The Best Lead Generation Tactics to Increase Conversions by 3.5x
I’m Ryan Schefke. CEO at Captello. I’m also the author of the Ultimate Guide to Lead Capture. I’m from the US in Texas, the second largest state in the US. And here’s what you’re going to learn today:
1: New trends for lead generation at events.
2: How to increase engagement.
3: How you can increase revenue as an exhibitor or event organizer.
When I think about the topic, which is the best lead generation tactic to increase conversions by three and a half times, What does that really mean? Let’s break that down. When I think about it, I think about: 1: Attendees, everybody that flows in or delegates, how do we convert them to be stand visitors? 2: How do we get those stand visitors to become leads? And then the most important part is #3: How do we turn those leads into revenue?
Here’s my first point:
Lead generation is a strategy.
It’s imperative that we work with our exhibitors. If we’re organizing events and we coach exhibitors, I feel like there’s a big sort of misunderstanding. A lot of exhibitors come to events and what do you think they care about? They care about generating leads and generating revenue, ultimately. So we need to help them. Exhibitors have to have that mindset. So we need to do a better job.
I’m going to use an analogy of cars. Imagine a fiesta, believe it or not. This is the number one car in the UK on the road. There’s 1.54 million fiestas around there. but you’ve got a fiesta. It’s kind of what we’re used to, right? It’s the existing way of driving. Well, here’s a Tesla and it’s a model Y. I’m actually fortunate enough to own a Tesla. I bought one five months ago, but before I bought one, I drove the other cars. And I’m telling you, when I got in that car, I was like, wow, I can’t believe what I’m driving. I’m never going back. So the analogy here is we’ve got to put the best lead generation and lead capture capabilities in our exhibitor’s hands because when they have it, they will never want to go back, and the de facto is just, Hey, whatever the show gives you.
And that’s not good enough. That’s the fiesta. So what’s the impact of disparate lead capture? You might not know this, but there’s a concept called ULC or universal Lead Capture. Let’s use this example. This is me arriving last week here in the UK from Texas. And I came into Russell Square having to find my way around, I had to figure out how to get from point A to point B.
Well, how could I do that? I could download this particular TFL go app and I could figure out which Elizabeth line to take and where I should go. So I could download that from the app store. That’s the map for getting around London. Or I could download the New York version if I was in New York, but what I did was that I used one system, Google Maps, and it’s consistent for me. So wherever I go, London, New York, Australia, I can open up Google Maps.
From an exhibitor perspective, they could be using universal lead capture. That’s a premium option for exhibitors. That’s like the Google Maps where they could have one system to capture their leads wherever they go, at any time, anywhere around the event. And every person can have that lead capture in their pocket no matter what you need to capture.
For example, when I get a business card, guess where it’s going? It’s going in my pocket. Yes, I’m staying at the travelodge. But it goes back to the travelodge. And I have to figure out how to get it in my system later on. If I had a good lead capture app, I could take pictures of that business card. They’d be transcribed, they would be in my system. It’s about being a little more organized, having that consistency. We need to make sure as exhibitors and as organizers, we do our best job thinking outside of the box or outside of the show floor. Oftentimes we think about needing to capture leads.
Well, it’s just going to be here during exhibition hours, right? Well, the best exhibitors already know everybody that comes to meet them at the exhibit because they’ve done communication beforehand. But not just during the event. Do things before the event, email campaigns, run competitions, whatever you can before the event to draw people to your event. You know, when we’re organizing events we have to fill the house, we have to get a lot of people in the door. The organizer can help but give the exhibitors the tools and the capabilities and the ideas, the strategy to also get people here, we need to do marketing before the event and then after the event, it’s about good follow up as well.
