Since marketing plays such a key role in the direction of many companies, take the time to review your company’s efforts and if they are being directed squarely where they should be.

Reviewing Your Marketing Needs

As you review your company’s marketing needs, analyze where your return on investment (ROI) could be improved, where money may be disappearing to and where you see your company’s finances down the road.

Among the specific areas to zero in on are:

• Numbers review – It is important to review the company financials to determine if change is necessary.
• Marketing efforts – Where are your marketing dollars going? Have you changed anything significantly in the last six months or years? If so, what were the end results?
• Get an outsider’s opinion – While it is easy to judge things from your end, have an outsider look at your marketing efforts. They can give an unbiased viewpoint as to what may be working, what isn’t likely to work and where the dollars should be going;
• Do an industry review – See what others are doing with their marketing efforts. Are they putting the pedal to the metal or are they pulling back? While you don’t necessarily want to emulate what the competition is doing, it doesn’t hurt to review their efforts.
• Customer feedback – Most importantly, get feedback from the clients you are marketing to. Find out what they like and don’t like. If they feel something isn’t working but you aren’t aware of that, how will you fix it?

While you don’t want to be changing your marketing efforts every month, tweaking here and there is by all means a good thing to consider.

If you decide that a change to your marketing game plan is in order, be sure you can answer the question as to why this is in the first place.  At the end of the day, companies need to determine and understand the ongoing cost of promoting and advertising their brand to their customer base and the potential prospects.

Dave Thomas is an expert writer on items like copier machines and is based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource, providing expert advice on digital copiers for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.

The traditional standard is 5 minutes for each engagement.  In that time, your booth staff must engage, qualify, and disengage.  The main goal should be to meet as many prospects as possible and gather their contact information and qualify them as legitimate leads, not to convert a sale.

Waiting until after the show to convert booth visitors maximizes the number of visitors your booth team can meet and allows you to slowly nurture prospects who have longer sales cycles.  How then is the best way to convert them after the show?

Marketing automation is one of the best strategies for energy companies to nurture prospects towards a sale.  Software programs, such as ActiveConversion, generate targeted emails for customers who are interested in your products and services, but are not ready to purchase yet.  For example, a lead interested in instrumentation services would receive an email a week after the show thanking them for visiting the booth and provide a link to an online brochure or a whitepaper discussing the benefits of your services.  Future emails would offer other resources such as webinars or case studies, and eventually would include a direct sales offer.

With the volume of emails that you are likely to be sending with this strategy, tracking who does and does not read the message can be tricky.  Readily available third party programs such as VerticalResponse allow automation programs to track and identify which leads read nurture emails and which recipients downloaded information.

Once leads are sales ready, a sales representative can directly contact them and close the sale.  Involving sales only when the lead is ready to buy reduces the time wasted chasing leads still in the early stages of the sales cycle and improves efficiency.

Lastly, you may be wondering why not just close the sale with the qualified visitor on the trade show floor?  Generally, trade shows convert 1-5% of the total number of visitors to a booth.  If you attempted to close sales during the show, the total visitor number would be very low, and thus so would your conversion number.  If you limit the time spent with each visitor and only acquire contact information and level of interest, you are able to meet many more visitors and increase the total number of conversions.  Converting visitors after the show using marketing automation or direct selling maximizes your booth traffic during the show and maximizes the potential revenue to be earned after the show.

Oil and gas service providers can implement a
marketing strategy to sell to customers worldwide in
a cost-effective and affordable manner. This
strategy leverages global trade shows supported by
a marketing automation solution. This approach
maximizes the Return on Investment (ROI) from
trade shows without requiring a substantial outlay.
Implementing this strategy will increase sales
beyond their local trade area while also reducing
costs in selling to local customers.

Following up on global leads from trade shows can be expensive, time consuming, and often fail to generate a sale.  Learn how to efficiently convert trade show leads into full fledged qualified prospects using online marketing and marketing automation.

Download this eGuide to learn the basics of:

• Using the internet to engage potential customers after a trade show
• Using conversion software to identify which leads are actually interested
• Maximizing time and cost efficiency with marketing automation
• Keeping prospects engaged until they are ready to buy

The most important question asked is, “How can I improve my tradeshow ROI?” There are many ways to market for a tradeshow and many ways to spend your money, but often little if any ROI is realized. The most compelling factor to attend a tradeshow and set up a booth is the prospect of meeting face-to-face with the decision maker. But is your tradeshow marketing investment totally justified when you are just a needle in the haystack?

There are many other techniques to market a tradeshow: you can sponsor an event, you can write editorials in the event magazine, you can advertise on the tradeshow website etc.  Tradeshows are already an expensive endeavor, and they can cost more if you choose to advertise using these other popular channels.  If you are not a large company, costs for tradeshows can be significant considering the already limited marketing budget.  On top of the advertising costs, there are other associated costs such as designing the booth, time that your sales reps spend to exhibit, flying costs, as well as food and lodging.

So, how much do you get back on the investment you just made on the tradeshow? Not as much as you were expecting, but the use of online marketing techniques can boost your tradeshow investment. In my last post, I wrote how you can combine the use of traditional and online marketing techniques and benefit from them, but here I’m describing how you can use online marketing to better market your tradeshows.

