The Tradeshow is Over – Let the Follow Up BeginThe lights are off! Your team gave their best at your tradeshow booth and now is the time to get the most out of your tradeshow attendance. Tradeshows provide the unique opportunity to meet and interact in person with people who are interested in the services you offer. They are the best place to initiate connections and create new relationships. However, all the time and effort you put into this goal will go in vain if you do not capitalize on the leads you generate. The only way to realize a return on your marketing investment is having a staffing firm tradeshow follow-up plan in place. Take a look at some tips on how to go about it.

Make the Rules
In order to make sure that no mistakes take place resulting in leads getting overlooked or falling through the cracks, you have to put a staffing firm tradeshow follow-up strategy in place. And you need to do that way before your team gets on the tradeshow floor. Come together with both your booth staff and your sales team and determine ways to engage with leads on the site as well as the timeline of reaching out to attendees after the tradeshow has ended. Remember that your lead generation efforts are going to be fruitless without proper lead nurturing, so do not leave room for misconceptions when setting your follow-up rules.

Set Priorities
An important point to keep in mind when it comes to your staffing firm tradeshow follow-up plan is that lead nurturing is extremely time sensitive. With that being said, you need to make sure that the prospects with a greater likelihood of turning into business have to be followed-up sooner rather than later. Use software at your booth to capture and sort leads based on their weight and integrate your CRM software in order to allow for a seamless delivery of information to your sales and recruiting staff members who are back in the office. This way your team will set the right priorities and reach out to hot leads in a timely manner.

Give it a Personal Touch
One thing that really turns off attendees of tradeshows is receiving multiple and generic emails from exhibitors in the days or weeks following an event. If this is the plan you have to reconvene with your leads, then do not expect much out of it. Remember that attendees want to get the most out of their presence at an event, so chances are that your booth is not going to be the only one they visit. In order to remind them about your booth discussion and the services you offer, you have to personalize your staffing firm tradeshow follow-up campaign. In your initial emails, include the name of the tradeshow as well as details of what you talked about when you interacted with them as a way to refresh their memory and initiate engagement.

Don’t Overdo It
Regardless of the way you choose to reach out to the leads you generated at the latest tradeshow, you should always remember one thing. Too much reaching out is going to backfire. Your goal is to nurture your prospects and not turn them away, so you need to be careful with the intensity of your communication. Carve out a staffing firm tradeshow follow-up plan that includes the sharing of valuable and interesting content that your leads find useful and gives them the initiative to engage with you. Build a communication calendar to make sure that your team is not overdoing with emails that end up annoying your leads.

Track Your Efforts
This one is easy. In order to know whether your staffing firm tradeshow follow-up pays off, you need to follow-up with it! For example, when you reached out to your leads using an email campaign or a direct mail campaign, what were the results you had? Did your prospects take any action after you contacted them and did they follow the steps you anticipated? How many of them reacted to your call-to-action buttons? The more you know about the effectiveness of your follow-up, the more you can improve it and more conversion of leads to new business you experience. Keep track of your lead nurturing initiatives.

S.J.Hemley MarketingKey Takeaways for The Tradeshow is Over – Let the Follow Up Begin:

  1. Set the rules of your follow-up plan and ensure everyone understands them
  2. Make sure that your team reaches out to leads in a timely manner
  3. Give your follow-up plan a personal touch
  4. Avoid overdoing it with your outreach communication
  5. Keep track of your lead nurturing initiatives

About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.