The Importance of Tradeshow Follow-up
What’s the point of spending money to attend a tradeshow if you don’t intend to follow-up on your leads and generate new business for your staffing firm? When promoting your services, announcing a new office location, or expanding your target audience, tradeshows provide staffing firms with access to a large group of potential clients and candidates. Exhibiting at a tradeshow is a great way to interact one-on-one with your target audience and make connections. In order to realize a return on your marketing investment, you must generate leads and create new relationships. When looking to fill your talent pool or contract new clients, you must work with your team to ensure staffing firm tradeshow follow-up.
Design Your Follow-Up Campaign
Before your exhibit booth staff members even leave the office and head for the airport, you must create a communication plan that itemizes and prioritizes your staffing firm tradeshow follow-up. Your campaign needs to set goals for lead nurturing and detail your approach for reaching out to attendees after the tradeshow has ended. As with any lead generation effort, your staffing firm must identify ways to initiate a conversation and engage with potential clients and candidates. Qualify leads by grouping them into categories that tie into your nurturing plan. If you are unsure how to group some individuals, send out a series of email messages inviting prospects to sign up for your newsletter or to download informational content from your website. Reassign categories based on who responds to your campaign, and work with your team to guarantee timely follow-up.
Some Leads Deserve High Priority
Hot leads, or those that you have identified as having the greatest potential of being converted into new business for your staffing firm, demand your immediate attention. Keep in mind that leads are extremely time sensitive. Promptly assign them to either a sales or recruiting member, depending on whether they are a potential client or candidate. Instruct your team to reach out and initiate a conversation within the first 2 or 3 days after the tradeshow. Send personalized invites to connect on LinkedIn and remind leads how you met in order to grab their attention.
Personalize Your Approach
Attendees may have visited hundreds of exhibit booths, so it is important to personalize your staffing firm tradeshow follow-up campaign as much as possible. Never use a generic email message and be sure to mention the name of the tradeshow in the subject line. Highlight a specific call-to-action and present them with tangible ways to engage with your staffing firm. Include a personal point of contact at your staffing firm, complete with a name and direct phone line, in order to promote interaction. Give them examples of how your staffing firm is prepared to meet their needs and solve their current problems. Study your website analytics to determine whether your message is working, and make adjustments as necessary.
Show Restraint
Include a small photo of your tradeshow booth in your initial email to refresh their memories and send individualized emails to thank those who actually visited your booth. Get right to the point by crafting brief emails, and make sure that every message is designed to initiate a specific action. Regardless of whether your staffing firm tradeshow follow-up plan includes emails, connecting via social media, or direct phone calls, the number one rule is not to overdo it. Nothing turns a potential client or candidate off more than being pestered and receiving emails without substance. In every contact, be sure to offer relevant content that your target audience is going to perceive as useful and strictly adhere to a campaign calendar to ensure that you are not inundating attendees with too many emails.
Options Are Good
While marketing best practices lean toward communications with a singular focus and a specific offer, tradeshow follow-up communications are the exceptions to the rule. Chances are that if you only offer one whitepaper or a link to a demo of a particular service, you are not going to grab everyone’s attention. Provide several options that are sure to appeal to a wide range of prospective clients and candidates in order to increase your chances of getting responses. Layout the touch points that you are going to highlight in each wave of your follow-up campaign so that they read as a sequential conversation that tells the story of our staffing firm. Don’t forget to always track your results so that you are able to calculate the return on your investment and determine whether exhibiting at the next tradeshow makes sense for your staffing firm.
Key Takeaways for the Importance of Tradeshow Follow-up:
- Design a follow-up campaign that clearly lays out the steps you are going to take after the tradeshow
- Prioritize hot leads and ensure that they receive immediate follow-up
- Personalize your message and never send out generic emails to the masses
- Adhere to a campaign calendar and be sure not to overdo the number of communications
- Provide several options that are sure to appeal to a wide range of prospects
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.