Trade fairs as marketing strategy
Trade fairs and events, national or international, are fundamental channels and opportunities because they bring together companies, customers and prospects in the same physical space. These events, that are finally going back to being “in presence”, are for companies an occasion to get more exposure and to establish connections.
Participation in trade fairs events should be part of any marketing strategy. This, in fact, allows to increase the awareness of a brand, to propose new ideas and solutions, but also to generate qualified leads and establish relationships with customers, partners and even with competitors.
The data of potential customers collected during the fair must be well managed to achieve a path that leads up to the conversion into customers and direct sale, in order to have an economic return on the investment made for participation in the fair.
From human memory to CRM and Artificial Intelligence
Until a few years ago, the collection of data and informations was done almost exclusively by memory and by hand on paper blocks, which were then set aside for such a long period of time that the loss of customers was an inevitable consequence. Over time we moved from excel files to CRM (Customer Relationship Management), able to record all the exchanges and relationships that take place between companies and their customers (personal data, notes, emails and phone calls, visits to the site, requests for a quote issued…).
Today, thanks to new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence it is possible to collect leads at trade fairs in a few minutes, processing requests directly to the company’s offices almost in real time, even during the fair itself.
How AI can be integrated into trade fairs
Many people always attend fairs, many business cards circulate and many contacts take place at the stands: in short, in a few days a huge potential of commercial negotiations is created.
In most cases, what makes the difference between a potential negotiation and a signed contract is the contact time and management of the negotiation. For example, if a lead is contacted in the first 5 minutes, the chances of qualifying it and getting to a conversion increase by 21 times more than a contact made after 30 minutes.
In lead generation campaigns within the trade fairs, Artificial Intelligence is a useful tool for companies to intercept and convert interested users into customers. Using it means deepening the knowledge of the participants based on their specific interests, but also making the event much more personalized.
For this reason, we have created a package of algorithms specifically for trade fairs. Here are the 3 algorithms used in the package to integrate AI in trade fairs.
Scan business cards using OCR algorithms
Using OCR algorithms (Optical Character Recognition), it is possible to scan the business cards of trade fair participants. In this way, the contact information of potential customers can be retrieved automatically and optimized. The data obtained are thus inserted directly into the CRM.
On the opposite, if done manually, information must be found by browsing through all the business cards obtained during the fair. Only later, and always through a boring and repetitive work, the information is sorted and classified, and potential customers contacted. If this happens after days, if not weeks, the risk of losing customers is real (the speed with which a lead is contacted is fundamental, we talked about it in this article).
Business cards are scanned in seconds simply using the smartphone, and the captured data are automatically entered directly into the CRM (whatever it is). This process allows to be more efficient and faster, eliminating all that back-office work after the fair.
Classify and enrich personal data with Lead Enrichment
The real key to success is knowing how to identify the ideal customer of your company. Trade fair visitors are often potential target customers who attend these events to learn about new proposals, create relationships and expand their business opportunities.
Companies participating in trade fairs must further qualify their acquired data to turn contacts into real business opportunities. Contacts should therefore be managed to create a direct sales path.
Thanks to Lead Enrichment algorithms, the trade fair participants’ data generated in the CRM are immediately enriched with information and profiled through calls to external databases.
This process saves that time spent on repetitive and tedious tasks to the benefit of value-added tasks. Companies can thus meet customers, trying to understand the needs that prompted him to get in touch with the company during the fair.
Classify and assign leads in an automated way
Thanks to the classification, a lead is catalogued and assigned according to various demographic and behavioral factors, establishing which of these are the most inclined to purchase. If performed correctly, the classification of leads saves time and money as it helps to focus on “hot” customers.
Until a few years ago, leads were classified manually. This operation required an accurate search of target customers and then a manual insertion of the information, customer by customer.
With the lead classification algorithms, you can assign to your business the perfect lead for them through different criteria and classification keys. It thus becomes much easier and faster to assign opportunities or leads based on their closing possibilities.
To learn more and increase up to 90% lead conversions from trade fairs, download the business case and discover the package of algorithms that we have created specifically for trade fairs.
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