Capturing Trade Show Booth Leads

One of the most important objectives of any trade show display is to get leads. You don’t just want people to stop by and visit – although that is a very important first step. You also want to gather information about your booth visitors – their name, contact information, and some idea what they are interested in – so you can follow up later. You’ve spent a lot of time and money having a trade show exhibit design firm create a trade show booth for you, so you want to get the most value out of it.

Leads range in quality right from what we might call “garbage leads” who have no real interest in your product, all the way up to hot ones who are virtually ready to buy. In the end the hot ones are the ones you want. You don’t consider it fun to waste time and money contacting people who are not really interested in your product or service.

At the same time you will probably come to the conclusion that it is the luke warm to moderately hot leads that deserve the most time and energy. Hot leads are already locked into your product. Moderately hot ones need a bit of convincing and massaging. Luke warm ones need even more of your attention. The goal is to turn leads generated at your trade show exhibit display into sales, so you want to use your time in the most efficient way to accomplish this task.

What this makes clear is the importance of sorting and qualifying your leads before the trade show is over and well before the follow-up team gets hold of them. As anyone in the business should know the best time to do the qualifying is right at the initial point at which a lead is gathered – right at the trade show.

Perhaps the most effective way to qualify leads is to ask visitors a carefully planned series of questions to ascertain their real level of interest in your products or services.

The most common way to do this is to have booth visitors fill out a simple “Yes I am interested” form. This could be either a paper or an online form where they give you some details of why they are at your trade show booth, and what they are interested in.

Just asking them to put something down will be a deterrent to many trade show surfers. If you are afraid of scaring some potential leads away, then just be sure to make your qualifying system as simple as possible. Don’t ask them to enter unimportant information that they don’t have at their finger tips – for example, the exact street address or phone numbers of their office. While this may be important information for the future, as long as you get their phone number, email address – depending on how you intend to follow up – and some idea of what they are interested in, you can fill in the blanks later.

For more trade show marketing tips, visit this helpful trade show news blog. It contains lots of information about trade show booth design alternatives, portable trade show booths, trade show booth rentals, and much more.