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They key to holding a successful business and networking event lies in creating a solid event marketing strategy, building collaboration, and tapping into your professional networks and connections.

But there’s one another crucial thing is often overlooked, and that is interpersonal skills.

Interpersonal skills go a long way in facilitating productive conversation at events. But more than that, they help you build a deep connection with your prospects. This helps you to make them open up to you and to express their challenges, thus giving you an edge in negotiations and solving their critical business problems.

Here is how you can use interpersonal skills at events to create potential lead capturing opportunities for your business:

To Foster Active Listening

Active listening is one of the most valuable parts of communication.

The truth is, your clients and prospects don’t care about how great your product is; they care about how your product or services can solve their problems.

And in order to solve the business challenges affecting your clients, you have to work at honing your listening skills, which is an integral part of interpersonal skills.

Active listening is not only about listening to what your clients are saying, but it also means giving your full attention to the client, and consistently providing visual cues to let them know that they have your full attention.

Listening cues include making eye contact, nodding your head whenever required, and giving verbal affirmations.

Once you listen to your client attentively, you will be in a better position to understand their problems, which will result in offering better solutions.

Naturally, the more attentive you are, the more leads capturing opportunities you will have.

To Help You Follow-Up Over Emails/Phone Calls

You are happy with your progress at the event you participated in. The business card scanning app that you used to capture lead information is now brimming with countless valuable leads.

However, the sales process doesn’t end here.

You have to now follow-up with your captured leads to let them know that you value their interests and would like to proceed with your proposal.

Here, again, your interpersonal skills come into play.

With exceptional interpersonal skills, it becomes easier for you to have a follow-up conversation via phone or email. It also comes in handy while articulating your sales pitch, whether it is verbal or written.

Sales representatives with better interpersonal skills always have the upper hand in breaking the ice and get the conversation going.

To Help You Relate to Your Audience

With impressive interpersonal skills, you naturally acquire the practice to make everyone around you feel comfortable. As a result, your potential clients are likely to find you approachable enough to share their problems with you. They will be comfortable interacting with you and will be at ease seeking your help and advice.

It also helps you foster a unique relationship with your client, which results in encouraging a great professional relationship. On top of that, you will also find that your ability to put people at ease and relate with them makes it easier to work with them, which ultimately leads to generating more valuable leads at events and ultimately more revenue.

Wrap Up

Excellent interpersonal skills, both verbal and written, are crucial to discern the requirements your leads have and then again comes in handy while articulating what you can do to meet those requirements.

Failure to get your point across can result in you losing your lead or worse, causing a rift between you and your client.

Thus, before you attend an event or conference in a quest to generate valuable leads, it is essential to work on your interpersonal skills.

Other than interpersonal skills, it is also vital to be armed with Martech-based sales productivity apps in order to generate the maximum ROI (return on investment). The blend of excellent communication skills and advanced technology will work wonders at events and help you make the most out of them.

Do you think that excellent interpersonal skills give a sales professional an edge when it comes to generating leads at marketing events? Give us your feedback in the comment section below!

The recent years have beckoned a welcoming change in the world of marketing technology. And in this fast-paced world and increasing customer expectations, it is especially important to stay up to date with all the recent trends.

That’s why, in this article, we are going to discuss some of the most important up and coming martech trends that are impacting the events industry in 2019.

But before that, let’s get a solid grasp of what martech exactly is.

What is Martech?

Techopedia defines martech as: a portmanteau combining the terms “marketing” and “technology.” As such, martech represents the intersection of marketing and technology in today’s highly digital business world. Any type of technology that has a bearing on marketing operations can be called “martech” whether it is a part of an analysis platform, a device-facing benchmark tool, or any other type of digital or high-tech resource.

Simply put, Martech refers to the integration of marketing and technology, where technology is used to solve traditional marketing issues and increase the outreach of the companies.

So, embrace all the upcoming martech trends that are impacting the events industry without any further ado.

Here are some important martech trends you need to look out for:

1. Leveraging automated tools

The top priority of every marketer is to capture qualified leads at the events.

And if you want to achieve your set goals as smoothly as possible, then conflating automated tools with your marketing strategy is the way to go about it.

For instance, using something like a badge scanner or plain old tactics of collecting business cards are not only too troublesome but they also lead to wastage of time. On top of that, you always stand a chance to either enter incorrect data in your CRM system or miss out on important contact details altogether.

