How can you improve your tradeshow ROI?” There are many ways to market for a tradeshow and many ways to spend your money, but often little if any ROI is realized. The most compelling factor to attend a trade show and set up a booth is the prospect of meeting face-to-face with the decision maker. But is your tradeshow marketing investment totally justified when you are just a needle in the haystack?

There are many other techniques to market a tradeshow:

• You can sponsor an event
• You can write editorials in the event magazine
• You can advertise on the tradeshow website etc.

Tradeshows are already an expensive endeavor, and they can cost more if you choose to advertise using these other popular channels. If you are not a large company, costs for tradeshows can be significant considering the already limited marketing budget. On top of the advertising costs, there are other associated costs such as designing the booth, time that your sales reps spend to exhibit, flying costs, as well as food and lodging.

So, how much do you get back on the investment you just made on the tradeshow? Not as much as you were expecting, but the use of online marketing techniques can boost your tradeshow investment. In my last post, I wrote how you can combine the use of traditional and online marketing techniques and benefit from them, but here I’m describing how you can use online marketing to better market your tradeshows.

Following some concerns and solution suggestions based on online marketing and online tools – thus making it the most for your tradeshow investment.

BEFORE the show: How do we get more people to visit our booth?
Give prospects a good reason to meet you to make the best use of their time and money.

DURING the show: How do I maximize marketing during the show?
Use marketing automation to convert the visitors into leads.

AFTER the show: Who are my best prospects? Whom should I follow up? What do I do with the big list of names?
Nurture the leads using marketing automation tools.