How To Be Top Of Mind For Trade Show Leads Without Sending Emails

According to Harvard psychologist George A. Miller, the average human mind cannot remember more than seven brands at a time in a product category. Ask someone to name all the brands in a selected product category and rarely will he/she name more than seven. The majority will only name up to two brands.

Multiple studies have shown that the higher up a brand is in its respective category, the higher the probability of customers buying from them.

This applies to trade shows too.

Trade show attendees will visit hundreds of booths and have interacted with booth staffs from multiple companies. The chance of them remembering your booth and brand is not great. Hence, staying top of mind is essential to a trade show’s success. If they don’t remember you, they won’t buy from you.

Why Facebook retargeting is one of the best ways to stay top of mind?

Most post-show strategy consists of sending follow up emails and most of the time…

The lead would turn cold
The lead is not ready to buy yet

Retargeting is one of the most overlooked ways to stay on top of your prospect’s mind. It is a form of advertising that advertises to people who have interacted with your brand before. It is also not interruptive and most importantly is considered a “touch” between your brand and the lead.

“It can take 7 to 13+ touches to generate sales-ready, qualified leads.” – Online Marketing Institute

Another benefit of retargeting is it requires little to no maintenance work after everything is set up. Once you have your ad creative and targeting setup, it is a system that runs on autopilot.

How to get started

To get started, go to Facebook Ads > Audiences > Custom Audience

Step 1: Select Customer File which will be your list of trade show leads

Double-check that your file is in CSV format not XLS or any other format because Facebook only accepts CSV (or TXT).

Step 2: Select the first option (Add customers from your own file or copy and paste data)

Step 3: Upload your CSV list and give this upload a name

For example, Caravan Show 2017 leads, CES 2017 leads, etc.

In the future, you will be able to create ad campaigns that target those specific leads again. For example, are you going to exhibiting at the same trade show again next year? Good, set up an ad campaign to target leads you got from the previous year’s show.

Hence, it is important to keep everything organised.

Step 4: You are done and ready to create your ad creative

If you want to expand your list, there is a feature on Facebook called Lookalike Audience. What this means is Facebook will find similar people to your audience. In this example, it would similar people to your trade show leads.

Best of all, you just expanded your audience for free. The only thing stopping you from reaching those people now is your budget.

“A Lookalike Audience is a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to your best existing customers.” – Facebook

You can learn more about Lookalike Audience here.

Step 5: Design ad creative

This is the most important step and will determine your level of success.

It is the same for any advertisement campaign, TV, radio, print, etc. If you run a TV advertisement and your ad is terrible, no matter how engaged the viewers are in that channel, how much research you have done such as between 10pm-12pm is the best time to run your ad campaign, your ad is going to fail.

This applies to retargeting campaigns too.

You can:

Setup your ad account in the most efficient way
Target the most qualified leads
Afford to pay the highest CPC/CPM
Done the most extensive research to find the best demographic to advertise to
Done the most extensive research to find the best time to advertise on

You can do all the above but if your ad creative sucks, your retargeting campaign will fail.

Here are some resources on how to create a good ad creative:

Step 6: Setting up your ad

Trade show leads – Check
Ad creative – Check

Now, the only thing left is setting up your ad which is pretty straightforward.

There are hundreds of tutorials out there on creating a Facebook ad so I won’t reinvent the wheel.

Bonus: Target trade show attendees who didn’t become leads

Another advantage of using Facebook retargeting is the ability to advertise to trade show attendees who didn’t become leads. They saw your landing page from one of your trade show marketing materials and are interested in learning more and instead of talking to one of your booth staff, they go to your website.

Your sales reps can’t reach them because you don’t have their phone number.
Your marketing team can’t reach them with email newsletters because you don’t have their email.

With Facebook retargeting, you will be able to reach these people who can’t be reached with any other method.

To do this, you need a dedicated trade show landing page. Meaning anyone who visited that landing page is a trade show attendee and the only way to find out about that landing page is via trade show brochures, trade show graphics, or any marketing materials from the trade show.

Tip: You need to have an enticing enough offer for them to visit your trade show landing page. If not, why would they visit your landing page when they can just go to your homepage?

Bottom line

Studies have shown that the higher up a brand is in its respective category, the higher the probability of customers buying from them. Manually sending emails to each trade show lead is just one way to stay on top of your prospect’s mind.

Running a retargeting ad campaign is another method to achieve a similar goal to improve your probability of winning a new client.