On the other hand, this can be easily alleviated with the use of modern tools such as business card reading apps, where you just have to click a picture of the business card and all the contact details get imported into your CRM right away, automatically.

Which option seems more credible and dependable? Of course, the latter one.

2. Conflating marketing with data analytics

Data analytics is tricky and not the easiest thing in the world. That said, it is something that you can’t do without anymore, especially when it comes to your events business where being privy to even the minute details is imperative.

Robust data analytics reports allow you to optimize your KPIs, measure your conversion rate, track return on investment (ROI), and track whether your event campaign is on the right track or not.

This results in formulation of clearer goals and strategies, which in turn leads to a streamlined execution of your event marketing plan.

Having a cohesive plan also makes it easier for marketers to keep track of their follow-up strategy as well

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has been around the block for a while now and is a great way to grab eyeballs for an upcoming event.

You can also increase your outreach using paid ads and promotions and target your potential prospects directly through their social media profiles.

Another field of social media marketing that is in trend these days is influencer marketing where you connect with macro and micro influencers to promote your brand or event and accumulate a wider audience.

These influencers often have thousands or even millions of followers. They are remarkably active and the best part is that their followers are able to relate to them and hence tend to believe them more easily than any A-list Hollywood Start.

However, connecting with these influencers is not as easy as it may seem.

First, you have to find popular influencers in your niche and then decide on what incentives you can offer them in order to get them to promote your event.

Summing Up

Most of the marketers fail to meet their lead generation goals at events. And the main reason behind this is the use of outdated methods to collect leads and lack of a proper lead generation strategy.

Leverage the mentioned Martech trends to scale up your lead generation process at events and generate qualified leads. However, don’t just chase these trends and use them out of an obligation. Instead, create a proper layout how you will go about the whole process and at what point you will incorporate the latest automated tools like the business card reading apps.

While you are at it, don’t shy away from getting in touch with influencers in your niche to get them to promote your upcoming events. It will surely help you boost your attendee count like never before.

So, what martech trend do you think is most relevant to the events industry? Let us know in the comment section below!

Brand promotion is the core of any marketing strategy. And event marketing is arguably the best way to promote your products and services.

But what is the perfect even marketing strategy? Trust me, nobody knows that! Because there is no event marketing template which meets the requirement of every business. In fact, event marketing can be done in multiple depending upon your business and marketing strategy.

One of the major perks of event marketing is that it provides marketers direct access to the customers. So, how is it done? What are the critical steps which you must take? In this blog, we will discuss every relevant detail about event marketing.

1. Invest in Resources and Process

Chalking out an event marketing strategy and implementing it efficiently are two completely different things. For the latter, you need capable people, marketing tools, and the right strategy to achieve desired results. It is essential to source the right resources well in advance to meet your marketing goals.

Here is how you can choose the right resources for your event marketing process:

Manpower – People who are working at the event are supposed to meet your potential customers. And you would never want your potential clients to not come to your stall because the people present there don’t look friendly. In fact, you want your event marketing guys to be approachable, pleasing, good listeners, and always willing to help with any queries related to your products and services. Look for highly motivated people who are always to go an extra mile to make the event successful.

Process – The right process plays a crucial role in defining the success of your event. Think about the business requirement and priorities carefully while chalking out the event marketing process. Some critical things which you must plan well in advance are the logistics of the event, how will you capture the leads and follow up on them later, and the placement of your staff at the event to ensure smoother operation.

2. Know More About your Target Audience

For instance, you are planning an event for small or mid-sized SaaS-based entities in HR, but you don’t know much about them. And without knowing them better, you will not know about their needs and problems to pitch your products and services efficiently.

There is one solution to it – track conversations of people on social media who are associated with these companies to know them better. You can use social media monitoring tools like Brand24 for tracking them.

The social media monitoring tool allows you to churn out essential information like where they hang out, their age, hobbies, problems, interests, and much more. It can bring out the entire profile of a person to help you converse with them in a better way.

You can also run pre-event surveys to identify the expectations of your potential clients and what are the problems they are facing with their businesses right now. It will help you plan a more effective event marketing strategy.

You can also segment your target audience.

Focus on demographics including job title, industry, location, etc. to go after top prospects (especially for direct mail or call downs), and remember that location matters. Always consider company location, personal location, or inferred location, like IP address, to ensure that you are sending your communications to the right person.

After all, you would never want to send an invite to someone who lives and works in Boston for an event in Wisconsin, unless your data shows that they have attended events in that area before. But always take this process with a pinch of salt as you will never get 100 percent right.