We want people to come back and have these repeat attendees. Another idea here is, we need to encourage our exhibitors to focus on the right priority. And that is again, revenue, all of the people who are exhibiting, they all report up to the CMO or the Chief Revenue officer or the CEO and what do they care about at the end of the day? They care about revenue. This is a typical list of what an exhibitor does when they prepare for a show. It’s obviously abbreviated. I build my booth, I get my collateral, I create my team. And then the last thing, what is it? The need for lead retrieval. So that should be priority number one. And if you have universal lead capture, the Google maps of the world, you already have that in your pocket. You go into the show, the event, it’s already ready, it’s there for you, you don’t have to download new stuff. You have to have a process as an exhibitor, a process to multiply those leads by three and a half times. Let’s imagine a picture of a person with boxes. He could carry these boxes, from point A to point Z. But it’s a lot better if you’re organized and you have a process, you systemize your lead generation. Every exhibitor should have a system. And how do you go about that?
1: Talk to your team
If you are an exhibit manager or coordinator or marketing person, rule number one, talk to your team. What data do we want to collect? Where do we want to send that data? Where should that information go? What system? What should our follow up be? You have to talk to your team. The fourth tactic is making sure we qualify our leads. But how many exhibitors collect leads? I got 100 leads, 200 leads. They’re probably really not leads. They’re just names. How many scans did you get? Who cares? You have to qualify the leads. There are good leads and there are bad leads, but how do you qualify them? You qualify them in two ways. Number one, objectively, in sales we talk about BANT, budget, authorization needs and timeline. But what’s important for you to objectively qualify somebody, ICP, your ideal client profile. If you’re an exhibitor, talk to your team. What does an ideal client look like to you? So that you can collect that information as an exhibitor on your forms, when you scan your leads.
2: Qualify leads subjectively
The second way to qualify is subjectively, if I had a conversation in my stand with somebody and I could tell their emotion is super high, they’re excited, they’re enthralled, I have to have this, this is amazing. I could put this in the form and this person might look like everybody else, but I’ve to subjectively qualify my leads. Is it urgent, cold, medium hot? What else can I do to subjectively qualify them? Well, these are a couple things you could do. Use Audio Notes The first thing you could do to subjectively qualify is record audio notes. You have a conversation, you step away, you hit the mic button and you record.
Listen to the inflection in my voice, the tone, when that lead gets passed off to my sales team then they can execute and close the deal. That’s really important. Schedule a Meeting The second thing you could do is schedule a meeting. How many times does a lead fall through the crack? if it’s urgent, schedule a meeting right there and then have everybody’s calendar, your sales team right on your phone. Great, you’re booked, you have a meeting next Tuesday, they get an invite, they show up, tactic number six. And this is more of a tip when you’re exhibiting or as an organizer, encourage your exhibitors, get there, get there early.
3: Take a picture of your team in your booth. Put it in your follow up email. That way when you follow up after the event, you’ve got your team, you become memorable, and make sure you know where that lead is going to go. Where are you going to put it in your system? Are you going to have a business development team doing follow up? Are you going to put it into your CRM? Where’s that going to go? The seventh tactic is important for exhibitors, which is to measure revenue.
Measure your ROI, your return on investment. How many times do we talk about, oh we exhibited. It was a great show. It was good. What really matters to the CEO? To the CMO? Your ROI. How much did you spend to get here? Your flights, your hotels, your meals? How much did the stand cost? Did you have to pay to speak? you have to measure how many leads you get? What was your cost per lead? What was your revenue? What’s your return on investment as a percentage? Can you report that? Can your exhibitors report that? I hope so. If they can’t, they need the right systems to do it. Here’s the fun part. Expand ways to capture leads, you might ask what’s the standard process? You go to a trade show. Oh, where’s the app? I download the app, I talk to exhibitors, and network with partners. And they’re like, yeah, I just figured out how to download the app. And it was like halfway through the day. But that shouldn’t happen. And that’s why you need to be ready.
Number one, equip every person on your team from the person setting up your booth to your CEO, everybody needs to be walking around, they need lead capture in their pocket for that business card, that badge, whatever you might need to capture.
4: Have a kiosk in your booth.
