You’ve heard it all before, but there’s a reason organisers of business exhibitions still bang the follow up drum. Believe it or not, over 75% of exhibitors that exhibit at a business show, exhibition, or tradeshow, still fail to follow up after the event has finished.

It’s a shocking statistic and quite frankly enough is enough.

If you’re thinking of exhibiting or if you’ve recently booked a stand at one of our business expos, you must plan your follow up before the event.

And what’s great if you do allocate time after the event to follow up, you’re almost guaranteed instant results. Partly because none of your fellow exhibitors will bother.

To give you a headstart, here our three of the effective ways to follow up after an expo:

1. Send a personalised follow up email

Sounds simple, and that’s because it is. But the secret to effective email follow up is keeping is short and sweet. Don’t send someone an essay about who you are, what you do, what awards you’ve won and a list of clients. They don’t care. They want to know what’s in it for them.

Personalise the email with their name and more importantly inject personality. If you met them at the expo, carry on the conversation or remind them of what you spoke about at the event, so they know you’re talking to them directly.

2. Connect with them on LinkedIn

Again, this is an effective yet casual way to get them to opt-in to your network. Find them on LinkedIn and add a message when you send the connection request. Keep the message short and mention that you met them at the event, so they know you’re not just a stranger.

After they’ve accepted your connection request, engage with their posts. Like, comment and share to build the relationship. Remember that the event was just a place for you to meet, it’s now time to start the know, like and trust process.

3. Arrange a 1-1 to get to know them better

One of our favourite strategies when following up after an event is to arrange a meeting with our hottest prospects. And guess what, you should be doing the same too.

Contact everyone you met at the expo and invite them to a 1-1 call, meeting, appointment, Zoom call, Teams meeting or showroom visit.

Again, use the meeting to get to know them better and find out more about them and their business needs. You want to find out as much as you can about their business, so you can figure out how you can help them solve their problems.

Conclusion

Following up is easy but does require a little effort. Most people think that once the car is packed and you’ve driven home after the event that the hard work is done.

But actually, the event is just the beginning. If you find the time to follow up using the three ways we recommend, we guarantee that you’ll get instant results. You will get replies to your email. You will get people accepting your LinkedIn request. You will get a sales call or meeting.

The only reason you wouldn’t get a reply or a new LinkedIn connection or that sales call is because you didn’t do the follow up.