3. Create an Effective Promotion Strategy

When putting so much time and energy into planning your event, you want to make sure that you do the promotion right. To ensure that more and more people register for the event, you should deploy a mix of email, social media, PR, and other forms of paid promotions to achieve the best return for your buck.

Effective communication with your target audience is compulsory before an event to spread the word and expect a better turnout. A successful event promotion includes a series of promotion activities, including emails, press releases, and call campaigns, among others. The promotional activity also depends mostly on the kind of event promotion you are looking for. For instance, webinars and online events’ promotions can be done online, but offline events require multi-dimensional efforts.

There is also one channel which you would not like to ignore – social media.

Whether it is a webinar, virtual event, or a tradeshow, having someone managing your Twitter presence will keep you engaged with attendees. Also, you can instantly reply to anyone who might have a question or comment.

For instance, Twitter is the most effective tool for marketing and promoting your events. It also helps in engaging and connecting with the audience and attendees in real time. Leverage Twitter to live tweet, engage with partners and influencers, and drive traffic to your event landing page. The first step is to make sure you set up a hashtag for your event to use on Twitter, and make sure this is well publicized. If you are doing a webinar, the hashtag should be communicated by the moderator and written on the slides as well. If you are attending a live event, make sure you tweet the hashtag beforehand and include it on promotional materials

And once the event is over, you can measure the buzz using social media tracking tools and collect the best tweets. Also make sure you post contest results, submitted photos, and thank your attendees for taking time to come to your event.

4. Event Marketing Technology Stack

In the world of digital marketing, every decision has become data-driven, and you always need actionable insights to run your business. This is why it becomes extremely crucial to have the right technology stack for any kind of successful event marketing. From your registration software and billing to mobile apps and email marketing tools, everything comes under the umbrella of event marketing technology stack.

The time is now to shun archaic marketing tools and embed the efficiency of technologically advanced tools.

For instance, a business card scanning app can be a handy tool at events where exchange of business cards with potential clients is a common norm. Business cards are the quickest means to share contact information. But how do you manage the information of hundreds of business cards?

Business card scanning apps are capable of scanning all the details on the card and import it instantly into your CRM. This means, you can store all the information about your potential customers at one place without any hassle.

Wrap Up

So, these are some of the most essential tips that will help you a great deal in scaling up your lead generation process at events.

Apart from the above points, you must also track the results of your event marketing efforts.
Here also, you can use automated software tools and dive into the goldmine of data to capture crucial metrics, including the number of tickets sold and revenue from sales, among other things.

While you are at it, also send event surveys to the participants to gauge the satisfaction level and success of your event.

How do you plan to scale up your event marketing efforts? Let us know in the comment section below!

After all the hard work, brainstorming, and funding, your company is finally going to attend a marketing event. 

And of course, the end goal is to capture qualified leads and eventually turn them into paying customers. 

Then there’s another important metric — ROI. 

Once you wrap up your event, return on investment is the only metric that matters the most. 

This means you have to work on mitigating your expenditure and maximizing revenue. 

And this can only be achieved if your sales team is adept at using a variety of sales productivity apps to meet targets and have a solid lead generation follow-up strategy in place. 

There’s one problem, however. Many sales professionals find it hard to make use of new technology to spruce up their results.

That’s why it’s important to give more opportunities to your teams to make sure that they make the most of the marketing events they attend. Moving away from ineffective lead generation methods like renting event badge scanners, manually capturing data on paper lead generation forms, etc. and empowering your sales teams with more advanced tools like business card scanning apps goes a long way in maximizing events’ ROI. 

Here’s how you can do it. 

1. Educate your sales team about the benefits of new technology

For the most part, sales representatives capture leads at marketing events and then pass them on to their marketing and sales team. 

Naturally, the use of new technology and top-notch tools like ScanBizCards, a business card reading app that automatically scans and captures more B2B leads at events, is going to help your team solidify their lead generation efforts. 

While the sales reps may get a bit skeptical by the transition from using current methods to more tech-savvy methods, if you articulate the benefits and educate them about the new technology, they will realize how the benefits far outweigh anything else. 

For one, the use of manual ways to capture leads at events leads to unwarranted delays, Helvetica Neue, and other deviations, which ultimately result in lost opportunities. 

If you could encourage your sales reps to use the new technology and teach them its importance, you’ll not only make things easier for yourself but for your sales reps as well. You just need to find a viable way to make them aware of it. 

