How To Waste Money on a Tradeshow #eventprofs #assnchat #stlsmr #mpi
As we talk with event managers, exhibitors, sponsors, speakers and attendees about the good, the bad and the ugly regarding their events, one of the core issues we uncover is the pressure for a return on investment – in the expo or booth area, in the meeting and session rooms and especially in the opportunity to meet and engage with other attendees.
So, how do exhibitors get more of what they need (qualified leads and qualified conversations) so that event planners can get what they need (more exhibitors, with the right products and information) so that attendees can get what they need (information, connections and engagement)?
More than a year ago we wrote a series of articles on the challenges that tradeshow attendees face; Tradeshows, Where Good Leads go to Die (Part 1 & Part 2 & Part 3). In the BusyEvent offices, we refer to these as our “Jerry Maguire” documents. Taken as a whole, it outlines our view of the problems in the tradeshow and events industry and describes a set of solutions.
As you know, in April we launched the Event Bookmarking System which has won a series of Awards as well as garnered significant press coverage (Domino’s Pizza Case Study, Microsoft Case Study, Building a Face-to-Face Social Networking Company, BusyEvent Hits a Bullseye).
In any economy, participation in an expo is dependent upon the amount of qualified leads a vendor received for their time, money and efforts. But simply agreeing to invest in a show is only half the battle because traditional lead management only produces a list of who was “scanned”; a list of a list, if you will. It can’t produce a list of truly ‘qualified leads’.
The follow up on these lists can be daunting and is typically done by placing those new leads into the sales pipeline for eBlasting or even worse “dialing for dollars” phone calls made by the newest sales trainees or more expensively, top sales talent.
In the traditional model, once a show occurs, attendees unlucky enough to get caught in the sales lead process get pounded with junk mail and emails and phone calls thanking them for stopping by and ‘pitching’ the product or service. As a result, little list qualification occurs and they simply become part of the database going forward. Solving that problem is what generated the lead management component of Event Bookmarking (Watch the demo videos for creating and managing products and leads).
And now the story that started it all . . . Years ago, we attended one of the tradeshows about tradeshows. We happened across one of the dozen or so ‘event management’ companies (translation – event registration software), ate the candy, took a brochure out of guilt, and thanked them for their time. We learned a lot from that experience. We were two people in a show full of several thousand attendees. We came, we saw, we talked and then we left . . . For us, that was that.
And that’s when the emails and the phone calls and the invitations started coming. “We’re having a webinar!”, “We’re doing a luncheon in your town!”, “We’re offering new modules that we’ve stacked on top of the other ones . . . it’s all shiny and new and you MUST BE THERE to see it!!!”
Since we were relatively unimpressed with what we saw and were already well into the development of the BusyEvent Event Management Platform, we opted-out and took this one-time experience as a good dose of what not to do. Our event management clients were telling us what they wanted, didn’t like, wished they could have and we had already been building tools like this for over a decade as one-off software. The time was right for us to build an event platform.
But the lunch invitations kept coming. Even as we were launching Version 1 of BusyEvent and made no secret to who we were, nobody at the “we’ll invite you to a luncheon and show you our stuff” company had any tools or information to know if we were a qualified lead or not – so we’re still on the list today.
Over the past 6 months, we’ve received 4 invitation to see another demo and get another free lunch . . . which got us thinking about the costs of this approach . . . What did this one unqualified lead cost them and how many unqualified thousands more are rattling around in their system?
If, instead of spamming and inviting they had just been able to sift through the thousands of contacts they gathered at the event we attended to find the 50-100 good and qualifiable leads it would have been more useful to them. What they do with the other 900 is up to them . . . so, here’s what we do:
- First, everyone doesn’t get a color glossy brochure that will sooner-than-later find its way into a landfill. Instead, had that original event had the Event Bookmarking system in use, every contact could be filtered and the qualified leads would get more attention.
- Then, we track who downloaded our PDF brochure, clicked on the link to our site, blog, Twitter and LinkedIn, etc . . . and expressed ANY follow-on interest. All of this can be done inside Event Bookmarking and all of this information can be ported to other contact management systems, or even downloaded as a CSV.
By self-identifying as ‘interested’ each of those more-qualified leads would get a call from us about the real actions that occurred (we met, we talked, you clicked a link, etc…) and as appropriate, those qualified-leads would continue through the sales funnel until a more expensive contact, such as a meeting, a lunch, or demo, etc . . . made sense.
The others would all get an invite to a webinar, links to downloads and perhaps a quick 3 question survey about what they’re interested in. And they’d remain in the ‘more qualifications needed’ list.
Before Event Bookmarking, Sales and Marketing would have no way to measure a successful show other than the number of contacts they gathered – qualified or not, “just get me names”. Those really aren’t leads, but rather, names on a list. Then inside sales is incentivized to get people to come to the luncheon no matter what their level of interest. This occurs over and over until nobody knows where the leads came from or what money is best spent on Marketing. It’s the “brute force approach” and we believe that budgets will never be there for that, ever again.
And, because of all of the Web 2.0, social networking and advanced lead qualification tools built into Event Bookmarking, the budgets don’t have to be. What you’ll see by clicking any of the links is what we’ll address for every attendee; the actual measurement of ROI and the identification of which contacts are worth spending time and money on and converting into leads.
That’s why . . . rather than continuing to be part of the problem, we’re offering part of the solution.
What is Event Bookmarking?
BusyEvent and the Event Bookmarking System is cutting the cost of event management in half AND increasing the value for every participant. By eliminating hard costs, reducing waste, decreasing uncertainty and providing more real-time information, BusyEvent helps event managers run better, faster, cheaper and greener events. For attendees and exhibitors, our Event Bookmarking tools enrich the face-to-face experience by providing quality introductions to people, products and ideas. Plus, by monetizing the data stream, BusyEvent creates more revenue and profits, provides information and intelligence for enhancing future events and a measurable increase in ROI.
More technically, it’s a software and purpose-built hardware platform that combines Lead Management with Audience Response, Face-to-Face Social Networking and an online information source to extend a 3-5 day event into a 365 day year-round connection between attendees, vendors, speakers, sponsors and event managers.
So, feel free to visit our ‘Green Friendly’ Event Bookmarking web site and contact us to discuss how to cut the cost of event management in half AND creating value for every event participant, at the same time.
Home
About Us
Contact Us
Recent Comments