Lead acquisition at the trade fair is the decisive factor in ensuring that the fair pays off for the company. By offsetting the quantity and quality of the recorded leads and the budgetary expenditure for the trade fair, the success of the trade fair can ultimately be determined and qualitatively justified.
It is immediately apparent that there are mainly two levers with which success or the probability of being able to draw up a positive cost-benefit calculation at the end increases. On the one hand there are the expenses for the trade fair presence, on the other hand there are the costs for the lead acquisition at the trade fair and the follow-up of those leads in-house. Since the trade fair budget for your exhibition cost can often not be further optimized in order not to be lost in the masses due to the large number of exhibitors and competitors and the lack of marketing activities, we are going to address the second described cost factor of the lead acquisition at the trade fair and how this process can be made as efficient & cost-effective as possible through digitization.
Definition of lead acquisition
In order to have the most target-oriented data available for the follow-up of the discussion contacts in the sales department and to be able to make a strategic classification of the contacts at the trade fair, every company has to deal with the lead acquisition in the trade fair planning. It is important that not only the contact data is relevant, but of course the content of the conversation has to be documented in some way. For this purpose, there is the traditional and digital lead recording or capturing at the trade fair.
Traditional lead acquisition with paper-based questionnaire
Which company that regularly travels to trade fairs does not know the good old visit report? A document is defined as part of the corporate strategy in sales, which is filled out manually by the sales employee during the trade fair conversation. Unfortunately, this traditional method has some disadvantages, which I would like to briefly explain in the following paragraph. In summary, paper-based visit reports are no longer an alternative today:
- Additional organizational costs arise from the secure storage (data protection) and transport of the paper sheets to the company headquarters.
- Post-processing is time-consuming due to typing, costs due to faulty data transfer or illegible writing.
- Media disruption (information must be entered manually = typed in): from paper to CRM system or Excel file
- Data will only be available at a later point in time after the trade fair/field service assignment.
- Create a conservative image, "oldschool" company with old processes
Digital lead capturing at the fair
There are different levels of digital lead acquisition that can be implemented at the trade fair. The first stage is a business card scanner, which digitally captures and extracts the contact information of the conversation partners. The given information during a sales conversation itself still has to be written down manually during this step. In the second step, a digital lead report is used at the trade fair or in the field, which supports to capture the entire conversation information - without paper-based text recordings. This process is preferable due to the complete elimination of media disruption and the associated transaction costs that are less.
Lead acquisition with snapADDY VisitReport
During the development of the snapADDY VisitReport, we dealt extensively with the process of lead acquisition at the trade fair so that it can take place without media disruption and unnecessary processes. We have identified some critical benefits that make digital lead captions at the exhibition as efficient as possible:
- Offline availability: At many trade fairs or in the field, reception is poor or even non-existent. Therefore, the snapADDY VisitReport can be used completely offline. When the corresponding device (tablet or mobile phone) has a stable Internet connection again, the data is uploaded.
- CRM integration: In addition to exporting the recorded reports as Excel files, PDF files or to your own CRM via our API, we currently offer a standard integration to the CRM systems Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP C4C, Pipedrive and SugarCRM, in which the contact data is transferred directly into the CRM. In addition, the answers to the questions filled out digitally in the app are also stored in the CRM - associated with the respective contact.
- Comprehensive configuration options: In addition to various question types & question categories for each individual trade fair, you can also enter notes, drawings or attachments directly in digital form.
- Branding: In order to enable a thoroughly professional appearance, you can completely adapt the app to your own branding with logo and color scheme. The result is the impression of a company-owned app, which contributes to the professional overall impression of your trade fair appearance.
- Data protection: Due to the server location in Germany, the recorded data & connection to the CRM are securely stored. In addition, the use of snapADDY services is compliant with the European Basic Data Protection Regulation (EU-DSGVO).
- Support for different devices: For the snapADDY VisitReport there is no need to purchase a new device. We support iOS, Android and Microsoft devices.
- Analysis & evaluation possibilities: Of course, the costs & the success of the trade fair campaign must be evaluated. Therefore, the snapADDY VisitReport offers basic evaluation options for the most successful times and days of the lead acquisition at your exhibition.
In a detailed comparison of the advantages of the new digital methods for lead aqusition at the trade fair with those of a paper-based approach, the use of the new lead management systems can no longer be plausibly ruled out. If you would like to convince yourself of the advantages of our integrated solution in a conversation with a sales representative, please do not hesitate to contact us!