By: Helen Shacklett
For many B2B companies, the trade show is the holy grail of marketing, and for good reason: a convention hall packed with prospects often leads to filling the top of the funnel and making more sales down the line. But with these great results comes a great price tag, so making the most of time and money spent at trade shows is crucial for your business.
Geofencing can be the just the right tool to help you do that. This form of targeting works when attendees download an app that can sense when they’ve come into a perimeter or “fence” that’s been set around your booth or the event itself. Once they’re within that border, you can then push them notifications with offers and information through the app. The possibilities for marketing with this location-based technology are endless, but the four benefits listed below are the most important ways geofencing can make attending a trade show even more worthwhile.
Boosts Brand Awareness
As attendees see messages from your company, they’re more likely to recognize who you are later and assign you more credibility in their minds, especially when they stumble across your booth. One study from mobile ad platform xAd confirms this, even going so far as to suggest that geofencing might be better than audience targeting for brand awareness. Whether or not that’s truly the case, there’s no doubt that associating your company’s presence with the physical location of the trade show will encourage more engagement, message retention and traffic to your booth – especially traffic that’s in a position to buy.
Drives Qualified Booth Traffic
Imagine a prospect walking into the show or near your booth and suddenly getting an offer on their phone for a free sample of your product if they visit your company. Maybe it’s a map leading them straight to your booth or information on a key benefit about your solution. Either way, ads like this encourage your fellow trade show goers to come by your booth because they offer true value. Every company at the show is fighting for the attention of every prospect there, so when your business gives them something in return for the trouble of learning more about you, there’s a higher chance they’ll take the time to stop and talk about your solutions. Because your notifications have already shown attendees a glimpse of what your company has to offer, there’s also a better chance that the people you meet will be interested potential buyers instead of aimless booth wanderers.
Gathers Data
One of the most helpful aspects of geofencing is the data that it delivers about the activity of your prospects from where they’re spending the most time throughout the show, what interests them most in your booth, and how much foot traffic you’re actually getting. Insights like these aren’t easily gathered from visitor surveys, and they’re priceless for designing the layout of your booth, figuring out the best spot to reserve in the convention hall for next year, and deciding which products you should focus on most throughout the show.
While learning about and using technology like geofencing can seem overwhelming, working through the complexity is well worth it if you want to squeeze as much ROI as you can out of your days at a trade show. With an enhanced ability to get prospects to recognize your brand, entice the most qualified buyers to come by your booth and collect data to optimize the process, there’s no doubt that geofencing delivers value that can make your next trade show pay off big time.
Helen Shacklett is the Content Marketing Manager at MultiView and can be reached on her LinkedIn or Twitter.
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