Workload and provide ways to eliminate it so that you can spend more time on what matters most to you.

Save Some Sanity
Trade-in Tedious Tasks for Tech

Event Management Platforms are designed to automate and simplify the entire planning process. So next time you wake up to an unfinished batch of name badges or a completely different seating chart, you’ll have a new and improved method to manage all the madness. Check out to find ways to make your next event as smooth as possible!  

1.) Find Your Venue Sourcing Sanctuary  

Whether you are planning a VIP lunch for 10 or a global conference for 5000 people, venue sourcing can take a lot of time. It is one of the most multifaceted pieces of the overall project. Manually finding, comparing, and requesting proposals for meeting spaces and hotels requires countless hours and isn’t an efficient use of your time.  

Through the, you can navigate your way to a “sourcing sanctuary” where you will find several alternatives. Cvent’s free sourcing and eRFP tools can be used to help you automate finding the perfect venue while reducing the amount of time you spend on this task. 

2.) Drowning in a Sea of Badges? 

Alphabetizing badges may be the perfect example of a highly manual task. Managing badges, putting them in sleeves, attaching lanyards, and alphabetizing are tedious tasks that can bore you to tears.  Along with the pain of handwriting hundreds to thousands of names, there are also PII (personally identifiable information) concerns with leaving names and titles out on tables for everyone to see.  

Top planners turn to onsite event solutions in order to reduce check-in lines and make the registration process much quicker. With self-service kiosks and on-demand badge printing, guests can register, check-in, pay fees, and print badges all on their own.  

3.) Lost in a Maze of Paper Surveys 

Paper surveys? So last season. The laborious responsibility of printing out surveys, distributing them, begging every attendee to complete them, and then re-collecting them is simply inviting a bigger, more monstrous workload.   

You can eliminate the tedium of paper surveys by turning to online surveys. By providing surveys within mobile solutions during and post-events, you’ll increase response rates and gain insights that you can use to optimize future events to suit everyone’s tastes. has a solution to this too! Learn more about easy digital survey tools your attendees will love.  

Love Yourself and Take a Load Off  

These are only a few of the many ways top planners use event management platforms to eliminate their Invisible Workload. We understand how stressful event planning is and how nerve-wracking it is to have to wear multiple hats at one time.  

Check out to see how Zoe and other top event professionals leverage technology so they can better plan and execute every single event.  

It’s time to stop living that invisible life and hustling behind the scenes. Ditch your Invisible Workload so that you can spend more time on what really matters- creating a once-in-a-lifetime experience for your attendees.   

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Your event marketing strategy doesn’t end after you’ve shaken all the hands and run out of business cards — but following up on all those leads can be overwhelming and costly.

Well, you’re in luck. is here to save the day and all those new relationships you sparked. Read on to learn how your can benefit from marketing automation before, during, and after your big event.

BEFORE THE EVENT

• Jump-start the customer journey.
  shows that 84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number, is the key to winning their business. So sure, you can blast your entire email list with a canned “Find us at booth 274!” email. Or you can create a personalized communication experience that business buyers prefer. With marketing automation, you can build a 360-degree view of conference attendees’ needs and characteristics based on existing data. For example, the week before an event you could send a dynamic email promoting sessions or networking activities related specifically to a prospect’s interests (based on their previous engagement). Win!
  
• Get social.
  If you’ve been to a trade show recently, you’re familiar with the flood of emails beforehand, with unknown brands announcing their presence and begging you to visit their booths. Since that email likely doesn’t offer the ROI you’re looking for, try social media. Social media advertisements can cultivate more authentic brand recognition before an event begins. Use social media to market your brand or your conference booth to attendees that open or engage with your email content. Following up on this initial interest will deepen the connection and lead into a seamless brand experience for your event leads. Bonus: Consider promoting a contest or giveaway via social to entice people to visit you at an event.

