Optimizing Event Success: Balancing the Needs of Marketing, Sales, and Consumers

Marketing, sales, and consumers all have different objectives when attending events. Marketing people need to justify the event to management and find top-of-funnel leads. Sales want qualified leads, and consumers want to attend events and not receive many unwanted emails.

So, how can you collect information from event attendees that can satisfy the needs of all three groups?

Here are some tips:

Refine problem-solution match: There needs to be a better refinement of problem-solution match along with a vetting of the person behind the company that may solve their problem. This can be achieved by organizing a dedicated round table sponsored by a vendor, addressing a particular pain point that clients may face. To add value, a white paper can be written following the round table discussion, involving the community in problem-solving and identifying viable opportunities for sponsors.

Align marketing and sales objectives: Marketing and sales teams need to be aligned on objectives to ensure that the events chosen have the right target audience registering and attending. This can be done by looking at past events and ROI and deciding whether to do it again or not.

Collect qualified leads: The biggest problem with events is that almost nobody is qualifying leads at the booth. Instead, Leadership gives the order to scan every person there because "what the hell we can always nurture them." This same approach encourages the wrong behavior at events, and that is why the second the team members at the booth see someone so much as look in their direction, they attack with "can I scan?" To avoid this, the booth staff should qualify leads by having conversations with attendees and determining if they are a good fit before scanning their badge.

Customize outreach: Big shows typically offer scanners that allow for custom fields. You can create a "qualification" question with options that look like: Hot (expressed immediate need for our product/wants a meeting), Medium (potentially a good fit for our product - but did not explicitly ask for a meeting), and Cold/Blank - not a fit. This will enable booth staff to fill in this field on every scan and tailor the outreach accordingly.

Host pre and post-event activities: To get interaction, you can host pre-event activities such as posing questions that may be of interest to the attendees, then have each vendor provide their take on an answer (before the event). Attendees can then decide whom to talk to based on their relevance to them. After the event, you can ask everyone if they’d like to do a virtual recap. People can drop whenever they want. This will help to keep attendees engaged and also serve as a grass roots marketing strategy.

Provide value to sponsors and consumers: The event organizers should ask themselves, "How can I provide value to the sponsors and consumers so that my event is talked about, even post-event? What can I do to ensure people will sponsor again?" They can provide incentives for attendees to complete a short survey or opt-in for a WhatsApp/Telegram channel for the show only and update on things as they are happening in real-time.

In conclusion, collecting information from event attendees that can satisfy the needs of marketing, sales, and consumers is not an easy task. However, aligning marketing and sales objectives, collecting qualified leads, customizing outreach, and providing value to sponsors and consumers can help to make events successful and create raving fans. By following these tips, you can achieve better results from your events and improve your lead-generation efforts.

See at the next conference!