The current situation unfortunately does not allow visiting face-to-face exhibitions and calls for alternatives to trade shows. Digital media with high-quality gated content support your company in acquiring new leads and B2B customers for your successful business.
For your businesses, trade fairs and exhibitions are an important instrument to increase the level of awareness of your company and to acquire new customers in the B2B segment. Thus, this form of external presentation is an important part of your marketing strategy.
At the same time, you will meet important regular customers at trade fairs and possibly gain new leads or direct orders through interesting trade fair discussions. Unfortunately, due to the restrictions associated with the corona virus, it is not possible to physically attend to trade fairs with an audience.
But what alternatives to trade fairs are there at all for successful new customer acquisition?
For your company in the B2B sector, it is an important prerequisite that you maintain contacts with your regular customers even in these difficult times. At the same time, it is crucial for your sales pipeline to regularly get new interesting contacts to B2B customers.
This is the only way your business will be successful in the future. Thanks to the digital world, there are still ways to shape marketing. As an alternative to trade shows, these options exist:
Showcase your business on an online blog
Use social media channels
Start personalized email campaigns
Create videos
Host online webinars
To choose the best concept for your strategy, Aioma, as a specialist in marketing in the B2B segment, can always assist you. In many cases, a mix of the presented alternatives to trade fairs is a tailor-made solution for your company.
An important alternative to trade fairs is the production and provision of gated content from your own company. With this strategy you have a solid starting point to generate new leads for your B2B business.
Case studies
Webinars
Whitepapers
are some examples of gated content that you can make available on your website. In order for your prospects to view the content, they must first fill out a digital contact form and disclose their company information to the people on your marketing team.
So receiving contact information of potential leads is your company's reward for providing the gated content for free.
When creating your content, it is crucial that it is of high quality, both in terms of content and presentation. Additionally, your content should be exclusive and make the user feel like they have been given unique content for giving up their data.
Only when your new lead feels well-informed they will increase their contact with your marketing staff. Another great benefit of good gated content is digital distribution.
Satisfied leads will share your content, ensuring wide distribution for the content you uniquely created.
Here are some suggestions that can be an alternative to trade shows for successful lead generation.
It is currently not possible to organise physical trade fairs. Therefore, the updating and maintaining your website is of crucial importance.
A good idea is to provide your visitors on the Internet with current information about your business and your products.
An online blog with regular new content and gated content is extremely efficient for your marketing. Here, the employees in marketing and sales can present new products and important topics.
This way, you spread the topics and focal points that were announced at trade fairs and exhibitions in the past via your own website.
Source: ELPRO Company Blog
The widest distribution of gated content occurs with high-quality content shared via social networks. In the B2B segment, business-related platforms such as:
are often used to share business related content.
At the same time, the widely used social media networks such as:
are good channels for the distribution of videos from your company.
Source: Preview of a LinkedIn post with the Aioma software
When designing websites, remember not to overwhelm users with information. For example, a long video should be divided into topic sections in order to serve users snackable content tailored to their needs.
Additionally, provide interesting information about your products that is downloadable for free on your website.
By accessing the company's own database, the marketing team can determine which B2B customers were regularly invited to the presence trade fairs.
As an alternative to trade fairs, these contacts can be informed about important topics, developments in the company and new products with e-mail campaigns.
This digital customer access can be well used for:
Newsletter
E-books
Product videos
Whitepapers
For example, you may use gated content in the form of product videos and invite your regular customers and leads to livestream demonstrations on your website. It is crucial that your email campaign is personalized. This is the only way to ensure that your important information reaches the decision-makers of your clientele and doesn't end up as spam in the digital wastebasket.
Source: Personalized Newsletter from Aioma Software
An efficient alternative to trade shows is to create and distribute videos. Here you have the option to present new products of your company in detail.
At the same time, you can use other videos to answer potential questions from your prospects and respond to the needs of your leads and customers.
Through this medium, you can also publish video material that was planned for the fancy trade fair appearance.
Self-created videos as an alternative to trade fairs are particularly well suited as gated content. With the aid of a digital form you receive the contact data of interested leads. As a reward for revealing their data, the prospect receives the video they want as a link.
Your company's marketing staff can create their own videos in the same way as would be possible at a trade show under normal circumstances.
A good alternative to trade shows in the digital world is the tool of live webinars. Through this medium, interested customers and leads can be informed in a kind of video conference.
At the same time, it is possible to address questions in order to directly enlighten the participants. To generate leads, the webinars can be used to present
Whitepapers
Seminar documents
Product information
Company news
Certificates for customer loyalty
and can be distributed via download according to the content.
Well trained marketing personnel should of course know all the important information about your company and products. In addition, it is crucial to convince the participants of the webinar with a confident, friendly and polite appearance.
For the success of the webinars it is a prerequisite that the virtual seminar room is equipped with perfect image and sound quality. This is the only way to create a real alternative to trade fairs.
Unfortunately, the important instrument of visiting trade fairs is currently not possible for the active marketing of your company. Therefore, it is crucial for the continued success of your business to find alternatives to trade fairs.
The digital world offers the members of your marketing team excellent options for a professional corporate presence to attract new leads in the B2B segment.
The basis for this is an updated website with unique gated content offerings. Here, interested leads have the opportunity to pick up information that is important to them after providing contact details.
You still gain contacts to promising customers with this alternative to trade fairs. At the same time, good gated content on your website increases the awareness of your company when the good content is multiplied by likes on the net.
