Generating leads at trade fairs, it sounds like something from the distant past. And indeed, due to the corona crisis, we have not had a single physical trade fair in the past 16 months. Also, online marketing activities have now established themselves strongly in B2B.
Fortunately, the outlook is becoming increasingly positive for meeting face-to-face at trade fairs again soon. Among the events planned for September are the Plastics Fair and the Dutch Metal Days, and preparations are in full swing for ESEF Maakindustrie in March '22. These leading trade fairs for the Dutch manufacturing industry are still crucial for relationship management. But also for increasing brand awareness and bringing in new leads, projects and customers. Lead generation at trade fairs remains a strong acquisition tool.
Lead generation in the manufacturing industry
In a nutshell, lead generation comprises all activities aimed at getting in touch with potential customers. In other words, a lead is a potential customer who is interested in your product or service.
Generating leads ("lead generation") in B2B nowadays is usually done with a mix of different marketing tools. Besides trade fairs, networking and telemarketing, email marketing, social media, SEO and content marketing are becoming increasingly important. This mix is also reflected in the infographic above (Outfunnel: "Lead Generation: a guide to lead generation strategies for 2021 and beyond", July '20). This lists the most common ways of lead generation in B2B .
This shows that trade shows and telemarketing as relatively classic methods for B2B are still important compared to the newer inbound marketing channels. Strange, by the way, is that of more than 20% of leads, the origin is not known!
Of course, there are differences between industries. But we too believe that especially in the Western European manufacturing industry, the classic "outbound" and "event marketing" methods, including trade fairs, are still very effective for generating leads.
You might think that at the moment there might be no reason at all to start looking for new customers. After all, the Dutch manufacturing industry has been recovering very strongly from the corona crisis for a few months now. Many companies are struggling to meet sharply increased demand or are facing staff shortages. So there is really no room at all for even more new customers....
Strategic considerations
But perhaps this is also a good time to start working on the quality and profitability of your customer base. Or to explore opportunities for your company and expertise in a new market. Two examples of strategic choices, where lead generation at trade fairs, if properly prepared, can help you execute.
However, this means that preparing for a trade fair goes beyond designing an appealing stand and formulating the message to be conveyed, because: who do you actually want to speak to?
Of course, not only the number of leads is decisive; actually, their quality is even more important. However, many lead generation methods are passive and reactive: you actually have limited control over who visits your website or exhibition stand. There is often a lot of "noise" resulting in bad leads.
Quality leads therefore require more grip on the lead generation process: actually, you want to reverse the process and proactively generate leads. In industries and countries of your choice, and well suited to your company and products!
Practical approach
But how do you tackle this in a practical way? A good approach for this starts by defining a few criteria that your leads must meet:
- In which market segment
- Geographical location
- Company size
- Which products
You can then identify relevant companies and associated decision-makers using web search, social media (LinkedIn) and industry associations.
When doing so, also carefully ask yourself which decision-maker you want to speak to; the head of engineering, purchasing or the managing director? Which decision-makers at the customer are most important to you and most involved in choosing new suppliers?
These qualified leads can then be approached with, for example, a personal invitation by name to visit your stand at the trade fair. Of course, you can try to approach decision-makers for a personal appointment. But with full diaries these days, this is very difficult. They often do make room to visit relevant trade fairs, which increases the chances of actually being able to speak to them.
Moreover, with the invitation itself, the follow-up call, the visit to your exhibition stand and, of course, the follow-up, you create a number of strong contact moments.
If you’d also like to be well prepared to generate new leads and win customers at trade fairs, and find out more about our approach, please visit our website.