Following some concerns and solution suggestions based on online marketing and online tools – thus making it the most for your tradeshow investment.

BEFORE the show: How do we get more people to visit our booth?

Invite people from your list to meet you at the booth. Give them a compelling reason for meeting: a big prize give away, or a free product, or a free software copy, or free consulting time or free passes to the tradeshow in your email. Give prospects a good reason to meet you to make the best use of their time and money.

DURING the show: How do I maximize marketing during the show?

When the prospective client meets you at the tradeshow, you can scan his badge and register him in your system. These are already partially qualified leads and can be entered into your CRM or Marketing Automation system. Using a marketing automation system will let you know exactly who clicked on your offer, and then scanning their badges at the show and assigning those leads to your system can qualify your leads further.

AFTER the show: Who are my best prospects? Whom should I follow up? What do I do with the big list of names?

After the show, send the prospective client a thank you email note with the prize giveaway announcement, and have the prospects click on the results. If the prospect does more than just look at the prize landing page (for example visit other web pages) browse your product page or the pricing page, you can see how the accumulated scoring of your leads will give you a better picture of the lead quality. Now that you know who is really interested, you can nurture them further using marketing automation tools.

Therefore, during various stages of your tradeshow you engage the prospect, and help qualify the leads that actually will be worth spending your time on.  With online marketing, make before the show, start of the sales cycle.

So the next time you are a part of tradeshow, think about the before, during and after of the tradeshow, and how online marketing can help generate stronger leads. Download this PowerPoint slide deck and read this whitepaper that talks more about the challenges which companies face today, and learn more about increasing tradeshow ROI using the online marketing techniques. Go on and start perfecting your tradeshows!

Related articles

• Webinar Recording- Learn How to Substantially Increase Your Trade Show ROI (b2b-marketingblog.com)
• Global Petroleum Show 2010 Exhibitors; Find the needles in the haystack! (b2b-marketingblog.com)
• Tradeshows: What’s your ROI? (b2b-marketingblog.com)
• B2B: Tradeshows (b2b-marketingblog.com)
• How to Engage a Tradeshow Audience Year-Round (marketingprofs.com)
• Make Your Next Tradeshow a ‘Qualified’ Success (marketingprofs.com)
• Let Your Brand Shine at Tradeshows (marketingprofs.com)

In this recent study of Interactive marketing priorities for SMBs, (Forrester) for 2011, Shar VanBoskirk believes that 54% of marketers will decrease their marketing budget for traditional tactics.  While more than half of the marketing budget is now being spent on interactive/digital/online marketing, it is still hard for some companies to actually understand the true value or ROI gained from this medium. The return on invesment is approximately measured based on the number of click throughs (CTR’s) from email marketing or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising or from number of page views calculated from certain analytical tools. Online form, used by marketers to gather useful information of their prospects, is also very powerful online lead generation technique. But with stats indicating that only 1-2% actually will ever be willing to share you their information, makes this lead generation technique not that attractive (The ‘Contact Us’ fallacy: The importance of identifying anonymous visitors).

I’d like to share here how companies can still make use of their traditional marketing. Combining both traditional and online marketing techniques (powered by marketing automation and sales intelligence tools) companies get the best possible ROI  from their marketing budget. Integrated marketing will not only augment your marketing efficiency, but will also give your marketing a much needed boost in this digital age.

Use marketing automation tools to nurture leads you already have in your sales funnel

Meet with your prospect at a networking event. Exchange your cards hoping that they might call you or that you will get back to them when the time is right. But, is the time ever right? After the event, your card will either end up in a pile of other similar cards collected over the years or will just be forgotten. You can alternatively choose to nurture those leads on the given email address. Marketing automation tools can nurture leads with pre-written, automated email messages, and help you stay on top of their mind, giving them a chance to learn more about you.

After all, on an average it takes about 7-10 touches to register certain brands and their marketing messages. A series of nurture emails with valuable content such as thought leadership, industry knowledge, and links to marketing collateral can help you reinforce your marketing message in several ways.

Use CRMs funneled by marketing automation to continue building the relationship

Prospect info gathered from these traditional channels can be manually entered into your CRM. Marketing Automation (MA) tools synced with certain CRMs make it possible to send the prospect info from CRM to MA tools to track future visits. You can also track if your prospect show more interest in your offering after your initial meeting. Marketing automation is then used to track, score, and nurture those prospects until they become a qualified lead. Anonymous visitor identification system, can also report visits from different individuals from the same company showing their cumulative interest. Keeping a watch on your prospect/company will help you solidify the next steps within your sales process.

Use of email marketing to inform and persuade your prospects in the funnel before the show

Bulk emails can be used to inform your prospects of the tradeshow booth you are setting up or a seminar you are hosting. The email informs and persuades the prospects in the list to come and visit you at those events, and they are an excellent way to – increase the awareness of your brand, and get a meaningful reason to get in touch with your prospect list to inform your prospects about your events along with your new or existing initiatives.

