An iPad giveaway doesn’t count as event marketing nor lead generation.

A few weeks back I received an email from a company who approached us a few weeks back at an event. At this event, we suggested that there were a few areas of opportunity, and we may be able to increase value to their events and marketing programs.

We spoke about a few problem areas (Let me fill you in on the story)

Branding: At this particular event, their stand lacked a consistent brand with ad-hoc signs and different versions of their logo used sporadically across their stand, signage, and collateral.

Signage and Visual tools: Their banners and stand signage were extremely complex and used way too much “marketing jargon” obviously put together by the internal staff who are too close to the business.

Message and sales pitch: After reading their signs twice, you struggled to grasp what it was they do? I chose to speak to one of their event staff members who after 3.5 minutes, still could not explain clearly who they were, what problems they solve for companies. This staff member clearly wasn’t from sales, marketing or operations, more a software engineer who wasn’t briefed to explain use-case examples.

Event delegate engagement: In clear view on the stand was the traditional iPad giveaway, with a fishbowl to catch business cards. The team on the stand were so totally focused on gathering business cards and scanning badges from delegates, numerous people (who could have been potential sales opportunities) walked off as no-one bothered to engage them and show interest in their problems.

The company that sent me the email explained to me how they had been doing the events this way for years and they always generate a lot of leads. I asked him “how many of these leads have generated you sales and ongoing business.” They told me “It takes us a few weeks to follow up all the names, and from that, we get a few sales of labels and even the odd machine. Marketing said that the event was successful because of the number of cards we gathered. Personally, I question this?”

We just go about doing the same things year after year, and hope that we get new sales. Those days i feel are history and only time will show that our competitors doing new and more innovative things will surpass us. – Anonymous Prospect

Event sales and marketing programs can often cause the following challenges;

1. It takes sales staff weeks to follow up the names gathered from an event. Out of this, they were lucky to convert 1-3 into genuine leads (even a small sale).

2. These ‘bad event leads’ causes distraction from their existing sales pipeline focus means that genuine sales opportunities with proposals were ignored.

3. The $ investment in the event wasn’t returning the ROI for sales conversions (or even branding).

4. Unfocused and confusing stand messages resulted in staff spending most of their time educating people on what they do and entering people into a prize draw (knowing from the outset that they were tyre-kickers)

5. The lack of pre-event marketing and PR meant that delegates either had not heard of their company or if they did, didn’t know that they were exhibiting at the event – a cold welcome.

This is a very common story. It’s not just about planning your exhibition, it’s also about how you wrap an event into an integrated marketing and sales program that promotes pre and post-event activities not just what happens on the day.

Stop the generic programs you’ve been doing year after year!
Remove the bad leads, noise, and wasted marketing budget!

Ask us for help!

Our rev™ Brand Marketing Programs can help you to plan and build a successful social media and digital marketing program. We’ll replace the noise of bad leads with quality new customer opportunities.

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