DURING THE EVENT

• Ditch the manual sign-in sheets.
  Capture lead information efficiently with Pardot’s kiosk mode. Data imports directly into Pardot, so you can follow up immediately and get to nurturing those leads before the day is even over. Automatic data entry will save you time and headaches. Easy-peasy.
  
• Break through the cluttered program.
  During the event, consider sending reminders to for sessions your team is hosting or sponsoring. While an attendee may just glance over the conference or trade show program, giving them a chance to see your content individually could boost session attendance, and thus give you more valuable brand exposure. Go a step further by using your marketing automation software to tailor your emails to individual interest groups.
  
• Expand opportunities for touchpoints.
  Trade shows can be a zoo of eager salespeople and crowded booths. Your marketing automation software can use geotargeting and event data from name tag scans and sign-ins to show you who you missed at an event. If someone engaged with a pre-show email, but »ćŸ±»ćČÔ’t get their badge scanned at your booth, you can use that information to follow up with a personalized offer for a 1:1 meeting. Communicate your interest with an offer to grab coffee or drinks. Or try following up with a link to an ebook or other freebies prospects may have missed at your booth.

AFTER THE EVENT

• Import your leads.
  First things first! Take all of those precious leads you worked so hard for and gather them into your marketing automation platform. From there, the platform can help you segment them based on past engagement, demographics, or other criteria. If you used Pardot’s kiosk mode during the event, you’re one step ahead.
  
• Qualify your leads.
  Not all leads are created equal, but you probably don’t have time to sift through thousands of data points and determine which customers you should focus on. This is where our friend comes in. Artificial intelligence software can and let you know which accounts you should spend your time pursuing. Lead scoring will help you get to know your most important prospects and what they may be looking for — a key tactic in any strategy.
  
• Follow up. Then follow up again.
  To drive conversions from your event, it’s important to maintain the connections you made. Nurture your leads to conversion by starting individual customer journeys that go beyond a “thank you” email. Make sure your sales and marketing teams are aligned, and hold your sales team accountable for follow up. Your company likely dropped big bucks on its event marketing strategy, so don’t let those valuable leads slip through the cracks.
  
• See how you did.
  Use to evaluate success from the event. Tailored data from your marketing automation stack will evaluate what worked, what »ćŸ±»ćČÔ’t, and what to do differently next time. Oh, and just in case you need to justify your efforts to some executive folks (wink wink), reporting will also arm you with hard data to show how valuable your event was.

In event marketing, personalization is the name of the game. How can you engage each business buyer individually and efficiently as they wind through a tradeshow hall?

Pardot makes it easy to nurture your leads before, during, and after the big show.

Learn more by checking out some of these resources:

• Download the ebook.
• Check out from companies that used Pardot to elevate their B2B marketing strategy.

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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:

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:

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 ” today.

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Trade shows occupy a unique and critical space in the outreach operations of many businesses. Seldom are there opportunities to showcase the mission and value proposition of a brand in front of an invested, captive audience. Delivering at a trade show can be the difference between an average and exceptional year for a company.

There are certain formalities to trade shows, which are fairly obvious to anyone who has a passing familiarity with the events, but exhibit professionals say success hinges on strategy before, during and after the event takes place.

Before

received a call at his business, , from a woman, Lana, from a walk-in freezer producer in Florida. “My boss just gave me the responsibility to manage our most important trade show in Anaheim. What do I do?’’ LoCascio says she asked. 

LoCascio is technically retired but maintains his consultancy in part because he finds trade show tactics so thrilling. He’s been working in trade shows for decades, ever since his father, a graphic artist, needed help with displays at an exhibit house in Long Island City, New York. “I noticed when the client would come in,” —corporations such as IBM, Crane, Allied Chemical— “the shop got cleaned up. I said to myself, ‘I’d like to be a client someday as well.’ ”

LoCascio may have remained on the vendor side for the bulk of his career, but he made that old-school respect for clients like Lana a hallmark of his professional life. And it paid off.

LoCascio counseled Lana to put together a document that stated what she planned to accomplish based on her exhibiting goals at the Anaheim trade show. Along with a pre-show briefing memo, she submitted the plan to her supervisor and used it to get feedback and buy-in. 