A set of 2-3 emails before the event is reasonable to stay in touch with your prospects and persuade them to take an action (such as opening the email, looking at the content), and hopefully attending and meeting you at the show.

Use online marketing with traditional techniques to increase brand awareness and get business online

It is never too late or too expensive to start online marketing and improving your website for better conversion. Online marketing will help you get business online and also help you establish your brand’s awareness.  This online presence creates a buzz around your company and products, and definitely gives your company an edge in the digital age. Combining the use of editorials or advertorials in your target market magazine along with an online banner ad will hit multiple audiences, both offline and online.

To learn more about combining traditional and online marketing (powered by marketing automation), read this whitepaper on increasing tradeshow ROI .

Register for seminar here

Often B2B companies end up spending substantially on marketing in addition to their own time – be it at the trade shows, conferences or events. This face to face interaction is intended to meet directly with potential new customers and create relationships. But often, these expensive endeavors remain fruitless due to the disconnect between marketing events and actual sales activities.

This seminar is presented by Yves Matson, Marketing Director from United Safety Solutions, who will walk through his own experiences. Yves is familiar with traditional marketing techniques, and he will demonstrate how the effective use of online methods and existing marketing such as trade shows to gain more customers. The highlight of this seminar will be how to make the best use of online marketing and marketing automation tools to accelerate your sales.

Register today for this informational and value packed seminar, and learn strategies on how to build stronger relationships with your prospects and get better sales results when you combine traditional & online marketing techniques. Also learn about how to effectively use marketing automation tools to your advantage to take your marketing efforts to the next level.

Yves Matson, Senior Account Executive at ActiveConversion, & Nancy Nardin, President at Smart Selling Tools shared some strategies and tactics around increasing trade show ROI.

Attendees learned how equipping their company with simple and easy to use marketing automation software drives several benefits that increase trade show ROI:

Other topics covered were:

• Who is visiting your website right after a trade show
  - if you are “top of mind” enough for them to investigate you after a trade show, they are your best prospects!
• How to automate an email nurture campaign after a trade show
  - instead of having sales follow up with the entire list, have them focus on those that show engagement, even if that engagement is months later
• Track the effectiveness of various trade shows and compare the return on investment against each other

Download the recorded webinar from: http://www.activeconversion.com/webinar/webinar-june-2010-access.html

Download the presentation from: http://www.slideshare.net/activeconv/activeconversion-increasing-trade-show-roi

Finding The Needles in the Haystack
Research on trade shows have shown that serious buyers will gravitate to doing their research online and arrive at your website both before and after the trade show. But trade shows like the Global Petroleum Show can have two huge wins for exhibitors; Opt ins, and after show website visits.

Opt Ins
By virtue of the fact they are going to the GPS show, anyone visiting your booth is qualified in so far as they are in the energy industry. When one of them asks to be scanned for more information they are doing what is the holy grail of  marketing; they are “opting in”.

When someone asks for their badge to be scanned for more info, you can email nurture them  while always leading off with “you are receiving this because you visited our booth”. Then use a new breed of software to notify you as to who keeps coming back to your website, or visited the right pages on your website; it will tell you who to call, who you stand the best chance of building a relationship with.

The Bigger They Are, The Less They Call
Every exhibitor at the GPS hopes for booth visits from big, sought after accounts. But ironically the bigger the account, the less likely they are to call you after a trade show for fear of salespeople chasing them months on end. Regardless though, if these big accounts are interested in your company they will likely visit your website after the show to investigate your company further. Again, knowing who is visiting, who is interested in your company, who you should target over the weeks and months following the GPS show can be a significant competitive advantage.

eHow To Guide
Here’s a quick eHow To Guide from ActiveConversion that further explains what I’ve mentioned above. Good luck at the Global Petroleum Show 2010!

Business to business (B2B) trade shows can be a cost-effective means of gaining valuable face-to-face interaction with many qualified prospects. Most B2B companies have a reasonable expectation that sales revenue will result from participation at trade shows. Yet too often, experience has shown that for many leads from trade shows the timing is too early in the sales cycle. This experience may explain why business executives are constantly dismayed that so few leads are actually followed up by their sales departments. Trade show industry research indicates that 80-90 percent of all trade show leads are not followed up.

What the guide advocates is that in addition to using marketing automation in the promoting of attendance pre trade show, a trade show booth is analogous to a website for the large number of “inquiries” that exhibitors come home with:

• Most of these inquires are not ready to buy (95% according to the research)
• They have opted-in to receive more information (so they are ideal for email nurture campaigns)
• They need to be nurtured through a sales cycle so that in 3 or 6 or 9 months when/if they reach sales ready, the exhibitor is still top of mind
• They need sorting (scoring of their behavior) to weed out the ones who are, and who are not, worth inside/outside sales resources.

But also key is the takeaway that companies need to know who is visiting their website (marketing automation platforms like ActiveConversion identify anonymous company visits, as well as labelled individuals).  The traffic that visits a company’s website directly after a trade show is often a key indicator of whom at the trade show they got some level of engagement with, especially if there are multiple visits from different individuals from the same company.

To download this eHow To Guide on why marketing automation can increase your trade show ROI, click here or on the image!