Congrats! You did it. You made it through the two biggest conferences of the year. Now comes the fun part: turning the sea of veterinary conference leads you gathered into sales-ready opportunities. Use these tips to make sure they all get a world-class follow-up.
1. Identify where each lead is in your funnel.
Review and clean your data before uploading it to your CRM. This ensures you can clearly identify which leads are MQLs and SQLs. Take the time to read the notes and update the fields that you use to identify MQLs and SQLs. Even the other criteria you use to identify different personas or cohorts of leads that get nurtured differently. Don’t skip this critical step! You know what they say—garbage in, garbage out.
It’s tempting to add leads to your CRM quickly without cleaning them and thinking they’ll be “good enough.” But when it comes to data hygiene, you want to keep things super clean. If you use personalization tokens such as first and last name, make sure you update the data to have proper capitalizations, so your personalized emails don’t look like you are yelling someone’s name.
2. Create visibility in your CRM and communicate with sales…OFTEN.
Track each conference’s metrics separately in your CRM, so you can identify which shows performed best. You’ll also want to make it easy for sales to find and work the leads. Keep a close eye on conference metrics for several months post-show and note changes in lead statuses and how the opportunity pipeline is growing.
If the data show that nothing is happening, it’s a red flag telling you sales and marketing need to communicate. These metrics are critical to creating accountability between sales and marketing to ensure all your hard-earned leads are getting the attention they deserve.
3. Engage cool veterinary conference leads from promo sign-ups.
Many companies host booth promotions during conferences. It’s a good way to grow internal databases. Often these leads are very top-of-funnel and require nurturing and education to convert them into MQLs. Bottom line: Get these leads into a top-of-funnel nurturing sequence. If you don’t have the resources to create nurturing sequences or you need support with content, the Brief team can help.
4. Nurture warm leads from booth conversations.
The most left-behind group of veterinary conference leads is often in the middle-of-funnel. You know the ones: They stopped by and were scanned. They stayed and talked to a sales rep for 30 minutes, but they weren’t the final decision-maker, and they left without asking for a demo. Often, a salesperson will call once or twice, but if they don’t get through, you risk these leads being abandoned. These leads are primed to be nurtured, so don’t leave them behind!
Put these leads in a middle-of-funnel nurturing sequence with in-depth information, buyer’s guides, testimonials, etc. Automate tasks for the sales reps to follow up via phone after they’ve completed the sequence.
5. Convert hot conference leads.
These are the leads who said they wanted a demonstration or perhaps to have a sales conversation after the show. It’s easy for these to get lost in the mix. Make sure your team has a process that creates visibility of these opportunities and associates them with your conference campaigns.
Sometimes organizations say, “Oh the rep said they will follow up with the hot ones. We don’t need to track them.” But that can create a scenario where you are not able to accurately track and measure your show success.
If a rep works these leads outside of your CRM and normal business processes, you risk losing the conference ROI attribution. Make sure in the post-show lead upload that all of these hot demo request leads are associated with your conference. Don’t forget to open up deals and attribute them to the show.
6. Use social re-targeting.
Create social media ads for your top-of-funnel leads and middle-of-funnel leads to extend the reach of your nurturing content. Develop a third set of ads targeted at SQL conversion, based on who engaged with the top- and middle-of-funnel ads. An email drip campaign can often be the right formula for social campaigns.
7. Leverage email re-marketing.
You can deploy follow-up emails that extend show specials, offer attendees the opportunity to provide feedback in a survey, or invite leads to book a meeting with a calendar booking link. These on-time emails can be deployed before leads enter their respective nurturing sequences.
8. Include leads in end-of-quarter and year-end promos.
It might feel a little early to be talking about the end of the year, but it’s really not. Don’t forget to include these leads in communications about quarter- and year-end promotions. Existing leads and open opportunities are often low-hanging fruit for conversion on these promotions.
Let’s start nurturing your conference leads!
Contact the Brief Media team today to start a conversation about how we can help you nurture and convert your show leads.