8 Preventable Trade Show Lead Retrieval Mistakes

trade show lead retrieval 8 common mistakes to prevent

It’s unfortunately far too easy to make mistakes with trade show lead retrieval.

That’s because trade show lead retrieval systems and booth staffers are often different from show to show, and because it’s not something you manage every day.

But because trade shows leads are some of the most valuable sales and marketing investments your company makes, it’s so worth your time to prevent making these mistakes.

Here are 8 preventable trade show lead retrieval mistakes we’ve seen our trade show game clients make.  We’ve even made some of these mistakes ourselves (fortunately not anymore)!

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20 Reasons Why You Need A Tradeshow Game

17 Reasons Why You Need A Trade Show Game

It seems like such a little thing, adding a tradeshow game to your booth.  Just an idea you are considering to make your trade shows a little better.

Yet, adding a tradeshow game to your booth can make a surprisingly huge positive impact to your company’s booth traffic, booth staffers’ success, company brand image, lead counts, lead data gathered, sales generated, R.O.I. — and much more.

So if you’ve ever asked yourself, “Why do I need a tradeshow game?”, here are 20 reasons a tradeshow game will make your trade show program vastly better:

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How To Write Effective Qualifying Questions For Your Trade Show App

trade show app questions

More and more exhibitors are ditching paper and instead of using a trade show app to capture lead data from their in-booth conversations.

Many shows provide a lead retrieval app that allows exhibitors to scan a badge and capture data digitally. Some exhibitors are going a step further and are purchasing lead capture software that they can use across many shows.

There are advantages to using a trade show app to save time entering and exporting data. However, too many exhibitors fail to go one more crucial step and include valuable qualifying questions in their digital lead capture.

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4 Ways To Boost Your Trade Show Giveaways Impact With Our Virtual Prize Wheel Game

SPIN TO WIN Virtual Prize Wheel built into trade show exhibit

Chances are you’ve used trade show giveaways to drive more booth traffic.  It’s a time-honored tactic that gets attention and lets attendees go home with a souvenir to remember you by.

But your giveaways can do even more to help increase your trade show results.  You can boost their marketing impact in 4 powerful ways, by combining your giveaways with our Virtual Prize Wheel.

Here’s how our Virtual Prize Wheel adds impact to your trade show giveaways:

1. Make your trade show giveaways more exciting to attract more visitors

When you show a colorful prize wheel on a big flat screen monitor, complete with photos of your big prize, it clearly signals to attendees that there’s a fun and beneficial reason to visit your booth.  Attendees get more excited to try to win a prize – even if it’s the same giveaways you would have given them anyhow!  And attendees love to smash the big button that drives the prize wheel on the screen.  As people spin to win, their enthusiasm and squeals attract attention from other attendees.  Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd!

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How To Follow Up On Trade Show Leads Faster

faster trade show lead follow-up

Research suggests that only 18% of trade show leads are followed up after a show. Further, hot leads and warm leads turn cold the longer you take to follow up with those leads.

If you are B2B exhibitor – then you are probably doing the following:

  • Investing a sizable portion of your marketing budget on trade shows
  • Measuring your success based on leads captured and sales closed

Time is money, my friend. Speed is the name of the game. If you don’t follow up on your trade show leads fast, your chances of winning the sale plummet drastically. According to InsideSales.com, 35–50% of sales go to the vendor that responds to leads first!

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Fun Audience Engagement With A Virtual Prize Wheel

5 Uses At Events For Virtual Prize Wheel

Note:  This is the latest post in our series of audience engagement posts.

One of the challenges of corporate events is to break out of the cycle of sameness.  A series of speeches, presentations, panel discussions and an uninspired trade show can have a hypnotic effect on attendees.

So why not shake things up a little and create some fun, energetic activity with a Virtual Prize Wheel? Here are 5 ways to use a Virtual Prize Wheel for audience engagement at corporate events:

1. Create a Name Wheel for Your Prize Drawing

Instead of drawing a name out of a hat and announcing the winner on stage, use a Spin to Win Virtual Prize wheel to take things to a howl new level.  Instead of putting prizes on the prize wheel, put drawing entrants on it.  Then, as the wheel spins the crowd excitedly watches to see whose name pops up – is it their name, or one of their friends? Finally, as the wheel gets close to stopping it slows down increasing the tension and excitement.

