Smart Digital Marketing For Exhibitions in 2024

If you are visiting exhibitions in 2024 you need to have a clear digital ad strategy to help you make the most of your investment in the trade show. This means taking the time to plan not just your ad content but also how it will appear and how you will collect the data to see how it worked after the show.

No one gets their digital marketing campaign right the first time. We create a campaign, run it, collect the data and then optimize and reconfigure the content and the targets of the campaign so that we can do better next time. If you don’t do this then you cannot optimize either your ad spend or the sales of your products as you don’t have good data to work with.

There are two basic parts to the process that I will look at this this article: The sequence of activities before the show, and then the data set up that you should make sure is in place to take advantage of all of the hard work you and your team have put in for the exhibition.

Pre Show Marketing Activities

Each company will have their own way of doing things, but the important thing is to have a coherent plan well in advance of the show so that you get the best possible results for your sales team and also make the most of the channel marketing opportunities during the exhibition itself.

Social Media and Google Ads before the show

Running these is a great way to raise awareness with the right people that you will be at the show and also that you will have some great new products there for them. For B2B Channels, Linkedin is critical for this and offers a very good ROI as it allows you to specifically target B2B customer industries and locations.

Email Marketing Through Channels and Lists

You can use industry specific online publications to boost your visibility through their email marketing campaigns and newsletters as well as your own email marketing to your existing B2B and B2C customers. You should always be building your email lists as these are a critical asset that helps your brand get rapid sales for new products from existing customers. If you are not running email marketing campaigns for your brand yet then this is something that you should look into urgently as it is a very cheap way for your brand the get a lot of exposure and sales with customers who already like your products.

Blog Posts and Articles

Blog posts are some of the top ranking and most visited pages on websites in 2024 and according to research companies that maintain an effective blog with great content attract 67% more inquiries than companies that don’t do this. The quality of blog posts and articles is very important so make sure to have a clear plan and great writing to make the most of every post.
Articles through industry channels and online magazines are also a great way to get exposure for your company and your products. Press releases and news stories on these channels are a great way to get rapid exposure before an exhibition with the right target audience.

Focus on Conversions

For all of these three types of marketing the most important thing is to make sure that you have clear target pages on your website that you will direct people clicking ads or links in emails and articles to. The second thing is to make sure that you have properly set up your data collection so that you are able to see which channels are delivering the most traffic and also whether they are converting into inquiries or sales, or just leaving the site. In the next section I will give you an overview of how to set up the data for your digital marketing activities.

Setting Up for Success: Tracking Campaign Performance Across Channels

For any brand there are some basic platforms that must be set up correctly if you want to obtain any meaningful data for your business:

• Google Analytics: A web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic, providing insights into user behavior and website performance.
• Google Search Console: A tool that helps website owners monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot their site’s presence in Google Search results.
• Platform Specific Analytics: If you are operating on a platform such as Shopify or Squarespace these channels also have their own analytics packages with excellent data.

For all of these platforms you should have monthly detailed reports with location, traffic and conversion information as well as sales data to see what is happening with your business so that you can strategize for the future.

Checklist for Effective Data Collection

Here’s a simple checklist to help you determine if your data is trackable across various advertising platforms:

1. Implement Conversion Tracking: Have you set up conversion tracking on your website to measure specific actions users take after interacting with your ads (e.g., purchases, sign-ups, downloads)? Google provides a detailed guide on setting up conversion tracking here: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722022?hl=en
2. Use UTM Parameters: Are you using UTM parameters to tag your website links within your ads? UTM parameters allow you to track specific details about your ad campaigns, such as source, medium, and campaign name. Learn more about UTM parameters in this Google resource: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/10917952?hl=en
3. Link Your Advertising Accounts: Have you linked your website analytics platform (e.g., Google Analytics) with your advertising accounts (e.g., Google Ads, social media advertising platforms)? Linking these accounts allows you to see how your advertising efforts translate into website traffic and conversions within a unified platform. Here’s a helpful guide on linking Google Ads to Google Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033961?hl=en

By completing this checklist, you’ll gain a clearer picture of whether your data collection is set up for cross-channel campaign measurement. If you need help implementing any of these steps, consider seeking assistance from a digital marketing professional.

Making the most of exhibitions is not something that you will get completely right the first time, but looking through the advice in this article will put you on the right path and hopefully allow you to collect enough data to see which marketing activities are working and which ones are not delivering value any more.

If you would like to find out more about how GlobalSense can help your business achieve international success with digital marketing please contact us.