Drive Tradeshow Sales thru Internet Marketing

Tradeshows are expensive. Total up the costs of the space, booth, graphics, collateral, gifts, travel, time & people manning the booth… and you realize it’s a big check to sign.

Complementing your tradeshow with Internet marketing increasings the number of people who will stop at your booth and the number of people who turn into leads.

What type of Internet marketing? PPC Advertising & Email.

Pre Show Promotions

Pay Per Click Advertising
Before an event, people usually go online to search for info about where the event will be, who will be speaking, who will be attending, etc. What if you ran a limited time pay per click campaign that drives more people to your booth? Or if you are putting on a demonstration or a seminar at the event, you might ask them to RSVP. Once you’ve got their contact information, you can use it intelligently. Contact them the day before the event and remind them to visit you.

Email Marketing
Have a list of emails for people you’d like to attract to your booth? Got the permission to email them? Send a quick note about the event. Mention that you’ll be exhibiting and why they should attend… and specifically why they should visit your booth.

Don’t have an email list of people you want to attract to your booth? Start building a list.

Post Show Promotions

Pay Per Click Advertising
Some prospects will leave your booth without your card or will loose/misplace it. Many times they’ll go back to Google and type in what they thought you were called. Do you show up at the top for your own name? Not just your full name but also for your short name? (i.e. IBM or Volcanic Marketing instead of International Business Machine or Volcanic Marketing Studios.)

If you are speaking at an event, people might go back to search for materials they missed or for PowerPoint slides. Use PPC to reach these prospects when their interest level is high.

Email Marketing
You probably collected a ton of cards in your fish bowl with some kind of a promotion. Have a plan in place for contacting these people. Email marketing should be an integrated part of this plan. Do you have a newsletter? Whitepapers? Product Sheets? Case Studies? These are all great candidates for post-show follow-up and email can automate most of this.

PS: Be relevant. Do not SPAM.

PS2: Volcanic is an internet marketing agency that helps manage search engine marketing such as pay per click advertising. We also can help with your email marketing strategy and creative development. Need our help? Call Melvin Ram at (916) 743 9369.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 11:09 am and is filed under Trade Shows, Marketing Strategy, Internet Marketing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.