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Capture Lost Overflow Trade Show Leads With Our Digital Fishbowl

Digital Fishbowl - great for overflow trade show booth traffic

Let me tell you a story about how our Digital Fishbowl saved us from losing potentially lost trade show leads during the busiest times in our own trade show booth. And why you should, therefore, consider adding one or more Digital Fishbowls to your own booths at your busiest shows, too.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: Day 1 at EXHIBITORLIVE 2018. 

Within less than an hour of the start of the EXHIBITORLIVE 2018 show, we had 13 visitors at the same time in our 10 x 20 booth!  Hooray!  Just one problem — we only had 4 staffers to talk to them all!

It was awesome to have so many interested visitors, but agonizing to see interested prospects ready to walk away.  Especially when you know (thanks to Exhibit Surveys) that the average cost per trade show lead is $283 each!

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REGIONAL SHOWS: Fix Broken Lead Management and Measurement at Regional Trade Shows

Broken Regional Trade Show Lead Capture Lead Management ROI Measurement

When you manage a large trade show program with 20, 50, 70, even over 100 shows, your regional trade shows pose several unique and significant problems – problems our Digital Fishbowl game solves:

Regional trade shows broken lead capture lead management ROI measurement

Let’s dive deeper into each of these regional trade show problems that the SocialPoint Digital Fishbowl game solves.

Regional Show Challenges & Digital Fishbowl Solutions         

1st Challenge: Field Sales Reps Not Forwarding Leads

When you “volunteer” your remote field sales reps to staff your booth at regional shows, they reluctantly participate.  Hey, it’s not really their job, but for most companies, their sales reps are their best choice for engaging with local attendees.  It’s just that those salespeople will often not have your sense of urgency to get any leads they take back to you.

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Real-Time Analytics: Measure, See and Report the Success of Your Trade Shows and Meetings

Trade show and event game analytics reports in real time

Analytics to the rescue!

Now there’s no more guessing how well your trade show or meeting performed.  With our real-time analytics and downloadable data exports, you’ll know how well your interactive trade show game and audience response app did, during and after the event.

With our analytics you’ll be able to:

  • Track your progress in real time with our dashboard reports
  • Identify opportunities for improvement and celebrate your success
  • Download the data into excel for further analysis or loading into your CRM

Here’s a guide to our built-in, real-time analytics and reports you’ll get with SocialPoint:

Analytics included with SocialPoint’s Interactive Trade Show Games

Challenge Bar Trivia Analytics Dashboard

Analytics - Trade Show Trivia Game Dashboard

What it tracks:

Our Challenge Bar Trivia game includes a wealth of stats and charts that report in real time key metrics about attendee participation in your game:

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Determine Your Best SocialPoint Trade Show Game Choices By Answering These Two Questions

Determine Your Best SocialPoint Trade Show Game Choice By Answering These Two Questions

When we talk with potential clients for our interactive trade show games, almost every conversation starts with how they want to increase booth traffic and get people engaged with their booth staffers.  And that’s awesome, as all our games can help with those worthwhile goals.

And while many clients already know which SocialPoint trade show game they want to implement, some are unsure which of our games they will get the best value and fit with their specific needs and situation.

After hundreds of conversations, we’ve discovered that these two questions best help answer the “which trade how game to choose?” question best:
  1. How sophisticated are you attendees and booth staffers?
  2. What size is your trade show booth?
The overlap of these two questions produce 4 possible (and common!) scenarios:
  1. Low sophistication attendees/booth staff, smaller/inline booth
  2. High sophistication attendees/booth staff, smaller/inline booth
  3. Low sophistication attendees/booth staff, larger/island booth
  4. High sophistication attendees/booth staff, larger/island booth

You can get a sense of which trade show game is right for you by either referring to the colorful chart shown above, or by reading the choices outlined below.  I’ll first share a summary table, and then give the explanation for each scenario.

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