Check out these affordable digital strategies for trade show lead generation

For companies exhibiting at a trade show, pre-show promotion is a critical component to any marketing plan.

• 76% of attendees arrive knowing what booths they already want to visit.
• Exhibitors using pre-show campaigns raised their “attraction efficiency” by 46% (quality of audience attracted to the booth).
• Conversion of booth visitors to qualified leads rose 50% when pre-show promotion was used.

Beyond pre-show email and direct mail campaigns, digital and mobile advertising are the latest – and highly effective – pre-show promotion strategies exhibitors use to get on attendees’ “must-see” lists and drive booth visits.

Targeted Digital Advertising for Event Attendees

A recent “State of B2B Marketing” report cited that 82% of respondents plan to increase their online spend. Until recently, it’s been difficult (or expensive) for exhibitors to target pre-event digital advertising specifically to show attendees.

Thanks to IP targeted advertising and mobile marketing strategies, exhibitors can deliver relevant pre-show digital ads promoting their event participation to the browsers of current or prospective customers, without paying for expensive trade show sponsorships.

With IP targeting, for example, an exhibitor decides to promote its upcoming trade show presence to a group of pre-registered attendees plus a portion of their current customer list. During the show, they also decide to increase awareness about their participation to attendees staying at conference hotels. Once IP addresses are determined from the target list and hotel locations, the exhibitor’s digital ads are only delivered to the browsers of those target IP addresses.

Reach Attendees on Mobile

But what about reaching event attendees on their mobile devices where they spend an average of 4.7 hours a day?

Exhibitors can also extend pre-show promotions to mobile devices within certain geographic locations – a small “geofence” radius around the convention center or conference hotels. Rather than being delivered to browsers, ads are served up on smartphones through popular mobile apps.

With this mobile strategy, an exhibitor stays top-of-mind to on-site attendees and increases likelihood of a booth visit.

Integrate to Boost Results

While targeted IP and mobile advertising can increase awareness and drive booth traffic, response rates are highest when integrated with multi-touch email and/or direct mail campaigns.

Continuing the earlier example, an exhibitor’s IP targeted and mobile ads feature a strong offer and call-to-action linked to an online lead capture page. The exhibitor also uses direct mail and email to contact the same list and promote the same offer and call-to-action. The integrated campaign allows the exhibitor to gather lead contact information and survey data and even set sales appointments before the event starts.

And of course, tracking impressions, click-through rates, survey responses and leads generated make it easy to show ROI of your entire pre-show campaign.

Learn more about how IP and mobile ads can be used to boost response rates and generate actionable leads with your next campaign.