Optimization and data-driven. I’m sure you’ve been hearing these buzzwords. Just check your
As much as you hear about it, don’t over look it. In a world where you can track exactly when someone opens up your email, how many times they’ve visited your website, and how engaged they are within your application, being data-driven and constantly optimizing user behavior should be a way of life. Heck, it can be a religion.
For example, Neil Patel, in a guest post on Conversion XL, talks about five characteristics you can test in your article headlines to increase readership of your articles. And our GetCourse team constantly tests email subject lines to improve open rates. In order to better convert users, we are still testing the core messaging of how GetCourse allows you to add user analytics, lead capture, and questions to presentations.
Interestingly, the zeitgeist of testing often seems limited to the online world. We don’t do as much to test and optimize our interactions in the real world.
We wanted to change this, and what better place to do this at conferences where we have meaningful opportunities to interact with potential customers.
How we started testing 100% of our human interactions
To give you some background, we also sell a popular educational reading and writing product called EasyBib, used by over 40 million students. At a recent educational conference, we tested different approaches to engage would-be users in the exhibit hall with the ultimate goal of getting their contact information. Two of our team members, Brendan and Eli, tested three strategies.
Test 1: Asking if people were familiar with EasyBib.
Asking if people knew about EasyBib was 50/50. We found that people clearly walking down the exhibitor aisle were rarely responsive. They awkwardly shook their head “no” and continued on their way. Those who glanced at the booth, however, were significantly more responsive. Some of them knew about EasyBib, and wanted to learn more. Others saw how EasyBib teaches research skills, and were curious to understand how it can improve their teaching.
Key takeaway: It may seem obvious, but only focus on those who show at least some interest. Trying to engage those who only walk by is not a good use to time and energy.
Test 2: Starting conversation with our marketing swag
Asking if people wanted our “Super Librarian” stickers and our “Cite It Before You Write It” bookmarks turned out to be great to stop and initially engage people. The attendees identified with the swag, liked it, and were happy to take it. However, this rarely led to conversation about the product, and our team collecting contact information. When it did lead to a product discussion, these people were either familiar with EasyBib or were glancing at our marketing material beforehand.
Key takeaway: Swag alone does not generate leads.
Test 3: Being conversational and coming across with no agenda
Casual and unassuming conversations resulted in good lead conversion. We tried numerous nonchalant openers. Based on the time of day, we struck up conversation about food, asking, “I’m about to get some lunch, have you tried anything good here yet?” We asked where they traveled from. If they were from Chicago, for example, we would try to impress them with our sports knowledge by talking about Da Bears.
We had the most consistent success talking about the conference. We researched keynote speakers beforehand, and monitored what was trending on Twitter with the conference hashtag. We would engage people by saying, “We’ve been hearing great things about the keynote on the flipped library. Did you watch it?” This would lead to genuine conversations about trends in the educational space, and easily evolve into how EasyBib addresses these trends.
Once conversation was established, we would try to navigate the conversation to discuss the benefits of EasyBib. This, in and of itself, requires different strategies and testing. Overall, we found success transitioning the conversation to talk about product and capture contact information.
Key takeaway: Try talking to people like people, not like an object you want to make a sale to. Be well informed about the conference through conference newsletters and social media. Opportunistically chat about other topics, like where a potential customer is from, especially if you can read it on their badge and know about the place, or about food options if it’s lunchtime.
Challenges being data driven at a conference
Our goal was to document each conversation, whether we were able to engage them, and if we were able to get their contact information. In marketing speak, if you will, we wanted to assess our lead funnel from conversation acquisition to contact conversion based on our strategies.
We quickly found out, however, that it’s very difficult to track what happened when our booth was very busy. We didn’t want to take notes at the cost of not talking to people. Instead, we blocked of different times of the day to try different strategies, and took down anecdotal data.
Additionally, we found that some of our conversations felt a bit like cold calling, but were even more uncomfortable because they were face-to-face. We were okay with that. We were spending thousands of dollars to attend the conference, and we wanted to educate as many people as possible about EasyBib.
Why you should have a testing framework at conferences
Having this plan going into the conference, we were very cognizant of how we spent our time, and how we approached each interaction with a potential customer. We exercised a mindset of “Is this, or is this not working?” Each person walking by, or each interaction was a learning experience. It made us accountable to succeed or fail at our different approaches to customer engagement.
More importantly, we can employ a better game plan for our next conference based on our learnings. For those seemingly uninterested in our booth, we’ll talk about popular conference sessions, and for those who give us that importance glance, we’ll hand out our stickers and ask if they know about our product. And of course, we’ll iterate on these strategies to become ever more effective.
Do you try similar data-driven approaches when exhibiting at conferences? What works for you? Feel free to tweet or follow me @tapneal. I promise I'll get back to you ;-)
