How To Run a Lead Generation Event: Complete Guide

The bad news: Today’s consumer is perhaps more distracted than ever. Companies have to compete for their attention in a world that seems increasingly fragmented. However, the good news is that events can be ways to interact with prospects and generate leads.

Businesses in certain niches can find success with an engagement strategy that incorporates events. Events can be the perfect backdrop to introduce potential customers to their products or services, nurture relationships, and earn more sales.

What is event lead generation?

Event lead generation is focused on producing or attending events to capture prospect data. These contexts can include in-person conferences, trade shows, and virtual events like webinars. Companies can then use this information to their advantage to target prospects and convert them into customers.

Ultimately, making a positive impression through interactions that draw them in is the main idea behind event lead generation. It’s a way to make the most of interest and follow up to create leads. Unlike other channels, like email, events are dynamic and engaging and can pique interest because of their novelty.

The Best Types of Events To Capture Leads

As you can imagine, there are many event marketing formats that can serve as fertile ground for lead capturing. Here’s a look at a few and how to approach each to generate the most leads.

Conferences

Conferences can be your ticket to networking opportunities and framing your expertise. Sponsorships and exhibits, specifically, can help you connect with potential customers in real time and cultivate viable leads.

Networking Events

It’s always a good idea to meet and connect with industry peers. Networking events can be the motivation you need to foster strategic relationships that could be referral sources. These events can be formal or informal gatherings, such as industry mixers, happy hours, or conferences. Networking events can be a great way to build relationships and brand awareness and generate leads.

Online Training and Workshops

Invite prospects to learn about your industry and solutions by way of online training or workshops. These virtual events can help you elevate your credibility and introduce you to leads. This is an easy way to capture emails and follow up after the session.

Product Launch Events

An event can help you build excitement around a product launch and help you attract positive attention that you could leverage to nurture leads and gain new customers.

Trade Shows

These industry-specific events usually draw in a niche audience. By using an exhibit to their advantage, B2B businesses can create brand awareness. Later down the road, that could lead to customer growth.

Webinars

The onset of the pandemic meant an uptick in the number of webinars. Many professionals still prefer this format over live events. When you present, you have a wide audience that could become a lead generation engine. By offering value and substance, companies can draw in groups of people who might represent their ideal customers.

How To Plan a Lead Generation Event

There’s no substitute for careful consideration and execution when planning a lead generation strategy for your event. You’ll want to make sure you do all of the following to maximize your event marketing efforts:

Pre-Event Planning

Identify Your Target Audience

Who’s your ideal buyer? What are their motivations, pain points, and priorities? These questions will help you craft a message that resonates with where they are on their buying journey.

Choose the Event Type

The best format will align with your target audience and its goals. For instance, if you’re an HVAC company owner trying to reach busy moms who have limited free time, then an all-day conference isn’t the way to go. Perhaps a booth at an annual home and garden show might be a better fit.

Set a Budget

Determine how much you can spend on all facets of the event, including venue rental, food, marketing, and other incidentals. Do your best to over-estimate so there are no surprises in the event planning.

Develop a Marketing Plan

A marketing plan should spell out how you plan to promote your event and bring people in. A combination of social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, direct mail, and cross-promotion may work to your advantage. Your approach will depend on the type of event, audience, and budget.

Create an Event Agenda

Event planning is all about the details. The agenda should provide a loose structure that reflects the speaker schedule, demo lineup presentations, and networking opportunities.

Find Potential Event Sponsors

Think beyond your team’s capabilities and bandwidth when fleshing out the event. You might consider partnering with a complementary business to cast a wider net and offset costs.

Live-Event Execution

Use Storytelling To Resonate With Attendees

It’s both an art and a science to curate messaging that connects with your audience and speaks to your product or service’s value. You need to have a clear understanding of buyer personas before you embark on this mission.

Incorporate Attendee Engagement Elements

Live events can encourage participation from attendees in ways that recorded ones can’t. Use that fact to your advantage. For instance, you might incorporate Q&A sessions, polls, and real-time messaging features to keep things interesting.

Post-Event Follow-Up

Send Surveys To Collect Feedback

Get in touch with attendees after the event to help you improve future events and follow up with potential leads.

Review Attendee Feedback

Identify trends and patterns that might suggest opportunities and weaknesses. Make sure this information is shared with your team so they can translate these insights into actions that will lead to better outcomes.

Compile Event Metrics

How will you know you’ve crushed your goals? You might log key performance indicators like attendance and revenue after expenses. Every event will be different but you’ll want to have a way to gauge your ROI.

How To Capture Leads Inside Events

Don’t forget the purpose of the event: generating leads. After it’s over, there’s work to be done to lay the foundation for converting prospects into customers. That groundwork can take several forms. For instance, you might do one or more of the following:

Implement Lead Scanning Technology

Lead scanning technology can help you connect with more potential leads at scale. This innovation is a means to capture attendee information quickly and accurately. Instead of manually inputting data from a business card on the spot, exhibitors can use an event app to track leads in real time.

Automated lead capture (and related follow-up) can help business leaders track the flow of leads. By looking at certain indicators, exhibitors can get a better idea of where leads may be dropping off and respond accordingly. For example, if leads stop engaging after receiving a certain automated text, event hosts can change their follow-up strategy to nurture leads more effectively.

Create Irresistible Promotions

You have to give attendees a reason to provide their contact information. Think of it as your version of the carrot and the stick. Discounts, promotions, and prices can be incentives to do so. Get creative but always keep the prospect at the center of your efforts. An offer that doesn’t align with your brand might confuse attendees and work against you.

Engage Attendees With Interactive Demos

Show don’t tell. Part entertainment and part promotional, you can make a point to set up demos to inspire curiosity and capture leads on the spot. You can even record these stunts and use them in your social media campaigns to get more mileage from your efforts.

Host Informative Workshops or Presentations

The key is to develop material that educates attendees and establishes you as the authority in your industry. Leave them curious and wanting to learn more about how your product or service can solve their problem.

Consider this the roadmap you need to plan and execute lead generation events that help you make your business goals a reality.

Capture More Leads With Podium

You don’t have to go it alone when it comes to lead generation events. No matter the type of event, Podium’s messaging platform can help your business capture and nurture leads, turning your business into a sales engine in no time. Here’s how it works:

Centralized Communication

Manage all incoming messages, including texts, web-based chat, and social media messages, in one place. You won’t have to worry about missing a lead ever again.

Automated Responses

Automated technology means you can provide immediate responses to common questions, so your team can focus their time and energy on landing major deals.

Lead Routing

You can rest assured that the leads will go to the right place. Podium makes it possible to send leads to a certain party based on location, expertise, or other pre-defined criteria. Efficient and effective is the name of the game.

CRM Integration

Podium integrates with many of the go-to CRM platforms. This feature allows you to manage and track leads at any point in the sales pipeline.

Analytics and Reporting

Take advantage of in-depth analytics and reporting on lead generation progress. These insights can help you measure the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns so you can adjust where and when it’s needed.

With Podium, business leaders can capture leads more effectively, improve their response times, and nurture leads into customers. That’s a win-win-win! See for yourself—try Podium today.