2.Deploy sales analytics tools

When you are working hard towards meeting your lead generation goals, it is important to analyze whether you are on the right track or not. 

Therefore, it’s excessively important to encourage your sales team to keep track of all the metrics using advanced sales analytics tools like Google Analytics, etc. 

These tools give your team insight into how well your strategies are faring. You can see what is working out and what is not — and find out why. 

Sales analytics also reveal how newly captured leads are interacting with your brand. 

3. Provide regular sales training  

I know what you are thinking…

“Of course, we have trained our sales reps and taught how to go about the whole lead generation process.”

If you are thinking along the same lines, then you are certainly overlooking the main keyword here, i.e., “regular training”.

This means, training your sales team once or twice after you purchase modern technology and lead capture solutions are not nearly enough. You have to regularly provide assistance and training

to your sales team to make sure that both of you are on the same page and the results align with the goals set by the management. 

Always keep them updated with the new developments and updates, especially right before they are required to attend a new event.

4.Incentivize the lead capture process 

Offering viable incentives to your sales reps for achieving a great feat goes a long way in motivating them to do better for the next event as well as for the next step in the lead generation funnel. 

You can either encourage some healthy competition in your team by offering a bonus to the sales rep who captures the most qualified leads, or offer a collective incentive to the whole team if they meet or surpass the goals set for them. 

Both approaches can help you a great deal in encouraging your sales reps to make use of new tools and strategies to augment their results

5. Set clear goals but don’t be restrictive

Having unclear goals and an ineffective sales process can drastically impinge on your sales productivity and efficiency. 

That’s why a documented lead capture process and clear goals can assist your sales reps when it comes to generating better results. 

Clearly, point out all the pain points of your leads and how your sales reps can tackle them in the event. Teach your reps to pitch the product in such a way that they succeed in touching the nerve of the leads and offer them the solutions they have been looking for. 

However, you have to be cautious of one thing. While you create a model for the goals that are to be achieved along with the sales process, don’t be stringent and restrictive. Recognize the fact that every sale and client has a different thought process. So, make sure your sales team knows that they can step out of the box whenever necessary.

 Summing-up

Managing a sales team is not easy. 

But with great training and new tools in place, you can achieve a lot more in a decidedly lesser number of days. 

When all is said and done, your sales team is the backbone of your organization, which is why you have to rely on them to make use of all the new tools. And once they realize that using new technology and documented sales processes work in their favor as well, they would have no qualms about working the way you want them to. 

Also, don’t forget to motivate and reward the sales reps who achieve great results at events, trade shows, and organization in general. 

How are you encouraging your sales team to capture the most qualified leads at B2B events? Let us know in the comment section below! 

So your event is over. Owing to all the effort you put in, you have impressed your leads with your offers and a lucrative sales pitch.

Now what?

If you think that capturing qualified leads at an event is then you are drastically mistaken.

In fact, you have barely started.

Following your event, you need to devise a solid follow up plan, engage your leads, share your experience on social media channels, and so forth

Today we have rounded up the ultimate checklist for exhibitors to ensure better results post event.

1. Thank your leads as well as your employees.

First and foremost, thank your leads to take the time to visit your event or event booth and showing interest in your product or services. By sending out a detailed thank you message, you are letting your leads know that you are genuinely interested in their input and value them. It also shows how great your customer service is and how stealthily you can assist them in the future.

To make it even more effective, you can even offer a discount coupon along with your thank you newsletter. This will surely give them a nudge in the right direction. Plus adding a personal touch is always a great idea!

While you are thanking your leads, don’t forget your staff members and employees in the midst. Remember that it was their efforts that resulted in this great success at the event. This helps them keep motivated and provide room to further growth.

2.Segment your leads 

Once you have generated plenty of leads using various sales productive tools such as business card reading apps, lead-generation forms, and more, you are now likely to have a long list of event qualified leads.

Notice the emphasis on event qualified leads.

Yes, the leads that you generated are not qualified yet…they are still only event qualified. What you have now is a blend of hot, cold, and warm leads.

To push them further down the sales funnel, you need to start with an aggressive follow-up routine. However, depending upon their interests, requirements, and preferences, your sales and marketing team would require different methods and messages to send across.

That’s why it is important to segment the leads into different categories and follow up with each category accordingly. For instance, with warm leads, you need to share your product details and its benefits to take things forward. On the other hand, with cold leads, you still need to give them a nudge by sending out discount coupons and more.

