Even with the online world at your fingertips, attending events and trade shows continues to be a prime opportunity to generate leads and gain customers. Unfortunately, we all know that trade shows can be costly for your company—both in money and time. This heavy investment can leave you wondering—is the ROI from trade shows truly worth the effort?
Although the high cost of trade shows may tempt you to focus your marketing dollars on Internet leads rather than belly-to-belly events, the most loyal customers are built through direct relationships. Profitable business relationships more often come from looking a client or customer in the eye, shaking their hand, and truly listening to their needs; however, seasoned exhibitors and account executives know that a tremendous amount of data and follow-through need to happen before a face-to-face meeting can convert into a profitable long-term business relationship.
In any industry, the competition can be fierce; sales teams need every possible advantage. SmartSource Rentals offers a technology solution that can lower costs and increase sales—an interactive digital document library! This tech option can not only cut down on the expense of printed trade show collateral and eliminate waste, but it also enhances your ability to capture leads and follow through with potential customers—arming your sales team with specific knowledge about each customer’s problems and the products and services that interest them the most.
Going Green – Saving Money
Accordingto the Center for Sustainable Tourism, the typical trade show can generate the equivalent of 170 trees worth of paper waste, and attendees can carry home as many as ten pounds of paper. As our culture focuses more attention on globally appropriate practices, a business that fails to adopt a digital solution for their document library fails in more ways than one:
- They’ve failed to be environmentally responsible.
- They’ve failed to consider their attendees’ convenience.
- They’ve failed to utilize the new technological standard.
- They’ve failed their own bottom line.
While paper certainly had its day, times have changed. Paper documents cost a company in materials and printing costs, but also in shipping, storage, and drayage. Print collateral has been the standard for a long time, but it does very little to generate actionable, trackable leads. You have no idea if people are actually reading what you hand out.
If you’ve ever attended a trade show, you’ve probably been on the customer end of this cycle of paper waste. You come back from the trade show floor with piles of paper, which you might—or might not—look at before they go into the recycling bin. These flyers and pamphlets were easy enough to pick up, but reading, processing, sorting, filing, storing and acting on them is an overwhelming task.
Generating Leads with a Digital Document Library
A digital document library offers a paperless place for potential customers to find the information they need; however, digital document libraries also provide an additional, enormous benefit to businesses because they gather data!
- They offer the ability to generate leads by capturing the user’s information as they research your material and download the documents that are most relevant to them.
- Digital document libraries can be presented in a completely customized way—giving the user a more in-depth view of your company, as you highlight what matters most to your business (and your customer).
- Customers can view videos, add items to a cart, and read materials that interest them personally—simply by scanning their badge. The items they select are automatically emailed to them (without creating ten pounds of paperwork to carry!).
Behind the scenes, your company gets detailed information on guests that used the library and a list of the items viewed or downloaded. Data reports can include information such as the guests’ names, jobs, associations and titles, the data they received, and the documents they viewed. The system can also provide analytics by day, hour, or workstation, and all data is easily exported. All lead generation information can be programmed to automatically ship to your regional sales people.
No waste lead generation. How great is that?
For more information on the SmartSource Digital Document Product, watch this video hosted by David Schmerbach, Digital Communications Coordinator at SmartSource Technology Rentals.
