For Sales and Marketing professionals in the biopharma and life science industries, exhibiting, sponsoring and attending tradeshows is a long accepted way of getting leads. However the benefits are dampened by some significant issues – they can be incredibly expensive, take a huge amount of time to plan and attend, and there are hundreds of them a year making it impossible to take part in them all!
This article explains how SciLeads’ lead generation platform can help you decide on which events to invest in, and how to get the biggest ROI out of both attended, and even unattended events.
What Tradeshow Information Does SciLeads Hold?
We are constantly adding new scientific tradeshow data into our platform – we currently have info for over 1400 of them, with new data being added on average 3 weeks before each show begins. This includes all attendees, presenters, details of scientific posters and when they will be speaking, plus which BioPharma companies will be exhibiting (including your competitors). Use the upcoming and past years’ attendance information to make informed decisions on which of the hundreds of events each year are worth the investment.
Attended Events – Pre-Show Campaigns
Anyone who has manned a booth, trying to flag down relevant prospects to talk to will understand how difficult it can be, and the value of being able to pre-book as many meetings as possible. For tradeshows that you decide are worth the investment, use the email addresses, LinkedIn profiles and phone numbers in the SciLeads platform to reach out to attendees and book meetings with them at the event up to three weeks in advance. This avoids the need to use often disappointing event apps which rely on attendees creating and checking an account. Even those who do create accounts usually only do so on the day of the event allowing little time to book meetings, and are often overwhelmed with last minute messages.
The above graph shows the top tradeshows to attend for for CRISPR in 2023.
The wealth of information in SciLeads, such as poster information, recent publications, grants, VC investment, mergers and acquisitions allows users to personalize their messaging and make their outreach stand out from the crowd.
Attended Events – During the Scientific Tradeshow
Of course the most important thing is to attend all of the meetings you pre-booked using the information in the SciLeads platform! But for those you could not secure ahead of time, use the scientific poster and presentation times to plan your day and visit as many prospects as possible. Informed with the profile information on each prospect, initiate informed, tailored conversations and present relevant information to secure sales.
Attended Events – Post Show
If travel is involved, the information in SciLeads allows you to search for companies who, although not attending the event, may be interested in a face-to-face meeting while you are in the area, maximizing the ROI from the visit. Once the event is over, use the information in the platform to follow up with both the people you met, and those you missed, using the contact info in SciLeads, tailoring each outreach using their profile details. The network visualization feature in SciLeads also allows you to see who you may have in common with prospects you are not able to reach, to secure warm introductions from your existing contacts.
Non-Attended Events
For the events you cannot justify the spend of attending, create omni-channel virtual campaigns, personalized to each person based on the profile info in the platform. Use the alerts available in the platform to receive email notifications whenever one of your prospects makes a notable change, e.g. receives a new grant, moves jobs or labs, or has published a new paper – and reach out with relevant offers at the perfect time.
If you are running an account based marketing (ABM) campaign, these alerts can provide all the information needed to tailor your outreach to that company. Messaging those who attended the event, including details about their recent presentation, and asking questions that are relevant to both them and your product offering, can be a great way to open doors in that company. A perfectly relevant multi-channel email campaign can, in fact, prove much more fruitful than a poorly researched, and therefore forgettable, conversation at an event!
This article covers just the events-based use cases for the SciLeads platform, but there are very many more! Get a personalized demo here.