Post Link: Effective, Insight-Led Trade Show Follow-Up with Content Marketing

Effective, Insight-Led Trade Show Follow-Up with ContentMarketing

There comes a time in every wholesaler’s life where, as lucrative as existing relationships are,it’s time to hit the trade show floor and hustle some new leads. A few days’ worth of hard workcan have a huge impact on your results in the coming months (or even years) as those newrelationships deepen.

It can be difficult, however, to execute an effective follow-up strategy that will eventually win youthat new business. What if, long after the trade show had closed its doors, you could follow upwith prospects with information that they’d actually pay attention to? What if that eventually ledto the first order of many down the road?

One way to provide more effective follow-up after a trade show is through what’s called “contentmarketing.” The content (e.g. blog posts) you create and publish on the Internet can help youcontinue the conversation and get new business relationships off the ground. You may evenclose sales based on the strength of your content.

Creating that great trade show follow-up content, however, is not necessarily easy. Just asthere are tricks behind getting attention at trade shows, creating the right type of content togenerate interest can be tricky. Here’s how to make it all come together.

Gather the Right Information at the Trade Show

As you’re setting your goals and objectives for a particular show in the weeks or months of pre-show planning, be sure to include goals around gathering insights on what your customers andprospects might be interested in.

If there will be a speeches or seminars at the show, consider asking a speaker for a shortinterview or simply their opinion on one or two relevant subjects. Do your homework before theshow to get in contact with these thought leaders.

Another great technique is to prepare a set of basic questions to ask everyone who passes byyour booth. Depending on how industry-specific the trade show is, you may consider askingvisitors to complete a survey or opinion poll on, for example, how they think the sector will doover the next quarter, what they think the biggest trends will be next season, etc. Here, you’regathering valuable market intelligence insights that people will want to see.

Try to keep any survey short, but be eager to discuss if visitors are willing. There are greatsurvey tools for trade shows, which can also help you capture the contact information of newleads.

Be sure you are prepared to take copious notes or find other ways to record all of theseinteractions. You’ll need them later when it’s content creation time.

If you already have some great digital content ready-made, you might be interested to knowthat more and more companies are using electronic literature in order to create a kioskexperience allowing attendees to select what content they want and have it sentinstantaneously to their inboxes.

Follow-up becomes much easier when you have a set of names, email addresses, and a clearoverview of what content they were interested in seeing.

Slice, Dice, and Publish

After the trade show is over and the dust has settled, you can get to work sifting through theraw information you’ve gathered to package it up into some great content.

The overriding principle here is that if the information is interesting or useful to you and yourbusiness, it will likely also be interesting or useful to someone else working in your space andespecially to someone who may potentially do business with you.

Here are few ideas to get you started producing content based on your ideas from the tradeshow.

Present information that you gleaned from other trade show attendees. If you ran a survey,1.you can share its results with your readers. If you asked a survey question like, “What do youthink will be the biggest trend this upcoming season?” people are going to want to know whatothers in their industry are saying.Share thought leadership. Informal chats with customers can also reveal nuggets of2.

information that others in your space will be eager to learn. If you landed an interview,transcribe it and publish it so others can learn from it. Even these insights are coming fromothers, readers will associate them with your brand for bringing them to their attention. (Ofcourse, make sure to get permission to use any quotes, etc. from the intervieweebeforehand).Summarize formal presentations that were given during the course of the trade show. Trade3.show attendees who may not have seen one of the presentations or seminars at a tradeshow will be grateful for the recap.Analyze and comment on all of the above. Providing your own thought leadership is a great4.way to give your brand strength and credibility, as well as open up new dialogues. When itcomes to B2B relationships, more depth means more profits.

Remember that all of this needs to happen very quickly after the end of a trade show. Inaddition to processing any orders you may have received at the show, make this contentcreation a priority for those leads who have not yet placed and order.

Rather than having your sales team follow up with just an email looking for a meeting, give themsomething that will make your prospects sit up and pay attention. If, for instance, your repssends an email that includes a personal note along with an “Trade Show Trend Report,” it’smuch more likely that they’ll get that meeting.

Don’t forget to publish your content online as well; the Internet is home to millions of potentialleads who are prowling cyberspace in search of information. In other words, don’t let your tradeshows be just trade shows. Farm them for online content and reap the benefits for the years tocome.Post originally located at: https://www.handshake.com/blog/trade-show-follow-up/

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