It's wedding Expo season. What are you going to do with those leads? Listen to this episode for some ideas. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. This is a listener suggestion, this one from Chuck in Philadelphia. And he said, it's wedding show season. What are we supposed to do with these leads? Well, there's a different way to think about wedding expos or any kind of trade show that you do. It doesn't have to be for weddings.
It could be anything. And the first thing, and I've done an episode like this in the past, if you go back, it's probably a year or two ago, about a wedding show success. And I have this thing of six steps to wedding show success. And what I want you to do is prepare for the show before the show. Let's prepare your booth. Know what you're going to do. Have everything you need, have backup supplies, have repair supplies, and everything that you need. And I always like to get to a show early, first of all, in case traffic.
But you get there early, set your booth up, and then you go to walk around, because once the show starts, usually I don't have that time, see who else is there, help some other people carry things, set up, whatever, know where people are. So when someone says, hey, I'm looking for something, you could say, oh, go see my friend Chris around the corner. Right? They're great. And now you'll know those things. So that's a good thing to do. The next is prepare your follow up before the show. Now, why is that important? Because once you get that list, life's gonna get in the way. And that's why only about 10%, usually not more than that, of the exhibitors at a wedding expo, are gonna use the list at all.
And that, to me, is a crime because you paid for it. You paid for access to an audience that will never exist again as a group. Now, some of those people might see you on your social or might not. Some of them might see you on an ad platform like wedding wire, the knot, weddings online, hitched, et cetera. Or they may not. Some of them will find you on Google or not. This group as a whole will never exist anywhere again. And you paid for that privilege.
So prepare your follow up before the show. If you're going to do direct mail, have the pieces printed. If you're going to have something that goes in their bag, have those things created, printed, designed, whatever, before the show, obviously you need, if you're going to hand them out, you need them before the show. But your follow up emails, your landing pages, anything you do specifically for that show should be done beforehand. When I do a show, like, let's say, wedding MBA, I have the landing page for that where I'm going to give away my slides if that's what I'm doing. It's created, it's done. The email is created, and it's just waiting for the list. It's waiting for the people to send it to.
And that's what I want you to do, is have your stuff ready. The next thing is to think about the four different lists that you could end up with from a show. The first list is sales that you made. And if you think you can't make sales, you're right, because you're not going to try. If you think you can, then you might. And that means being prepared to take a deposit or whatever you call it, retainer or whatever, space preservation, being able to take that, being able to get some sort of contractual thing done, whether it's an e signature or something right there. To me, the money talks. So if you get them to give you a payment and.
And then you're able to send them a receipt and say, this is holding that date, and then we'll do the papers, that's fine, too. But I. Cause I think the money is more important than that case, than the signature. Cause there's your commitment. Experienced. Recently, my son and his fiance were looking for wedding venues and he told me, yeah, there's a few of the venues are holding a date for them. I said, did you give them any money? They said no, and they didn't end up choosing, obviously, they only choose one. So the other ones that they didn't were holding this date with no commitment by this couple.
And that's why I don't think you should ever hold a date without money. Right. I tell people I'll pencil it in, but that date's not yours until we have deposit. Again. To me, that's more important than the signature. I'll take the signature, but I'll take the money first and that's done. So what you want to do is be prepared to make a sale at the show. The second list you'll end up with is people that you made appointments with because you can only speak to them for so long, or maybe they don't have their partner with them or other people that are involved in the decision.
So you've scheduled a phone, zoom in person, a tour, whatever you schedule that, you have your calendar there, you're ready to do it. You send them the calendar appointment so that it's in their calendar as well. You have their contact information. There you go. Will some people not make those appointments? Sure. But if you do follow ups on that, if you're prepared for how to follow up and remind them of that, more of the people will show up. Third list is people you've had a conversation with, but they're not ready for that next step. They're not ready for the call, the tour, the appointment, or anything like that.
