A Guide to B2B Event Lead Generation in 2025

According to various sources, lead generation at trade shows accounts for between 20% and 60% of marketers’ lead generation, depending on the industry and several other parameters. However, they all agree that face-to-face event meetings are among the top five most effective lead-generation methods.

Marketers highly value the personal contact opportunities that conferences and trade shows provide to build stronger relationships with potential customers, as well as brand development opportunities.

In this article, I will examine the methodology for generating leads at trade shows, including the specifics of this type of lead generation, the reasons why some marketers fail to achieve results, and a guide to the lead generation process—from pre-event preparation to follow-up.

Trade Show Lead Generation

Quite often, marketers fail to achieve tangible results from lead generation at trade shows. Therefore, first of all, it is worth analyzing the most common reasons why this happens:

• Definition of ICP (Ideal Client Profile)

Quite often, marketers rely on the principle of mass-collecting contacts of all passing conference participants in the hope that, in the future, there will be qualified leads among them. This is what reduces ROI.

• Preparation for processing leads after the event

Often, the team does not care about post-processing leads after the event, relying on the situation: " First, we will collect them, and then we will figure out how to process them based on the situation.”

• Work plan at the event

Many neglects to develop a plan and schedule for work at the conference, including collecting leads and compiling a database.

• Focus

When communicating with potential clients at events, the team forgets that they are communicating with people, seeing only numbers in them. Focusing on scanning badges, the team loses personal contact with people, value is not created, and mutual understanding is not established.

• Lead generation

Without preparing a lead generation process before the event, the team starts thinking about what to do and how to do it after the event, losing valuable time, the leads cool off, because at the event they met not only you, there were many contacts, and it is easy for them to forget you in the flow of information.

Benefits of the methodology for B2B lead generation at events

• No unnecessary interruptions in the schedule - participants get the most out of every minute spent on the conference.
• Only high-quality leads - sales and ideal customer (ICP) research ensures that you will only meet with potential clients - eliminating unqualified event attendees is as important as targeting the right ones.
• Ability to find clients in advance—you will have full-scale sales meetings with decision-makers, while others will look for them only at the event.
• Effective sales management - you will have time to learn everything you can about the people you meet, their companies and business objectives.
• Right time: Since the meetings were scheduled in advance, you won't have to change your busy schedule.
• Creating value: Personal communication is always more effective than remote communication because it allows you to establish personal contact with the client. Try to create a history of your relationship from the first meeting so that it will be easier to continue communicating in the future.

3 steps to effective lead generation at trade shows

Step one: Preparation

If you decide to conduct lead generation as part of an event, I recommend starting preparations two months in advance. During this time, you need to:

• Create and describe the ICP for the event. Based on this profile, your sales development specialists (SDR) will compile a participant database, search for contact information, and create a meeting schedule.
• Important: It is worth putting current clients who plan to attend the event on a separate list. This will help you meet with clients once again, increase loyalty, improve relationships, and discuss increasing the check.
• Prepare and launch a targeted advertising campaign to attract the attention of event participants to your company. This will increase the attendance at your stand, convey the key message to potential clients, and maximize the effect of your participation in the event.
• Form a team to work on the project. The composition of the team may vary, but it must include marketers, business development specialists, and technical specialists if you are selling a technically complex product.
• Prepare content for work at the event. Be sure to formulate a key message, prepare product materials, and create so-called battle cards for working out objections. Be sure to formulate a special offer for event participants that will help interest clients and increase conversion into deals. As a rule, this is a one-page document that reveals how your company can close the client's pain point and voice your offer.
• Important: It is advisable to adapt the one-page document to the conference theme.
• Define a branding strategy as part of your work at the event. This strategy can include branded clothing, souvenirs, special prizes for active participation in quizzes or surveys, purchasing a branded sponsorship pack at the event, attracting agents of influence to your stand to promote your brand, etc.
• Launch an outreach campaign. Use a mix of marketing strategies to reach clients. For example, you can create a mobile application for the event with company art, reach out on social networks, use email marketing, and make cold calls. This will help you reach the maximum number of clients. For greater efficiency, you can prepare a landing page with a separate demo stand of your product (if it is a technology product), where the user can study the product in more detail and register on the spot.

Important:

Templates and scripts for messages in social networks and email

• When preparing the texts of letters and messages, it is advisable to use the name of the event in the subject line, this will help clients quickly navigate and not reject your message immediately.
• Write more about the meeting and less about the sale.
• Write short and simple. The value lies in a personal meeting.
• Advertise WHO will be at the event (for example, your CEO or vice president) and what prospects visitors will get from meeting with them.
• Offer to attend the participants' stand and not just invite them to yours.
• Do not use bold fonts, attachments and non-standard fonts - all this only repels and reduces conversion to responses.

Landing

• Add a form in Google to schedule a meeting directly on the page.
• Indicate a link to the landing page in the letters that you send to your potential clients.
• Place valuable closed content there (for example, your insights).