3. Import leads into your CRM  

Before you even start with your follow-up strategy, you need to import your leads into your CRM right away. There are clever tools, for example,business card reading apps like ScanBizCards allow you to automatically import all your leads into your CRM without missing out on even a single contact’s details. 

This way, you can also keep track of the follow-up messages that you have sent to your leads. Otherwise, you risk sending out similar messages multiple times to the same prospect, which is likely to ruin your chances of getting your lead on-board with you.

4.Follow-up with your leads 

Now that you have already segmented your leads and imported them into your CRM tool, this task becomes decidedly easy.

First and foremost, follow-up with your warmest leads, the ones that you think will convert faster than other leads. Also, make sure to follow up sooner rather than later, possibly within 24-hours of your event.

Your follow-up message will decide how your relationship pans out with your prospect. Make sure to personalize each of your follow-up messages and make it relevant to your target audience to get a better return on investment.

5. Calculate your ROI (return on investment)

Engaging your leads is not nearly enough!  

To check whether all your efforts are bearing fruit or not, you need to track certain metrics including your ROI (return on investment). 

When you see that you are not receiving an intended ROI, then you can evaluate where you are going wrong. However, if you don’t check such metrics in the first place, then you might never get to know what needs to be changed.  

Wrap Up 

These were some of the important steps that you need to follow through in order to scale up your lead generation efforts post event.

Also, make sure that you stay in touch with all your leads disregarding the fact they get converted this time around or not. 

The leads that you failed to convert this time might end up turning into your permanent customer during the next event. So keep on engaging them despite their response or lack thereof. 

Are you ready to convert your leads into permanent buying customers? Do you think we missed out on something important? If yes, then let us know in the comment section below!

ScanBizCards has a lot of exciting new improvements.

We’re running a massive 66% discount on ScanBizCards Premium
Download the iOS ScanBizCards Premium app or upgrade from ScanBizCards Lite for just $0.99 — we’ve reduced the price from $2.99 for a limited period.

The Android app is also available for $0.99 (discounts are currently available for USA users only).

We have new features and updates

Conference Badge Scanning: You can now easily save contact information from conference badges of your attendees at conferences, trade shows, and events.
Learn more about our badge scanning feature and how to use it

Batch Scanning: You can now batch scan multiple business cards all at once.
Learn more about our batch-scanning and how to use it

In addition to this, ScanBizCards also has a new and improved Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to ensure higher scanning accuracy.

We have a brand new website
We posted this story in an earlier blog post. You will find everything about ScanBizCards on our updated features, pricing, and support pages.

Follow us on our social networks
Follow ScanBizCards our new social media pages to get the latest updates on our app, industry news, insights, perspectives and more. Here are our new Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.

The Importance of a Solid Follow-Up Plan After a Conference

Are you successfully done with your marketing conference? If you followed all the tips and tricks required to achieve the best results at the events, you should have generated plenty of leads.

But now how do you take those leads to the next level?

Let me be honest. Converting your leads to permanent customers is rather difficult.

Prospects today are not easily convinced, which is why devising a solid follow-up plan after a conference is very important.

Don’t wait for your prospects to contact you because the chances of them contacting you are very scant.

That means, following up with a client after a conference is imperative.

Here are the other reasons why you should have a solid follow-up plan following your event or conference.

  1. Lead Nurturing

You might think that lead generation is the most important aspect of your business.

Generating qualified leads is just a starting point, your conversions are going to occur from nurturing these leads.

According to statistics, “61% of B2B marketers send all lead generation directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.”

This is why lead nurturing is important.

And lead nurturing is not possible without a solid follow-up plan.

You have generated some perspective, or market qualified leads (MQLs).   

Now, you have to follow-up with your prospects to make them feel important. It is always a great idea to shower attention on your prospects.

Start by sending out a ‘thank you’ message following the conference and further talk about your prospects’ problems and the solutions that you think will work out for them. Such follow-up emails are also great when it comes to setting up a communication tone with your prospects.

Naturally, a follow-up email will also help make sure that you and your prospects are on the same page.

  1. Collect More Relevant Data

Considering that you scanned all the business cards you received using a credible business card scanning app, you are already armed with useful data on your leads, including their contact number and email address.

But this data is not enough to take the process forward and close the final deal. The experience during the actual event is very fleeting. You have to interact with so many people at once, which is why it is not possible to collect more insightful data.

Again, to collect more data that will help you provide a solution to your leads and convert them into your customers, you need to send out follow-up emails right after the event, while your brand and services are still fresh in their mind.

