Here is a common scenario for a Sales or Marketing Manager. You receive an email announcing it is time to register to exhibit at an upcoming trade show. It’s a tradeshow you have participated in before. You immediately ask yourself: “Should we exhibit at this show again this year? Times are tight. Is this show worth the time and expense?”
Then you begin to think: “Well, did we get any good leads from the show last year? If we did, maybe we should go back. But did we? What happened to all those leads from last year’s show anyway? Did any of them turn into anything? What about the show leads from the year before that?”
Microsoft Dynamics CRM software can help you answer these questions.
Dynamics CRM Marketing Campaigns enables you to build a marketing campaign around a or any other event designed to bring you leads. Not only does it provide all the benefits of a planned, targeted marketing campaign to support the event, but Campaigns give you a way to plan and track both the expenses and the results for any other marketing event.
Here is an example: You decide to promote attendance at your trade show booth with a free giveaway; and you decide to promote the giveaway thru e-mail and a mailing. You also post the tradeshow giveaway offer on your website.
- In Dynamics CRM, under you can set up the activities to market the show and organize all the supporting activities such as the giveaways and the mailings. All the required activities are assigned and all the costs documented.
- To sweeten the pot, ) provides a detailed framework with which to plan and track the activities and expenses of attending the event.
- But now comes the best part: all the responses are recorded and can be traced back to the marketing activity that generated them.
Now you have the tools to analyze what really happened:
- Did the mailing generate responses?
- Did the giveaway bring people to the booth?
- How much did the giveaway promotion end up costing?
- What was the total financial investment for doing the tradeshow?
- And in the end, did these tradeshow leads generate business?
- How does this tradeshow compare to other shows?
- Should we exhibit again next year?
The next time you ask yourself if it is worthwhile to participate in a tradeshow or any other marketing activity, consider how Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides the detailed information you need to make the right decision.
By John Fischer, Account Executive, at your , Crestwood Associates.
