There are two types of marketers. The ambitious one who uses mean to justify end. The “mean” one who uses end to justify mean. I am the mean one and I am serious about how conversion should be added to justify our event marketing spend.

When you are exhibiting in a trade show, it is not only about showcasing your products. You want to convert your visitors to sales leads. But most of the trade show exhibitors that I have come across rely solely on the organic visitors’ traffic organized by the event organizer. That is not a good approach. Good conversion started before the event. Let me show you how you can take advantage from the organizer’s online promotion to improve your conversion result.

Bridge the gap. Event organizers always have a problem in content write-up when it comes to promoting the show. The content always looks superficial. You can negotiate with the organizer for content inclusion. Get a deal that allows you to publish your content through the organizer’s email marketing. Your industry knowledge will enhance the readability of the show’s marketing content, in return, you can collect direct feedback from the target recipients. But make sure you have embedded the tracking codes in the content. You will gain two benefits from the content inclusion. You can improve pre-show exposure and you can evaluate the quality of the target visitors before the event.

Advertise on the exit page of the event website. Yes, unlike the physical event where you always want the exposure at the entrance; when the visitors are visiting the show online, you want to know how and where the people exit. Because the exit page is usually the best spot of an event website that triggers conversion.

Event organizers always think their visitors will navigate the event website. But this isn’t likely the case. In one of my consulting cases for a mid-size trade show, I’ve found that each registered visitor, on average, only contributes 2 page views during the last 3 months before the event opening. The ratio of an event’s main landing page conversion is 16:1. That means for every 16 visitors who have landed on the main page of the event website, only 1 will end up registering the event.

However, the analytics also tells, for every 1.25 visitors who have landed directly on the registration page, 1 of them will complete the registration.

That makes sense because the majority of event website contents are pretty static. They attract less repeat traffic than the organizers expected. The visitors come and register themselves for the event, then exit after signing up. That makes the registration page usually the number one exit page and also the best page for online traffic conversion of an event website.

If you aim high for conversion, plan your conversion event after the submit button is hit. You can even advertise on the thank-you page that normally is displayed after the registration is completed. You can drive your own conversion by offering free sample or white paper if the visitors will hit another “yes” button and grant you the permission to obtain contact information from the event organizer. The confirmation email dispatched to the registrants for acknowledgment is also a good medium to trigger conversion, etc. Think your conversion strategy along the path of exit, not the entrance.

Alright, let me also point you to Google’s Conversion University, which gives fairly good introduction on the best practice for conversion. Definitely worth a read. In your next trade show marketing, start integrating an online conversion strategy that will maximize the result of lead generation on the expo floor. That’s worth a try!

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