  1. Discover Ways To Improve

Your event success doesn’t end here. Now you have to work on improving yourself and making sure to work on the things that still have room for improvement

Send out follow-up emails asking for feedback on your event, your brand, sales pitch, and more to discern everything from your prospects’ point of view.

Beyond regular mishaps, focus on discovering feedback regarding your core offering, your sales pitch, services and how you can improve on client experiences.

  1. Start Planning For The Next Step In Your Sales Funnel

When all is said and done, your main aim is to get a head start from your prospect and make them move further down the sales funnel.

For that, you need to further engage your lead, get them to see all the benefits they will get if they avail your services, and then take your cue from them to move forward. But before everything, you need to follow up with all the potential customers that you interacted with in the event.

I know it can be tempting to simply take a day off, however, just hold it off until you send out follow-up emails while your sales pitch is still fresh on your prospects’ minds.

Now, It’s Your Turn

Now that you know how important sending out follow-up emails are, get started with your own follow-up plan right away.

It’s important to avoid any delay in your follow-up plan because it is possible that some other brand will lure away the customer by then. Also, it is also easier to persuade people to move forward with your proposal when everything is still fresh in their memory.

So device a winning follow-up strategy to convert more leads, make your customers happy, and constantly improve the quality of your services.

Are you also planning to host a conference or a B2B event? Let us know how you plan to engage your leads by commenting below!

We’re excited to present our new website and some amazing new features and improvements to our app. Read on!  

We’ve got a couple of amazing new features, and more..

What’s the most important thing for you to do when hosting a conference, or setting up a booth at a tradeshow, or attending an event? It’s a no-brainer, really—you want to make sure that you capture every single contact.     

If you are not doing that, it doesn’t make much sense to spend thousands of dollars on such events.

However, if you are still using outdated techniques to capture event leads, like asking your prospects to fill out paper forms, collecting business cards in fish bowls (that never make it to your CRM), and renting event badge scanners, you’re not quite doing it the right way!.

What you need is an automated conference badge business card scanning app to scan all of your prospects’ contact details on the fly, automatically export the contacts to your sales CRM, and send email follow-ups..

ScanBizCards does all that, and much more.

We’ve added two major new features ScanBizCards (currently available to our US users only)  

  • Conference Badge Scanning: You can now easily save contact information from conference badges of your attendees at conferences, trade shows, and events.
  • Batch Scanning: You can now batch scan multiple business cards all at once.

In addition to this, ScanBizCards also has a new and improved Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to ensure higher scanning accuracy.

Check out our new website and social media pages

You can learn more about our new features, and explore our resource center on our new website.  

You can follow ScanBizCards our new social media pages to get the latest updates on our app, industry news, insights, perspectives and more. Here are our new  Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook pages.

 

Sales professionals go to great lengths to attend B2B marketing events.

From shelling out a special budget for this purpose to logging in extra working hours, there is so much you have to prepare yourself for.

Naturally, after going through all the trouble, you want to achieve the best results at the B2B event you are going to attend.

For your company, best results mean capturing qualified leads at such events.

That said, capturing qualified leads is no cakewalk.

However, you don’t have to worry. To make sure that you don’t end up empty handed even after putting in so much effort, we have rounded up some proven methods for capturing qualified leads at events.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

The more qualified leads you acquire, the more revenue you are likely to generate.

This much is obvious.

But how would you know who is your audience? How will you find them? Are they even going to attend the same event as you?

Just imagine this scenario: you end up at a content marketing event but turned out it was more like a meet up between some content marketers and you could barely find any leads, let alone qualified leads.

Now what?

Well, you head back home feeling dejected.

This problem can easily be eliminated by a quick audience research and identifying your target audience.

Your target audience primarily consist of folks whose problems you can solve and who have the budget to avail your services.

Have a look at some other questions that will help you identify your target audience:

  • What should be the size of the company you want to pitch your product to?
  • Common age group of your prospects
  • Where should your ideal customer be located?
  • What should be the challenges faced by them?
  • Can you solve their problems?

Once you have an answer to all these questions, you will be able to identify your target audience easily.

This will help you connect with the leads that are most likely to purchase from you.

2. Go Prepared With Important Apps in Tow

One of the reasons why so many sales professionals fail to translate their efforts into acquiring qualified lead is because they are still using archaic sales methods.

Most of them are still going to these events with lengthy lead capture forms. This often leads to indiscernible handwriting, incomplete forms, and so many other handicaps.

