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The Most Important Alternatives to Trade Fairs for B2B Companies

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.

The Importance of Trade Fairs for B2B

For your business, trade fairs and exhibitions are an important instrument to increase the level of awareness of the company and to win new customers in the B2B segment. Thus, this form of external presentation is an important part of the marketing strategy.

At the same time, you 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 hold presence trade fairs with an audience.

But what alternatives are there to trade fairs for successful new customer acquisition?

For your business in the B2B area, it is an important prerequisite that you maintain contact 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 do marketing. As an alternative to trade shows, these options exist:

To choose the best concept for your strategy, Pedalix as a specialist in automated content marketing in the B2B segment can always support you. In many cases, a mix of the presented alternatives to trade fairs is a tailor-made solution for your company.

With Gated Content to New Leads

An important alternative to trade fairs is the production and provision of gated content. With this strategy you have a good starting position to generate new leads for your B2B business.

  • Case studies

  • Webinars

  • Whitepapers

are some examples of gated lead magnets, which you can provide on your website. In order for your prospects to view the content, they must first fill out a digital contact form and provide their company information to your marketing team.

So getting contact leads is your 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. In addition, your content should be exclusive and give the user the feeling that they have received unique content for giving away their data.

Only when your new lead feels well-informed will they connect with people at your company. Another great benefit of good gated content is digital distribution.

Satisfied leads will share your content, ensuring a wide distribution for the content you uniquely created.

Here are some suggestions that can be an alternative to trade shows for successful lead generation.

Present Your Company in an Online Magazine

The organization of presence fairs is currently not possible. Therefore, the updating and maintenance of your website is of crucial importance.

A good idea is to provide your visitors on the Internet with current information about your areas of expertise.

An online magazine or 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.

In this way, you spread the topics and focal points that were announced at trade fairs and exhibitions in the past via your own website.

Use social media channels

The widest distribution of gated content occurs with high-quality content shared via social networks. In the B2B segment, business-related platforms such as:

  • LinkedIn

  • Xing

At the same time, the widely used social media networks such as:

  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

are good channels for the distribution of videos.

Source: Preview of a LinkedIn post with the Pedalix software

When designing your website, remember not to overwhelm users with information. For example, you should divide a long video into topic sections in order to serve users snackable content tailored to their needs.

Additionally, provide interesting information about your products for free download.

Launch Personalized Email Campaigns

By accessing the company's own database, the marketing team can determine which B2B customers were regularly invited to the 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, use gated content in the form of product videos and invite your regular customers and leads to livestream demonstrations. It is crucial that your email campaign is personalized. This is the only way to ensure that the important information reaches the decision-makers of your clientele and doesn't end up as spam in the digital wastebasket.

Source: Personalized Newsletter from Pedalix Software

Create Videos

An efficient alternative to trade shows is the creation and distribution of videos. Here you have the option to present new products of your company in detail.

At the same time, you can answer potential questions from your prospects and respond to the needs of your leads and customers in additional videos.

You can also use this medium to 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. You receive the contact data of interested leads via a digital form. As a reward for revealing their data, the interested party receives the video they want as a link.

Your employees can create their own videos in the same way as would be possible under normal circumstances at a trade fair.

Organize Online Webinars

A good alternative to trade fairs 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 answer 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

can be distributed via download according to the content.

Well trained marketing personnel should of course know all important information about your company and the products. In addition, it is crucial to convince the participants of the webinar by 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.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the important tool of visiting trade fairs is currently not possible for the active marketing of your company. Therefore, it is crucial for further success to find alternatives to trade fairs.

The digital world offers the members of your marketing team excellent options for a professional company presence for the acquisition of new leads in the B2B segment.

The basis for this is an updated website with unique content. Here, interested leads have the opportunity to pick up information that is important to them after providing their contact details.

So you still win contacts with this alternative to trade fairs. At the same time, good content increases the awareness of your company if the good content is multiplied by likes on the web.

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