Why are Virtual Displays The Best Way To Generate Leads?

If you look online to see how much you should spend on marketing, you’ll find a lot of competing advice. Some say that you should spend around 1-4% of your revenue on advertising depending on what industry you’re in. Others will tell you that for new companies, you should invest 12-20% into advertising.

The truth is that this number is somewhat arbitrary, especially if you’re considering trade shows and virtual displays. Every business is different, and there are too many variables to give you a specific percentage. In reality, the real question to ask yourself is how you can maximize the return on investment (ROI) you’ll get from your advertising efforts.

Coronavirus has had a dramatic impact on the trade show industry though, with most events canceled. Even the events that do happen have seen declining attendance as people attempt to protect themselves during the pandemic.

The good news is that your business can still thrive during these uncertain times. While in-person events have taken a hit, there are still plenty of virtual displays that allow businesses to market themselves to a wide audience. You can even create custom tradeshow booths for digital shows.

Read on as we discuss why virtual displays are the best way to generate leads and help you maintain your marketing goals.

Business on a Global Scale

Whether you’re a small manufacturing company or a large marketing corporation, you can benefit from the globalization of the business world. Companies now are more willing to do business with partners overseas because advances in technology and transportation have made it affordable and practical.

During a virtual display event, you can attract and even target these global partners to expand your business. You could find producers overseas that can help you lower production costs or that can help you expand into a new market. You could also be the producer that helps an overseas company enter into the American market.

The number one priority for any company is to provide relief for other people’s pain points, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Virtual displays allow you to not only connect with overseas businesses but to specifically market to them.

Expand Your Audience

Virtual displays aren’t only attended by people that would normally go to tradeshows, but they’re also attended by those that would rather do business online. These people represent a new audience to reach, and with the right strategy you can stand out to them.

One of the beautiful things about virtual displays is that people seek out certain types of companies. Sure, at a physical tradeshow you can lure people in with goodie bags and drinks, but how many people stop by stands simply to get those things? At a virtual display, people looking at your display have an interest in what you’re selling.

Virtual Displays Offer A Higher Conversion Rate

Since the people viewing your display are already interested in what you’re selling, they’re more likely to follow through and use your services.

When you market yourself and your business at these online events, you’re able to cut through the clutter and focus on the attendees that are more likely to use your service. You won’t have to worry about missing an opportunity with an enthusiastic buyer because you’re focused on chasing lukewarm leads.

Your online display also allows attendees to take more time to get to know you. You can answer more questions in an online format and immediately get people’s emails and contact information. You can follow up immediately with emails to provide more information, move the lead through your sales funnel, and remain fresh in their mind.

You can also create powerful landing pages to send leads too on the spot instead of having them wait until after the conference. Since your lead is already at their computer, you have new tools at your disposal to convert them on the spot before they ever make it to your competitor’s display.

Virtual Displays Save You Money

There are two reasons some people don’t go to tradeshows as often as they should. The first is the price of admission. Many buyers looking for a company to work with don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for attendance.

The other major reason is travel. Over half of those that attend trade shows say that they travel over 400 miles from their home. The amount of travel required to attend trade shows does three things. First, it limits the number of shows that people can attend. Many buyers can only go to one or two shows a year, so if you aren’t at those shows, you’ll never get a chance to sell to them.

Second, the amount of travel time stops many small and medium-sized businesses from attending trade shows at all. These businesses are often the ones that could benefit the most from services and products displayed at trade shows, but they aren’t able to take advantage of the opportunity.

Third, traveling to events costs a lot of money, which in turn makes some smaller businesses spend less once they arrive. If you’re selling a premium service, this can impact your ability to close on leads.

Virtual shows allow buyers to attend more events throughout the year, increases the number of small and medium businesses present, and encourages more spending because of lower costs. It’s a win for you and for potential customers.

You Can Build Stronger Relationships

One of the problems with only attending one or two shows a year is that if you meet a lead and it goes cold, you may not have the opportunity for more face time with that client for another year.

With virtual events, there’s a good chance that leads from previous events will attend multiple online shows. Since you can also attend more shows due to lower costs, you’re able to build stronger relationships with these potential clients.

You can take the time to get to know prospective clients, develop a repertoire with them, and personalize a pitch at the next show you see them if the lead goes cold. You don’t have to deal with long-shot elevator pitches when you can build a long-term relationship with them.

If you know that clients will be at several online events where you’ll present, you don’t have to worry about closing the deal right away. You can be patient and lead them through your sales funnel instead of worrying about turning them off by hard-selling them.

