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Tips For Increasing Your VTS Booth Lead Generation and ROI
J. Michael Applegate
President, ProAccess
June 2000
The key to overall VTS booth effectiveness is understanding the many unique features your booth offers and putting them to work for you. When putting together your VTS marketing and sales strategies keep in
mind:
- Any interaction you have will be from a qualified prospect — not a suspect or unqualified prospect.
- Your VTS Booth should be an integral part of your sales process and not used as just a marketing tool. Remember that your VTS Booth trade show presence can sell for you in every
geographical market, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
- Your VTS Booth should be incorporated within your company’s trade show and trade show follow -up programs.
- With current travel restrictions and the economy’s uncertain outlook, your VTS Booth offers a cost-effective alternative for those visitors who will be unable to attend
the physical trade show.
- Link popularity is an important metric used to affect search return ranking by the major search engines. Search return ranking defines how high your company comes up in a
listing when a search engine visitor enters key words in a search engine. Your VTS Booth is announced to over 100 major search engines and directories. Since it is also linked to your company’s Web site as well as the Web sites of
CUNA and a variety of other companies, a higher return ranking will be achieved for your company’s Web site every time your VTS Booth is announced.
Here are some things you can do to increase the VTS lead generation from your booth:
- Put a lead management process in place to make sure that all leads from your VTS Booth are followed up on with the same thoroughness that you follow up on leads obtained from
your physical trade show participation.
- It has been widely known for years in the trade show industry that visitors make up their minds in advance as to which booths they will visit in an upcoming physical show. Use
your VTS Booth to get people excited about visiting your booth at an upcoming physical show and get on their short list of “must visit” booths.
- At your physical trade show booth and in all your booth collateral, make sure you include your VTS Booth link and inform your visitors of the benefits they can obtain by
visiting your VTS Booth after the physical show.
- After a physical trade show, use your VTS Booth to follow up with visitors you’ve interacted with at your physical tradeshow booth.
- Integrate an order form and offer a special show discount or product “try and buy.”
- Visitors to a physical trade show do not have time to get truly educated about the features of your products and services. Use your VTS Booth to provide them with that important
information prior to their visiting your physical trade show booth. Use your brief physical show time with them to establish credibility, answer objections and possibly do a trial close.
- Make sure you encourage a subsequent visit to your VTS Booth, where a follow-up opportunity exists to close the sale or to initiate another closing interaction between your now
highlyqualified prospect and your sales staff.
- Offer an additional downloadable document or include a special offer that requires the prospect to complete the “More Information” form in order to receive it.
- Use your VTS Booth as a means of promoting the benefits and customer community opportunities available within your company’s Web site.
In a recent Tradeshow Week online poll, more than half of the exhibitors responding thought that online trade shows were a good complement to physical trade shows. But like everything else in life, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. Using your VTS booth as an integral element in your sales and marketing mix, and incorporating an actionable “call to action” in your booth, can help you increase your sales leads, and in turn, increase your VTS booth ROI.
If you have any questions about this article, or would like more information about virtual trade shows, contact Mike at  .
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