How to gain leads at a conference

Here are a few quick tips on how to market yourself at conferences.

Attract Attention

Make your stand engaging. Hire someone to be an entertainer on your stand. Make sure your stand is interactive!

Creating a competition is a good way to build leads, but there is limited brand building and emotional engagement. A slightly better way would be to tell them to either fill out a form, or write on a business card, “In 25 words or less tell us why our product is amazing..” or something to that effect. Engage the people around you by asking them to become involved with your company. Don’t just let them throw their business card in a bin.

Engage the Audience

Depending on your budget, you could have a “skin health” expert at the stand, giving people free 10 minute facials. Make the entertainment relative to your product or service. If your brand is a fun brand, make the stand fun as well. In order for them to get a head massage, or whatever the attraction is, the should need to book a meeting with you later in the week, or some other similar valuable business goal.

Always follow up

Follow up should always be a phone call. In the least you should email them the next day saying you will call them later in the week. If this is a lot of work, get a temp in to arrange the meetings for you. Face to face meetings trumps anything else ten fold.

To track follow ups, good old spreadsheets are probably the “best way” as they are easily manipulated and you can sort quickly through them. Otherwise most CRM systems should have a leads section you can put them in to.