New Research Indicates the Use of Games Help Attract Visitors to Your Booth and Increase Your Trade Show ROI
Digital sales strategies for the outdoor industry include trade shows. Trade shows are an important component in your overall sales enablement for outdoor companies. With a need for better alignment between sales operations and marketing, sales enablement is being implemented more and more into companies. It encompasses many key responsibilities, like providing the right tools, systems, processes, training, coaching, and development that enables sales and marketing to be more effective and efficient. Companies can help their event stand out while implementing sales enablement techniques through using games to attract visitors to your booth.
Digital games are increasingly more valuable for engagement of attendees and are a tool in your company's toolbox to enable increased sales through this marketing channel.
The Center for Exhibition Industry Research published results from their 2017 Attendee Floor Engagement Study. They discovered that an exhibitor can increase booth traffic, engagement, and stand out by utilizing games at their trade show booth.
The second-most engagement tactic used by attendees is “Games that help educate attendees about products in a fun way,” used by 67% of attendees. However, only 7% of exhibitors offer games that educate attendees about their products. That means there is a whopping 60% gap between attendee interest and exhibitor use of games.
Plan Games and Contests with Engagement in Mind
In-booth activities work best when the contestants are active rather than passive participants. When planning your contest, think about ways to get your participants engaged with your staff, product, or service. To succeed in this step, make sure you spend some time training the people who are going to staff your booth. Train your booth staffers to better interact with your visitors so that you can also get more qualified leads which will lead to better overall trade show results.
There are three stages in which to make sure your staff is trained to better qualify leads as described by Social Point.
1. Booth visitors waiting to play the game
Your game is really enticing and you have a line of people waiting to play the game. Your booth staffers can strike up a conversation with people in line, asking them qualifying questions before they even get a chance to spin the prize wheel. Booth staffers can ask qualifying questions such as “What are you looking for at the show?”
2. Booth visitors playing the game
Even if you offer a big prize of some popular new outdoor industry product, you can also offer multiple prizes at different value levels. Make second and third-tier prizes work to qualified attendees. When you prizes include a 10% discount on the next order, a free sample, or something else, your booth staffers can look for people’s reactions and what they say when they win those kinds of prizes. Tracking how they react can be used to focus on taking that particular prospect further.
Your booth staffers can also check out the badges while attendees are focused on playing the game. It’s not a good idea to look at someone’s badge when you are talking to them – they might find it rude. But when they look down to play, your staffers can look to see if anyone playing is from a company they know is a viable prospect, because of its reputation, size, or industry match with your best customers. This where you might also want to utilize best in breed trade show tracking technology.
3. Booth visitors who have played the game
Your booth staffers can also engage the attendees after they have played the game. Thank them for playing the game, giving them any prize they did win, and then asking a simple, yet powerful qualifying question such as, “What product opportunities are you looking for while attending this show?” or, “Is there a revenue challenge you are searching for a solution at this show?”
Engaging Your Booth Attendees with Questions that Stimulate
Besides the use of games to engage booth visitors and increase traffic, other research has shown that the right kind of questions can be powerful in increasing engagement. For example:
- What potential roadblocks do you see that will prevent our product from succeeding?
- Why do you think this product will succeed?
- Why do you think this product will fail?
- What in your company needs to change to make to increase your product sales?
- In your opinion, what success stories that make your company great are not being shared with customers and potential customers?
- If you had a magic wand what would you change about your company?
- In your opinion, what are three things that would make your company more successful?
- What are three things we should do differently as a supplier?
Looking for other ideas to increase your trade show ROI? Here are some other resources you might find useful:
-
The Pseudo-Scientific Approach to Sales Enablement Success
-
25 Ways to Boost Traffic to Your Tradeshow Booth
-
Cool Stuff I Can Do With Sales Enablement Technology
Developing the Structural Formula for Sales Enablement Success
Fortunately, these elements can be combined and configured in a multitude of ways to meet the varied needs of organizations big and small.
For more strategies on trade shows or more information about sales enablement, you can learn more from our sales enablement team. They'll help you understand how to create a strategy to that enables your sales teams to close new business opportunities. In the meantime, stay tuned for more details on how to create a winning formula for sales enablement success!