Save Money On Displays

The goal at a physical trade show is to generate attention to get more leads. This ends up creating a competition of sorts between businesses to see who can create the most eye-catching display.

These custom tradeshow booths are great for visitors, as they get to see cool designs and walk away with hundreds of dollars in swag. For businesses, custom tradeshow booths can set them back thousands of dollars.

Virtual displays are more about substance and don’t need to flash to catch people’s eyes. Since everything is online, you’ll want to focus on the quality of information presented because attendees will most likely visit each booth in their niche.

You’ll likely choose from a set of themes set up by the trade show sponsors and then customize from there. You can set up videos, graphics, landing pages, and display your products and services without having to pay for the physical stand. You save money on materials, labor, and transporting your stand.

How To Attract Potential Leads To Your Virtual Tradeshow Exhibit

It might seem difficult to get people excited about a virtual display, but there are certain things you can do to attract and convert leads during an online virtual display. In some ways, virtual tradeshows are better than in-person events when it comes to lead generation!

Earlier, we talked about marketing budgets and how the key to a company’s success is getting the best return on the amount spent. Let’s discuss how to improve your ROI and improve your chances of getting hot leads from your online exhibit booth.

Think Like A Digital Marketer

Digital marketers specialize in getting online customers to convert. They know how online users think and act. Since your virtual display is online, it’s beneficial to think like a digital marketer and follow some of their best practices when planning your tradeshow marketing strategy.

Keep It Simple and Easy To Browse

First, you don’t want to overwhelm the attendee with too much information. Virtual users tend to skim past things that they don’t think are important and instead look for the information that applies to them. There’s a lot of clutter in the virtual world, and users have learned to move past that and get to the important stuff.

Refrain from clutter. You don’t have to put everything on your display. Have a discernible section for each of your products or services that give the basics for each and create a space for more in-depth looks at each.

Remember: if the person looking at your display sees a bunch of clutter, they’re more likely to skip past everything than they are to dig for what they’re looking for. Make it easy for them to find what they want and position yourself as the business that makes life easier for potential clients.

Create Individual Landing Pages For Each Product or Service

Everything you offer should have its own landing page that goes into more detail. Put the basic information upfront so that a client will know that the product or service is what they’re looking for and then have a place for them to visit that gets into the finer points.

For example, let’s say that you run a marketing company and want to set up a virtual display. Instead of putting all the details upfront, use a brief summary that encourages the attendee to dig deeper. You can link them to a landing page for the services that they’re interested in.

There are a few ways you could do this. First, you could have a listing of your services, but instead of going into detail at the entry point (what the attendee sees first), you can simply say what pain point the service solves. This would look similar to:

Managed SEO Services

Do you need help managing your website and attracting quality leads? Learn how you can save time, improve your marketing ROI, and attract new customers here!

~Link to landing page~

Using this format still shows off all that you offer, but instead of overwhelming the attendee, you invite them in with easy to understand information. You could also reverse this and start with the pain point:

Need Help Attracting New Leads?

Learn how we can help you improve your online conversion rate. We offer you a hands-off way to develop new relationships with customers ready to buy now!

~Link to landing page for managed SEO services~

Looking For Ways To Manage Your Online Reputation?

Negative reviews can damage your business and hurt your ability to reach out to new customers. Let us help you manage your online reputation.

~Link to landing page for online reputation~

These strategies allow someone to quickly identify the services that they’re interested in and get the information they want without feeling bogged down by non-essential information. When you’re dealing with people in a virtual setting, simplicity will lead to more conversions than flashy presentations about what things they aren’t interested in.

Use A Strong Call To Action For Each Service or Product

When dealing with customers in a virtual setting, it’s important to understand that they will generally only take a specific action if they’re asked to do so.

A call-to-action is an easy way to move leads through your sales funnel. The main thing when creating a CTA is to think about what you want to accomplish. If you want to build brand awareness and create future leads, for example, you can add a CTA that asks attendees to give you their email addresses for future newsletters.

You can also try to get sales during the convention by linking to service or product pages. You could also add a “contact us today to find out more about how we can help you!” at the end of any landing pages to send attendees to your sales department.

If you have a hard time getting people to sign up for your mailing list, you can offer some extra value to the attendee that will also help convert them into a customer. Let them know that signing up for your email list or contacting your sales department today will provide them with a special discount, like 15% off of their first month’s service or order. This encourages them to try your service and allows you to track your conversions easier.