And you're going to follow up specifically because you'll have a conversation where you're able to make notes, you're able to say not only where you met them, but something that they're interested in, whether it's a date or a style or a color or a service or a product or something like that. So your follow up can be more personal, and then you'll end up with everybody else that walked through the door, assuming the show gives you that list, because not all of them do. So if the show doesn't give you a list, are you prepared to get the other names some way somehow, whether it's electronically, whether it's on paper, whether you're able to scan, if they have codes on their stuff or whatever, you want to be able to do that. And those are your four lists. So obviously, sales you made, you follow up in your sales procedure. People have appointments, you're going to follow up reminding them about the appointment. People that you had a conversation with, you're going to follow up individually. That's not a drip campaign, that's not a series of emails that you're just going to start them on because you had a conversation with them.
So you're going to follow up personally using those personal details. And then the fourth list, those are the people you can put into an automated campaign where right after the show, they're going to get their first one, and then a couple of days later, and then a few days after that and so forth, different ones with different information, adding value each time. If you made an offer of added value, I don't like discounts, you probably know that. I prefer added value. But if you made some sort of an offer, you want to reiterate that you want to create a landing page on your website that sends these people there instead of to your homepage where anybody could be there and you have no connection with them. So you want to create a page for that show or for shows in general that has the four elements I always talk about, which is images that look like the results you provide. So people in them enjoying themselves, having a great time at an event. If you're doing weddings, Kinsey's mitzvahs, whatever type of show it is.
The second is make sure the text talks to them about results. So it's your wedding, it's your child's mitzvah, it's your corporate event, it's your holiday party, it's your whatever. You, you, you always that voice in there. The third piece is the social proof, which is short testimonials from people that have already done business with you because they're speaking to what you've actually done. You're talking about what you could do, they're speaking about what you've actually done. And then the fourth piece is the call to action. Tell them what to do next. Have a short form on the page.
Have contact information there, but tell them why. So to check our availability, get a price quote or and to speak to one of our wedding event, whatever specialists, call, text, email, fill out this short form, whatever it is. There's your call to action, and call is a link to dial and text is a link to text and email is a link to email. So they're all actionable right there. One page. Look at it on mobile because a lot of people when they get their email and click, are going to look at it on mobile. Make it not more than two screens on their phone. One if you can do it, but you probably can't that way, but try to make it no more than two screens.
Make sure the visuals work. Make sure the links work. They're easy to click. Have a nice big button to contact you. If there's a contact form, only ask what you need to start the conversation. Every field you add, less people will fill it out. So their name, their email, phone, make it optional. And if there's an episode coming out with Mark Chapman where we talked about this with the contact form and phone, and I think this might be coming out well when you're listening to this, it could be before or after.
I think this might be a little bit before, but I'll give you a little sneak preview. If you put in the phone field, enter your phone number if you prefer texting, he said that increases the number of people that will put the phone and then you can text with them and then you want to have a way to do that. I use connect. If you go to my website, k e n e c t, little widget that says text us and it pops up and asks you what you're texting, nice short form. And that's gotten a lot more people texting me, and I've made sales through texting. We're having a conversation. Why would I try to change it? So your key with the show is be prepared before the show that there's those four lists. Be prepared with your follow up.
So all of those email templates are created ready to go. And then as soon as the show is over, follow up with those four different lists the way you need to, and then follow up again. And then follow up again and try to add value each time. So don't just send the same one and the same one. And if you've heard me speak about, or if you read any of my books on ghosting or sales, you should know about keeping it short, asking one low commitment question, et cetera, you want to use that procedure, and you want to do it again and again, because about 90% of the people that are at that show exhibiting are not going to use that list. Now, they're not all your competitors because they're different categories. But think about that. 90% are not going to use that list giving the business to you because you'll follow up and they won't.
So if you want wedding show success, that's what you need to do. Thanks, Chuck, for the suggestion, and thanks for listening, and good luck.
I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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