Event budgets are typically pretty spongy. They are usually handed out in lump amounts with very little success measures put in place around these events. Here are a few ideas to drive real leads from event spend.

• Make sure each person attending the event has goals assigned to them. Some examples include– X # of people scanned, X # of demos, X # of conversations had outside of the company booth, # of business cards collected. Use a little budget for prizes for the winners.
• Assign someone or a group of people to visit every other company participating in the event. You obviously have something in common, you are at the same event. Challenge team members to get other companies to drive traffic your way. Again, give away prizes to the company that sends the most people your way. Good use of $$ here, not only are you getting a chance to meet people who may not have stopped by to see you, you are also starting a new relationship with your forwarding friend.
• Ask each person that stops by your booth about the person responsible for using/buying your product or service. Give away another prize here to the team member that gets not only a name but also contact information and a referral from the person attending the show.
• If you have partners attending a show, put together a program that encourages people to visit your partner’s booth and vice versa.
• Once you return from an event and are getting ready to hand the warm and hot leads over to sales, STOP. Remember if you are passing a lead on there should be some additional information that goes along with the lead. Information that deems it Sales-ready. For these leads, use a little event budget and incent the Sales team to push these leads and to keep you posted on their progress. Everyone likes to be rewarded, a little piece of your event budget for prizes and everyone wins.
• Leads that aren’t Sales ready, divide those into 2 groups – those that you have the right decision makers name and possible contact info. These people are ready for a very targeted marketing program. For those that you only have the information of the person that stopped by and visited you at the show, invest in contact discovery for these. It’s worth the extra dollars to be able to turn otherwise dead event data into an actionable lead. These newly discovered leads will then be ready for your targeted marketing programs.
• Don’t forget to keep up with your spend. You’ll need this to calculate your ROI. You’ll also want to use this info. to measure the new tactics you are trying out.
• Tag event leads in your CRM system. This information will be used for follow up, for continued marketing with relevant messaging, and most importantly it’s needed to measure ROI of the event.

Got any more creative event spend ideas? Please share.