Social networks

• Use hashtags with the event name and event page tag in posts
• Publish content related to the topic of the event
• Preparing CRM. Be sure to enter all collected customer contacts into the CRM so that you do not lose the database in the future and can evaluate the effectiveness of lead generation.
• Create a meeting schedule. You can use simple tables or more advanced online booking tools. This will allow you to structure your work schedule during the event as much as possible, avoid losing a single lead, and use your working time at the event as efficiently as possible.

Important: remember that work at an event is very dynamic, the schedule may change, especially for clients. Meetings can be rescheduled, so it is worth considering the possibility of changing the schedule, or rescheduling meetings for the evening, after the end of the event.

• Prepare playbooks, communication channels, and message templates for working with leads after the event. Scenarios must be created for all client categories mentioned in the third step. This will allow you to avoid wasting time and conduct follow-up in a structured manner.

Step two: Event

• How well you prepare will determine how your work goes during the event. While the work schedule is very important, it is worth remembering that it can change, and this should not throw you off track.
• Create a general chat for the workgroup. This will help coordinate the team's actions and schedule changes quickly.
• Closely monitor the results of all meetings with clients. During the event, a large number of meetings take place, as a result of which at the end of the day it is easy to forget with whom what was discussed and what was agreed upon. Use tools for recording the results of negotiations. Try to take joint photos and sign them so that in the future you will be able to recognize clients by appearance. Collect all the results of negotiations in one place, so that in the future it will be easier to import them into the CRM.
• If possible, try to exchange phone numbers with the client during the meeting, send a greeting message in the messenger and receive a response. In the future, this will help to more easily establish contact after the event and continue negotiations. During negotiations, try to pay more attention to the client's business and the problems they face in order to find the best solution, instead of immediately starting to advertise your product.
• At the end of the working day, discuss the results with the team and what can be improved the next day (if the event is not a one-day event).

Step three: Follow-up

Follow-up is essential for any promotion. If you want to convert the contacts you collected into leads successfully, and the leads into contracts, then you should not rely on the memory of your conversations during the meeting. Remember that conference participants are very busy with information, including after the event, so your meeting can easily get lost and forgotten in the flow.

You need to have a post-event work plan with all categories of clients:

• Clients with whom you had meetings
• Clients you met at the conference
• Clients who never showed up
• Clients who did not agree to meet with you
• Clients who did not respond to a single email/phone call during the preparatory lead generation process.

Follow-up actions can be carried out via any communication channels, including phone, email, and instant messengers.

Enter all the collected information into the CRM, this will allow you to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the performance and evaluate the ROI.

Try not to put off the first contact after the conference for a long time, assuming that clients are very busy in the first days after the event. Of course, they are busy, but the longer you put off contact, the more likely they are to forget about you simply.

In your messages, use the general joint experience gained from participating in the event.

If the contract did not happen right away, do not write off the client completely; instead, transfer him to the “Hold” status. Perhaps your product is not relevant to him at the moment, but the situation may change tomorrow. Therefore, try to maintain contact with the client, share news with him, congratulate him on holidays, etc. Remember that simple human communication has not gone away and still plays an essential role in establishing trusting relationships with clients.

Helpful Tips:

How to Make Lead Generation Phone Calls:

• Before you make the call

Make a list of all the available time slots for the entire event. If you get a "yes," you won't waste time looking for a convenient time.

Learn about your clients' businesses! Find out what the company does, write down a list of their services and how your company can help them.

You must believe that the prospect really needs your product or service. To test this, try to imagine yourself in their shoes and ask yourself, "What will I get from this solution?"

Think of several ways your company can help.

• During the call

Make it clear that you are not trying to sell them anything now. You want to establish a business connection and set up a business meeting at the conference. One key goal of such events is to meet new people and find new business opportunities.

Have a plan B. If the client decides to skip the event, do not hesitate to arrange a video call within a week of the conference. Please say that your experts have extensive experience in the customer segment, you have insights, and you are calling to talk about it.

If the answer is "we already have such a solution," do not give up. Instead, ask questions about their satisfaction and effectiveness.

If you called at the wrong time, say it is very important and politely ask when you can call back.

• After the Call

Send a follow-up message summarizing your phone conversation. Be sure to thank them and share any content relevant to that decision-maker and company.

If you didn’t set up a meeting during the call but you feel they are ready, write down three meeting time slots in your email.

Outreach Practices

When doing lead generation or follow-up, it is important to follow certain rules for sending messages to clients. Don’t make the sequences too long. You can’t send more than 5. If the client hasn’t responded to you after the fifth message, then the next messages are likely to end up in spam. Take a break and wait a while before the next wave.

If you send the first wave of emails to the rest of your list on the eve of the conference, make sure that this is also the last wave. There is no point in trying to catch up on missed meetings during the entire event.

If you use automation services to send messages, make sure that all the settings are carefully followed so that the messages do not end up in spam. To do this, you should change the message texts, observe the intervals for sending messages, check the authenticity of customer email addresses, and not send a large number of messages at once.

Conclusion

Events can be a good opportunity for you to develop your business. Personal meetings have always been one of the best ways to establish strong business relationships in B2B. And after the transition to a remote work format, such meetings have become even more valuable. The main thing is to approach the lead generation process thoughtfully and calculate each step so that in the end you can evaluate the effectiveness of this approach to sales development.