Trade Show Booth Entertainment: Increase Leads– Capture Sales
When I’m helping companies show up HUGE at expos, conventions, and conferences by doing trade show booth entertainment (some describe it as infotainment), there is only ONE overarching goal I have: Help the company achieve THEIR GOALS.
Trade Show Goals
The goals that companies can have for including trade show booth entertainment are as various as they are numerous. Create goodwill in a marketplace, establish a dominating presence within a niche, mass lead capture, make sure attendees walk away from the booth with key messages, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Trade show booth entertainment can also help do what marketing consultant Bianca Bujan refers to as one of the most important things you can do for your booth: Generate buzz at your booth.
People are drawn to crowds. When someone walks by and sees a group of guests having fun, FOMO (fear of missing out) kicks in and they can’t help but stop to see what all the fuss is about! Make sure you include an interactive experience so that guests will not only pop in but also stick around!
While there are numerous intangibles (or at least harder to calculate metrics) that go along with exhibiting at trade shows, there are certain ones that are rock solid. How MANY leads did you capture? And what did you do with them? An entertainer/infotainer provides the reason for attendees to stop what they’re doing and pay attention to what you have going on in your booth.
Generate Value with Trade Show Booth Entertainment
But what I really want you to understand is the IMMENSE VALUE that having trade show booth entertainment can bring to your company’s choice to exhibit at a trade show. It’s a simple formula, one that you’ll be able to plug your own numbers into to figure out what the ROI that is possible when including in-booth trade show entertainment to increase lead capture. These are numbers that your sales and marketing executives should definitely have or know off the top of their heads. 
Take the number of leads you had last year. Multiply that by your average closing percentage. Multiply that by the average lifetime value of your customer. BOOM.
Company X
Let’s assume a decent and proactive sales person can capture five leads per hour over an 8 hour day. Let’s assume there are five sales people at the booth. For a three day trade show, your sales team has captured 600 leads assuming that none of them have taken a lunch break.
N x C x A = S
N = Number of Leads
C = Closing Percentage (usually between 4% and 7% according to TS
A = Average Lifetime Value of Customer
S= Sales Earned through Lead Capture
Working with companies , I stop attendees in their tracks, build a crowd, and deliver a 10-15 minutes presentation that is both incredibly entertaining and informative. Attendees will walk away from your booth knowing your company’s name and having heard your key branding and sales messages in a variety of memorable and sticky ways.
Before the end of the presentation, I deliver the most important part: the call to action. The crowd is pied-pipered further into the booth for lead capture, badge scanning, and to meet and interact with your sales staff and/or demo stations. These sales conversations and captured leads will flood your sales pipeline with heavily qualified leads.
So my question is this: what is the monetary VALUE to your company of capturing 50% more leads using trade show booth entertainment?