How many times do you think someone comes up? How many times does an attendee walk up and everybody’s busy, that’s good for you. But from the attendee’s point of view, you are just, oh, too busy, they’ll come back later. But the truth is, they’re not coming back. So set up a little kiosk, where you can capture leads. Another option could be touchless, such as a QR code. They could scan the QR code and the same capture form shows up on their phone. To compliment what we typically do. So we need to engage attendees, we need to bring them in our booths, using new ways to attract attention, such as digital activations. I’m not referring to physical activations, you’ve seen it at events, the spin the wheel, the whackamole, the Plano, etc. there are digital versions of all of those that you could easily brand and customize and use in your booth. It’s a way to pull people in. Hey, do you wanna play? Well, guess what? Come over here and try our digital activation, you could win 500 euros. I pulled you in. Now you came into my booth so let’s have a conversation.
It’s a lot better than just trying to sell them something right away. How can events engage stakeholders? Who are your stakeholders at an event? You’ve got your sponsors, you’ve got attendees, you’ve got exhibitors. These are all the stakeholders at an event. How can you gather more information about them? You could use surveys, which are now on your phone, it’s important to collect data, use all the resources you can. You have all these people in one room, ask them questions, learn from them and learn about them. Data is valuable because that allows you to market in the future and bring people back. You can deliver content in your sessions. There are easy ways to do that by showing a QR code. So that’s all part of your sessions. How can you make your sessions better in the exhibition? What can you do? Well, I mentioned in this article digital activations. You could spread them out across an event. You could have them in a booth, you could have them at the very front. People could take a photo on the wall, document it, make it memorable. Attending, networking.
People at events such as trade shows don’t necessarily know everyone so wouldn’t it be neat if there was a way where they could network with other attendees. maybe a little two truths, one lie, maybe some trivia, a scavenger hunt . Be the one that creates those opportunities to network attendees together.
5: Make it fun for people so they come back.
At some events they pass out a card and you have to go get stamps. But there are digital ways to do all of that. Have QR codes around an event. As an organizer, you’re asking people to take certain behaviors or in other words, guiding them to discover more during an event, giving them a goal to achieve. Oh, I want you to go visit over here in this area. You go there, get some points. When you do that, I want you to visit my flagship sponsor. You get some points for doing that. Give them premium lead capture. Make them happy. Don’t give them crappy lead capture. Make them happy. Try to gamify, Gamification is a general word, but has some competition. Make it fun, make it engaging. That’s what we can do for events as a whole.
Q & A:
1- Is there a defacto standard app like Google Maps for lead capturing?
Yes, there are companies that do provide universal lead captures such as us, Capello. The cool thing as an organizer is when you give that to the exhibitor, they can continue to use it everywhere they go. For example, we integrate with over a hundred different registration providers and so they could use our app, wherever they go, it’s universal.
2- How important is content marketing to the contact after the initial meeting?
It’s really important, but don’t just dump a bunch of content on an attendee. So whatever is important to the attendee, send them just that. But be very specific in your follow up. Content marketing is really important when you make it relevant. Listen to the people that come to your booth, what are their needs and respond to those needs appropriately and that’s why you need to have a universal lead capture app that can select the right content and send an immediate follow up. So make sure you can capture that information in the app and follow up.
3- When is the best time to respond to every single visitor after you’ve had a flood of visitors, after an event?
You should respond right away. And that’s because your competition is on the show floor. Rule number one in sales, make your follow up quick and again, immediately have a universal lead capture app that can respond. Send a picture of you in the booth that says for example “Thank you for visiting, we really appreciate it”. You’ll get there before your competitors get there. That’s rule number one. Number two when you do your personal follow up make sure you have a system that can follow up effectively, certainly the follow up shouldn’t take more than three to five days to send. But immediately is the best way to get your brand out there.
Captello is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.
To see how Captello’s growing library of digital activations (games), universal lead capture, and reward-based solutions can help your company generate more leads at your trade shows, contact us today!