Cater to the Types of Attendees You’ll Encounter

Generally speaking, you’ll experience five different types of attendees at virtual displays. Each of these types of customers has different motivations, meaning you’ll need to cater to their motivations to increase lead generation and conversion.

Let’s look at these five types of attendees and see what you can do to create a tradeshow marketing strategy that meets their needs.

Agenda-Based Attendees

This is the group of attendees that make up the majority of people you’ll experience. They know what they’re looking for and have experience with trade-shows, so they tend to hit the displays that meet their needs early.

The key to turning these attendees into leads is to keep it simple and direct. We talked about ways of setting up your display earlier to help them cut through the clutter, and you’ll reap the rewards of that setup with this group.

They know what they want, or at least have a general idea, and anything that doesn’t fit their agenda is white-noise to them. If they can’t find what they want at your display quickly, they could just move on to the next business. Once you identify what they want, focus on that and work to get them into your sales funnel.

You’ll need to focus on what makes you different from other companies and how it can help alleviate their pain points. Returning to the digital marketing example from earlier, you can mention that you have a content service, but every digital marketing firm has that. Instead, focus on the writers.

Have examples of high-end content you’ve created in the past and quick case studies available for them to look at. Give them a results-based and unique pitch and you’ll be on your way to getting a new lead.

Niche Attendees

These are the buyers that look for a niche service that meets their needs. They tend to avoid ‘one size fits all’ solutions and instead focus on targeted answers to their problems.

For these attendees, you’ll want to think about what makes you stand out. What do you offer that other companies don’t? Once you have the answer in your head, put that front and center. When organizing your display, make sure you put unique services you offer in a visible place and create a landing page specifically designed for these buyers.

If you’re targeting niche buyers, outline your services based on pain points instead of products. This will help them find the solution to their unique problem quickly and increase the chance that they will use your services.

Brand-Based Attendees

These buyers are the opposite of niche attendees. They look for all-in-one solutions and prefer to work with larger companies that can take care of everything for them. You can actually accommodate them and niche attendees though!

For these buyers, they want to see that you’ve worked with larger brands and that you have a strong brand. Has your business won any awards? Do you work with other large brands? Put that information upfront. Reinforce your position as an industry leader putting a large header on your display. You could say things like:

Trusted by over 500 companies worldwide!”
“Featured on [insert websites and media companies]”
“Winner of 25 Best of Awards”

Use anything that will position your company as a leading brand to attract these buyers. Once you have them, you can then hammer home the solutions your company provides.

Volume Attendees

These are the buyers you see at in-person tradeshows bouncing around from booth to booth. They seem like they talk to everyone at least once before circling back around to their preferred tradeshow booths.

These buyers will likely spend less time on your display, meaning that you need to impress them immediately to get a second visit. Keeping it simple and focusing on what they’re looking for will help. Your goal is to leave them with something memorable.

Earlier we said to think like a digital marketer during virtual displays. For this group, it’s extremely important to use what digital marketers call a ‘hook’. You want to hit them with something right off the bat that will create an impression in their head. Don’t try to smooth talk these attendees. Hit them with your best sales pitch as soon as they approach. Use language that draws them in and forces them to give you more than a “just-looking” answer.

Use questions such as:

“Do you have three minutes to learn how we can help you shave 50% off of your marketing budget?”
“How happy are you with your suppliers? Give me five minutes and I bet we can beat them.”
“You look like someone that could use a vacation. I bet we can save you enough time through automation to get you on a beach within a month.”

Newcomers

Newcomers to tradeshows, whether online or in-person, tend to spend a lot of time trying to get the lay of the land. After a few shows, they’ll fall into one of the four categories above, but for now, they’re just trying to find what they need without being overwhelmed.

The good thing about the keep it simple, easy to navigate formula above is that it works for almost every group, but particularly newcomers. These attendees don’t want to get overwhelmed with information. They want quick solutions that are easy to find.

Design your display with simplicity in mind and spend a little more time with these leads. They’ll appreciate you helping them through their first couple of virtual displays and will reward you with a hot lead that’s easy to convert.

Let Us Help You Develop More Leads

While most of us would rather be at in-person tradeshows, virtual displays are going to be the reality for the near future. The good news is that you can take advantage of this new reality and get more leads while investing less in marketing.

If you’re looking for the tools you need to engage and educate your clients, we’re here to help. Rockway Reach is a simple and interactive sales tool that can help you build relationships with potential clients while also helping you keep current clients engaged. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you.