Get Topical with B2B Lead Gen

We B2B Marketers are always looking for a new way  to generate awareness and leads at trade shows.Often the best way to come up with ideas that are fresh and work is to be topical. We recently ran a promotion at the Association of Financial Professionals that leveraged the interest in the presidential election. We haven’t counted up the leads yet, but Sales told us it was our best idea ever. we drew a ton of traffic and even had people “lurking” around the booth. 
 

The key message for the conference was that companies can use us for value-added services while still using the bank of their choice. To buttress our “best of both worlds” positioning, we went with a political theme: “Why vote blue or red? Vote purple” (our corporate color).

Prior to the conference, we mailed out purple campaign buttons. If we spotted someone in the exhibit hall wearing the button, we’d give them a free Kindle Reader. We gave 20 out over 4 days, plus a few Kindle Fires for those that stopped by the booth directly. And the best part about it is that we had the attendees spreading our brand for us!

Try it out – there are more "holidays" or special occasions that you can leverage for your next breakthrough trade show. Mardi Gras, Guy Fawlkes Day, Homecoming, the Super Bowl, you name it.  And if you can make it relevant to your core B2B target, even better.  Marketing to attorneys or other professions that need continuing education credits?  Tie in their fear of not having enough CLE, CPE, CEP, etc. credits for Halloween. 

Ian Eccleston is a marketing director at a financial services company.  Ian has 14 years of experience marketing for the B2B complex sale, and is a student at Northwestern's Integrated Marketing Communications masters program. Find him on Twitter at @B2BIMC.