Ugh! To think that you are only left with a few pesky leads after putting in so much of your time and efforts.

Well, it’s 2019 and look around — every top salesperson has abandoned these unreliable methods.

All of them are using various automated sales productivity apps to alleviate all these problems.

In this particular case, we would suggest using a reliable business card scanning app.

With these card scanning apps, you don’t have to write down the contact details. They automatically scan and capture the details included in a business card, which can then be exported directly to your CRM apps.

If you are a Salesforce user, then it would be a great idea to give ScanBizCards app a try. You don’t have to worry about it not aligning with your goals since you can avail its free trial initially to test the waters.

3. Offer your leads a bonus item

Everyone likes free stuff. And your target audience is not any different.

So, why not offer your leads a little something extra?

For instance, you can offer them a sample product on a purchase or a special discount coupon valid for their first purchase.

This is likely to give your qualified leads a nudge in the right direction and tempt them to finally do a business deal with you, given that your product solves their problem too.

Don’t sweat just yet, you won’t lose your money by distributing discount coupons or samples at B2B events. Once it starts translating into sales, your bonus offer will be worth it.

And let’s be honest, it’s not just about the free bonus item. It also adds a personal touch to your sales pitch, which would be hard for your prospects to resist.

4. Engage your leads before the event

B2B events are exceedingly professional, no one can deny that.

But it doesn’t mean that you can’t spruce things up a little before the event in order to engage your leads.

If you engage your leads on social media channels a few days before the event, you can easily and capture them at the event venue.

You just have to put some efforts in engaging them.

So, don’t hold back and engage your target audience. Share your excitement on going to the event, ask people in your connections whether they would like to tag along with you.

This will help you connect with your leads even before the event. If you engage with them properly, you might even be able to incite their curiosity about your product beforehand, which will make it easier for you to capture leads during the event.

Not just this, run social media contests for your social media followers and reward the winners. On social media for that matter, the word gets around fast. Once you start engaging your followers, even their friends will come to know about you. Now, those who are going to the same event will make sure to come at your booth and check out your product.

5. Leverage user generated content

In the previous point we discussed how you must engage your leads before the event in order to capture them at the event.

Another great way of making your target audience familiar with your product and your event (or your event booth) is by leveraging user generated content.

You would probably think, “Why not create your own content?” Of course, you have to create your own content as well. However, user-generated content has the edge over your regular content.

This not only saves you additional hassle, but it also boosts your event’s visibility and promotes brand loyalty at the same time.

How does it work?

It’s actually quite simple. All you have to do is to run a giveaway. For instance, you can host a giveaway contest and offer two airplane tickets to the winner.

Now encourage your audience to share images of the giveaway contest on their social media pages.

Crocs, for instance, encouraged its customers to post their photos accompanied by the hashtag #comeasyouare. They also feature some selective images on their website and Facebook page.

However, there’s a catch.

People are willing to share their photos for crocs which is a hugely popular brand.

But why would they do it for you?

No offense, but you are not that well-known…yet.

You can do one thing though. You can incentivize this process by offering something in return like discount coupons, a gift card and so and so forth. However, make sure that whatever you offer is valuable to your target audience.

Conclusion

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and try out these event marketing tips and methods for capturing qualified leads at B2B events. Your event or if you are attending someone else’s event, your booth will get flooded with leads in no time.

Just don’t go unprepared and always keep a business card scanning app installed on your smartphone. Such an app can prove to be a pretty remarkable tool to quickly collect lead information without causing any unwanted interruptions.

So, which method would you use to capture qualified leads at B2B events? Let us know in the comment section below!

Let’s face it. Not everyone likes mingling with strangers albeit important strangers at B2B Events. On top of that, B2B marketing events can be expensive, so much so that they take up 18 percent of your total marketing budget (Source).

That said, the cost incurred can easily translate into more revenue generation if only you leverage these events to their potential best. With so much time, money, and effort invested in, it would be downright disastrous if you do not.

That’s why today we have rounded up some amazing tricks to help you achieve the best results at B2B events.

1. Do your research and find out who is attending

We are going to talk about some amazing tricks that will help you get maximum results at B2B events.

However, there’s one thing that doesn’t need to be taught.

Research skills!

If you truly want to get the best results, then you have to brush up on your researching skills.
Sometimes, even some basic research on social media channels like Twitter and LinkedIn can help you garner plenty of details about your prospects. Get some information on the companies that are going. Would they qualify as productive leads? What problems they are facing currently and how can you solve them?