Lana’s show was an unqualified success, LoCascio says, because of the preparations she undertook prior to the conference. LoCascio goes so far to say that every company involved in trade shows should have a show manager, a position he held for many years. Much of the work handled by this person involves market research of the show audience.

“[The show manager] evaluates the business as it relates to the audience,” LoCascio says. “For three days you’re going to present and demonstrate the products that are of most interest to your particular market. You need to analyze who’s coming and get a rough idea of the number of prospects that would be interested in purchasing your product in the next 90 days.” 

LoCascio also advocates for late-stage planning to commence on site the night before a show kicks off. 

 The marketing department takes the lead, briefing everyone on the products that will be displayed, the objectives and how stations of the booth operate. 

“[When], the [prospect] steps on the carpet, right away, the [booth worker] on duty says, ‘Aha! This is a prospect. That’s why I’m here.’ He gets into the greeting and introduction, and he starts probing,’ ” LoCascio says.

During

As hinted at above, all that planning only pays off if it is executed properly. That means capturing people’s interest and making them listen. Even if marketers follow LoCascio’s strategy to focus on finding the most qualified prospects, they still must be attracted and persuaded. For that, trade show presenters often turn to attention getters such as . A former stand-up comic, Newman realized in the 1980s that his people skills and smoothness in the spotlight were highly sought after in the corporate world. He founded , which specializes in developing live presentations for clients at trade shows. 

Sometimes this means Newman is the person up on the platform proselytizing for his client like a hybrid of Steve Jobs and P.T. Barnum. Other times, it means he or a compatriot are planted in the crowd as a skeptic or dispassionate observer peppering the spokesperson with product questions. 

“I [could] be a totally geeked-up trade show attendee with two bags full of stuff, horn-rimmed glasses, pocket protector, the whole mess,” Newman says. “Eventually, the audience realizes this is a put-up job. But it’s still 80% content. We’re still getting the message across.”

Marketers don’t need Newman’s slick showmanship to excel at securing the presence of overloaded showgoers, but they do need to be personable.

“If you can show people that you care about their problems, if you acknowledge a problem, that tells them you know what they’re dealing with or what their challenges are. Address that,” Newman says.

Newman’s team will often hand clients a script of half a dozen icebreakers to hook passersby. 

“Read their badge and say, ‘Hey, what do you guys do? What’s your company?’ Nobody’s going to say it’s none of your business,” Newman says, noting that this is where the booth worker should respond, “One of our top clients does the same thing. How are you guys different?”

“Now you’re having a dialogue,” he adds, making it a seamless transition from conversation to demo.

After

By the conclusion of a trade show, marketers should have a good idea of how their efforts are shaking out, but that doesn’t mean the work is done. Some of the biggest movement can come from following up on leads generated over the course of the show. Many people who hesitate to commit on the spot need to be revisited, as do those who were punch-drunk on the trade show floor only to sober up after returning to their bubble. 

“The biggest [misstep] is when [companies] don’t have a strategy after the show,” says Tim Asimos, vice president and director of digital innovation at . Asimos says there needs to be intense planning about the timing and substance of post-event connections in hopes of conversion. Marketers need to be asking how they’ll nurture the contacts made at a trade show.

Asimos argues that rather than first-time presenters, veterans of the trade show circuit can be prone to a lack of post-game vision. 

“It becomes a little monotonous,” he says. “People aren’t necessarily thinking about it strategically, [nor are they] learning from prior trade shows. In addition to the follow-up with contacts, there’s no postmortem [review], a deep dive into what we did, where we were successful, where we missed the mark, opportunities for doing it better,” or, frankly, Asimos says, admitting when a trade show was horrible for a brand.

One step companies can take to effectively manage post-show operations is to identify a measurable goal during the planning period and track its success. 

Or, as LoCascio says, “Justify the time and money that you’ve invested into some kind of ROI.”

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