How to Prepare for an Event: Leave a Lasting Impact and Drive ROI
Events are a powerful platform for businesses to connect with potential customers, build brand awareness, and ultimately drive sales. However, with so much competition for attention, meticulous preparation is key to maximizing your event marketing return on investment (ROI). This article outlines a 11-step approach to ensure your brand stands out at events.
- Generate Pre-Event Excitement
Don’t wait until the event starts to make noise. Utilize a multi-pronged approach to generate excitement: send personalized invitations with QR codes for tracking, announce your participation on social media platforms like LinkedIn and X, and create engaging content like blog posts highlighting your presence and what attendees can expect at your booth. A Digital Asset Management (DAM) system further streamlines this process by providing a central hub for sourcing approved visuals for your social media posts and ensuring brand consistency across all channels.
- Maximize Venue Visibility
Once at the event, ensure your brand doesn’t get lost in the sea of booths. Strategically placed roll-up banners with clear messaging will guide attendees towards your location. Platforms like Ciloo make this easy by allowing you to order and produce branded materials close to the venue, eliminating the need for bulky international shipments. This is one tool you need in your martech stack to save you time and money when managing branded products.
- Create a Booth Experience They’ll Remember
Your booth is your brand’s physical ambassador. Design an appealing space that reflects your brand identity and values. Showcase your commitment to sustainability by incorporating eco-friendly materials in your booth design and swag.
- Equip Your Representatives
Empower your team to connect with potential customers by ensuring everyone has ample physical and digital business cards (provided by Ciloo). Custom-branded T-shirts, polos, or jackets create a cohesive and professional image for your team, instantly making them identifiable and approachable to potential customers, even when away from your booth.
- Increase Engagement: Make it Fun!
People are drawn to activities that are fun and interactive, even at a B2B fair. Reimagine classic games with a theme related to your industry, utilize tablets for interactive quizzes or product demos, set up a photo booth with props for social media sharing, or host contests and challenges with prizes to incentivize participation. Remember, the key is to make the activity relevant to your brand and target audience.
- Capture Attention with Giveaways
Offer high-quality, on-demand branded items like laptop sleeves created through Ciloo as an incentive for attendees to share their contact information. Additionally, run a prize draw for a larger item to generate even more interest.
- Share Value Through Brochures and Flyers
Provide informative brochures and flyers that highlight your company’s offerings and value proposition. Utilize Ciloo’s on-demand production to ensure fresh, updated materials are always available. Brochures and flyers offer attendees a tangible takeaway, allowing them to revisit key information about your company, products, or services even after the event.
- Beyond Your Booth: Leverage Venue Resources
Extend your reach beyond your designated booth space by exploring sponsorship opportunities with the event organizers to have your flyers strategically placed in common areas. Consider sponsoring a smaller event held alongside the main conference, such as an industry talk, networking lunch, or workshop, to position your brand as a thought leader and gain valuable exposure to a highly targeted audience. Ciloo can help with the creation of branded materials for your sponsored event, ensuring a cohesive brand experience throughout.
- Post-Event Follow-Up
Don’t let the connection end with the event. Send personalized thank you emails to everyone who visited your booth, and continue to engage leads with valuable content like case studies, playbooks or white papers.
- Close the Deal: Convert Leads into Customers
Your sales team should follow up with qualified leads within 48 hours of the event’s conclusion. Segment and tailor your approach based on lead qualifications and interests, utilizing CRM and marketing automation platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot to track leads, personalize communication, and automate marketing processes. By empowering your sales team to personalize their outreach and quickly understand each lead’s specific needs and interests, you can transform event interactions into lasting customer relationships.
- Track and Analyze
Monitor your sales pipeline and track the progress of your leads. Analyze which marketing efforts at the event yielded the most qualified leads. This will help you refine your strategy for future events and optimize your ROI.
Maximize Your Event ROI with Ciloo
The Ciloo platform makes it much easier to prepare and attend trade shows and fairs. You can manage all branded products through one centralized platform, with global brand control, on-demand ordering to minimize waste, reduced emissions through local production, and total cost control. By following these steps and leveraging Ciloo’s innovative platform, you can transform event interactions into lasting customer relationships and maximize your event ROI.
Discover the benefits of the Ciloo platform for event marketing. Book a demo today