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where marketing generates demand , captures it in the form of leads and sales closes the deals .
“ Marketing ’ s job needs to be to generate demand which turns into leads . Many exhibition businesses continue to fish in the same pond every year by making email their main ( sometimes sole ) marketing channel . Or they wait for people looking for them and then try to capture demand ( meaning leads ) via SEO , SEM or retargeting . This works for a while , but the email database will fatigue pretty quickly ,” she says .
“ Who hasn ’ t been in the feared ‘ lead meeting ’ where you discuss additional campaigns you can run to increase leads . And how often have these meetings and new campaigns resulted in anything ?”
“ Marketing ’ s job needs be to create awareness and demand from people that are not currently looking for you – through year-round campaigns . Exhibitions businesses still tend to run their campaigns in twelve
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months show cycles that abruptly come to an end . We need to change this and talk to our potential customers all year round . Not about the product but showcasing our expertise in the field through content . That ’ s demand generation which will lead to leads and revenue , although not overnight .”
“ Any business no matter the size can do this – the framework is always the same ”
Understanding your audience Careful segmentation and targeting is key when generating demand and leads .
“ Everything you do needs to be fully tailored to your audience . Build marketing personas – these will inform your channels and messaging and will deliver you a higher engagement rate . A good customer profile needs to include the kind of jobs they need to get done , their pain points and what delights them .”
“ Many promotional emails to potential sponsors and exhibitors I see list general benefits of taking part in
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the event – from raising brand awareness , to meeting their clients and prospects all in one place . We need to switch to focus on unique messaging , highlighting the unique benefits of attending . If ‘ what ’ s in it for me ’ is clear , inbound leads will come .”
Improving conversion rates Once demand and leads are generated , where should exhibition organisers start to improve their conversion rates ?
First of all , with tracking , says Hausmann . But tracking needs to be done regularly and repeatedly and analysed thoroughly she adds .
“ Step one , find out what your current conversion rate is . Step two , review the end-to-end journey from the lead coming in to it being converted . What channels do you use ? How do you capture leads , how do you pass them on to sales ? How do they follow the lead up ? What happens after it is disqualified ? Look at the entire picture and then set some goals and start to test and tweak the approach .
“ A few years ago , the business I was working with improved their conversion rate within two years from 8 % to 15 %. This meant millions of pounds more business and this was done jointly by sales and marketing as teamwork , because it doesn ’ t work in a silo .”
Once the entire journey
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is mapped , you will know which levers to pull should conversion rates decline . This could be driven through your campaigns , targeting , copy , sales follow-up or also product demand . “ It could be so many different reasons . If it was down , it doesn ’ t mean you have a bad lead , it could be the hand-over and follow up between marketing and sales .”
She gives an example of how studying the whole process can lead to insights that can make a significant difference .
“ We have done lots of analysis on conversion rate over time and discovered that the conversion rate drops from 18 % to 4 % if the lead hasn ’ t been followed up within four days . This information then empowered the sales leadership to set KPIs to follow up on leads within 24 hours .”
Setting lead targets “ Marketing lead targets and sales targets shouldn ’ t be unrelated . Apply an average conversion rate to your new business revenue target to get to your lead target . From my experience , the lead-to-sale conversion rate for stand and sponsorship leads should be between 8 % to 20 % - but this is very much dependent on in the industry and product .
“ I highly recommend setting your own benchmarks here and then work on improving it every year .”
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Summer — 27 |