How to Use Tradeshow and Event Data Meaningfully

As Ronald Coase the famous economist succinctly notes, if you torture the data long enough, it will confess. The data in current trend speak more loudly than ever owing to technology development; it implies that the more you dig deeper into data the more you will retrieve concise information or business insights. 

Back from historic days, the tradeshow & event venues being the hot-spot for the confluence of the older traditions and the emergence of new ones, it accumulates lots of information.  Unlike stone-age where data is carved on stones or clay tablet, today's tradeshow and fair have more sophisticated tools to analyze these data.  However, you might scratch your head looking at this encrypted message on the stone, which looks much like today’s computing code.

But in this course, one thing was extremely helpful is to understand the event ROI by analyzing attendee’s behavior through data.  The data insights have now become important metrics to determine event success or failure. These data, when converted to significant action, can further help to fine-tune the tradeshow strategy. 

Let understand how to utilize Event data meaningfully, but first look how data can be collected from different sources.

Sources to collect Event Data

During events, data are captured through mobile event apps (where every touch is trackable), beacon technology, twitter feeds, polling, a range of social media input, live streaming, exhibit hall heat maps, procurement databases and much more as listed below.

• • • Registration Kiosk
    • Pre and Post Event Survey Reports
    • Track event hashtags on social media (use software tools to track)
    • Track attendees reacted to your targeted messages, emails or push notifications
    • Track people registered or bookmarked for live session by experts
    • Real-time data collection
    • Tracking online ticketing registrants
    • Create a press kit and send it to media partners

Being aware of the advantage of data, we will straightaway jump to the topic on how to use event data meaningfully. 

1) Press notes and Journalists insight

Press notes and comments made by influencers, journalists, bloggers, in tradeshow some way does the profiling of your company projecting a positive image of the event or your service.  Post the event, exhibitors can gather the quote published by the journalist from social media or websites about your product services. These comments give insight into what the readers are interested in - and those readers could be your potential customers.  To reach the industry-relevant journalist, you can use tool anewstip from the world's largest database. Another similar tool is Muck Rack useful to connect with industry relevant journalists or articles.

You can even use a website like Businesswire and Prnewswire to put your event words or press release to the large audience.

2) Use Event app data to attract event sponsorship

Use event app data to attract sponsors for events. The event organizer can demonstrate to sponsors how their colossal data-bank can help them to reach and engage their target audience.  For instance, event organizer using a gamification can distribute passcode to event attendees through sponsors to collect points for the game. Not only the passcode helps to reach a target audience but will also determine the foot traffic that the sponsors will attend.

3) Building up Network

Start sorting those people from the database that have shown interest in your product during an event or tradeshow, and send them LinkedIn requests based on it. Data-analytics dashboard can help you identify the correct contact with detail report analysis.

4) Use Data for effective marketing

About 71 percent of companies currently use marketing automation, for instance, email automation to target their audience. With the right kind of event data on hand, your lot of revenue wasted on marketing could be saved. The marketing strategy would be more focused and target oriented, while cross-channel visibility is an additional advantage. You can share data among sales and marketing team, so they can work-out together on the consumers’ preference and understand the market trend.

5) Use real-time event data in demonstration

In tradeshow event, exhibitors add lots of glamour and frills to project their product out from the rest.  One more way of doing this is using the event data for a product demonstration.  For instance, exhibitors can feed real-time data about how many numbers of attendees have downloaded product app, a live number of attendees visited the booth, or the number of registrants, etc.

6) Integrate event data with technology to receive alerts and add new contacts

Discoverorg tool ‘Triggers’ allows you to take the hot list of qualified leads at the trade show, and create a related alert system that notifies your team when any new contacts or updates are added to the target account’s company profile.  If the prospect is not ready to purchase right after the show you can send a reminder to them even after several months of the trade-show.

7) Use event data to address event attendees personally

Tradeshow or event data gives attendees information like job title, industry, interests, and history with your events, and their lead score, you can send personalized notifications through your event as per their interest or domain expertise. You can also show them their interested booth location on their mobile.

If good business is the best art then good data is the best artist. Let know your thoughts on using data meaningfully in events and tradeshows.

Source:

• https://blog.printsome.com/collect-data-at-events/
• https://www.pcma.org/utilizing-event-data-apps/
• https://discoverorg.com/blog/8-steps-to-successful-post-trade-show-prospecting/
• https://www.creativeboom.com/resources/20-free-or-affordable-pr-tools-to-help-with-your-media-relations/
• https://anewstip.com/search/tweets/?q=event+and+tradeshow
• https://www.eventmobi.com/blog/data-driven-ways-to-measure-event-roi/
• https://discoverorg.com/blog/8-steps-to-successful-post-trade-show-prospecting/
• https://blog.socedo.com/how-to-use-event-data-in-your-lead-scoring-model/

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