You need to find out the answers to all these aforementioned questions to make the most out of the event you plan to attend.

Moreover, you must let your followers on social media know that you are going to attend a B2B event by posting something along the lines: “I will be in Vegas next week attending CES, if you’re also attending, let me know, beer’s on me”

Folks connected with you on your social media channels will start responding to your post. This is a great way of knowing who else is attending the event and the people you are going to meet there.

With extensive research, you can save a lot of your time and catch hold of the right people and productive leads. This way, you’re well prepared and can make the best of your time there.

2. Say no to outdated lead capture methods at events

Why do businesses readily spend so much money on these events?

The reason is quite actually simple — nothing solidifies business relationships more than meeting with your prospects in person. You can easily get your point across without any barriers and build a more symbiotic, trustful relationship.

Don’t believe me?

I am sure this statistic will change your mind:

According to a survey, more than 76 percent of salespeople claimed that in-person events are their most successful top of the funnel engagement tactic.

However, if you are still following archaic lead capturing methods at these B2B events, then you will have a fight on your hands.

For instance, marketers are still collecting business cards in fish bowls and some are getting their forms filled out to capture lead information.

What year is it — 1992?

If you want to boost your B2B lead generation efforts at these business events, then you have to start leveraging more sophisticated not to say time-saving methods.

Stop asking your leads to fill out lengthy forms. Trust me no one likes to do that anymore. Instead, learn to communicate effectively during B2B business events and make use of more automated tools such as a business card scanning app. Such an app will negate all the hassle from your lead capturing method and automatically scan your prospects’ contact details and export them to your Salesforce CRM tool.

Now that you have collected all the necessary information with a single click, you can easily follow-up with your prospects after the event as well.

3. Offer Freebies

I don’t like free stuff — said no one ever.

Right?

Giving out free but relevant stuff is always a great idea to capture leads.

You don’t have to shell out a massive budget to give out free stuff. Small things like a nice, branded pen or a power bank will do. You can also offer discount coupons for your own product or service.

Attendees will go home with a satisfied smile and even spread the word around about your brand’s generosity.

And it doesn’t matter if you are not hosting your event. Even if you are placing a single booth at someone else’s event, when attendees get hold of the news that you are distributing free stuff, they will be sure to stop by at least once. Once they come to your booth, the rest is up to you how you engage them and capture their business cards.

Mind you, don’t stop to write down their contact details in the middle of a conversation — it will only harm your B2B lead generation efforts. As I relayed in the previous point, just install a credible business card scanning app to automate such tasks. For now, your main focus should be on engaging the leads and to move them further down the sales funnel.

4. Spread the word on social media

Social media is exceedingly powerful — are there any disagreements?

Yeah, that’s what I thought!

Even its staunchest detractors can’t deny the power it has, especially when it comes to lead generation for your B2B events.

Social media doesn’t have to be only about *I-am-vacationing-in-Bahamas* type of posts. You can, and you must use this channel to spread the word around for your event.

Again, the idea is the same — even if you have a booth at some event or hosting your own event — you need to promote it to the fullest.

That way, everyone in your vertical can learn about your event and your company. Don’t shy away from posting at various other portals such as Reddit, Medium, and so forth. These platforms have a massive outreach and given that you present your pitch in an engaging manner (with a mention of your free giveaway), you can expect a huge turnout.

5. Develop a reliable follow-up strategy

You have got some productive leads at the B2B event you recently attended. Well, good for you!

And if you heeded our advice of installing a credible business card scanning app to quickly capture the leads, then we are sure you are now armed with a list of your prospects’ contact details.

But these contacts won’t bear desired results unless you re-engage the acquired leads and follow-up with them after the event. Hope you know that your prospects probably came across several other pitches like yours — so you have to fight many other fish in the pond.

You can do this by making your follow-up email engaging and informative. Try to incorporate something that is valuable and useful to your leads, offer them a solution to their problem, and so forth.

While you are at it, you can also offer a limited discount coupon, or any other incentive to give them an additional nudge.

Concluding Words

Armed with these great event marketing strategies and tricks along with some great automated sales tools, there is no way you won’t find success at such B2B marketing events. While these tricks are veritably useful, you still need to do prior research about your target audience and the events you are planning to visit. For instance, if you are planning to give away free stuff, you should know who your target audience is and what sort of stuff they would like.

So, implement what you learned today but back it up with substantial research. The return on investment (ROI) will be well worth all the efforts and money spent.