2019 NACS Show LinkedIn Campaign

challenge

Reach prospective tradeshow attendees and convince them to register for the 2019 NACS Show (tradeshow). Prospective attendees included 2018 attendees, individuals from the top 40 companies based on CSP Magazine’s ranking list and targeted key contacts. Another challenge is to overcome the regional preference where some attendees only attend the show closest to their home location.

Skills Utilized

strategy

Reach known and unknown contacts within the convenience and fuel retailing industries using the LinkedIn Advertising platform. LinkedIn is the chosen platform because it provides company and job function and job title targeting, which are very important to reaching this niche audience. Once in front of the target audience, present them with information about sessions, speakers, and other new components of the 2019 NACS Show.

solution

Used the LinkedIn platform to reach these highly-targeted professional audiences using a combination of targeting types: contact and account matching for past attendees and “key contacts”, company and job title targeting for “Top 40” companies.

Created several posts that highlighted key features of the event including, featured speakers, networking parties, education sessions, exhibitions, new products and more. Post images and content were pulled directly from other event marketing materials which made for a tightly integrated overall campaign that utilized multiple channels and maintained a consistent message.

The results presented below were very positive, although the number of confirmed registrations is in the single digits. The number only reflects those registrations which came directly from a LinkedIn ad and registered with the same device. In corporate settings the person being targeted and the person making the purchase are two different people, an assistant for example. Another factor is that most people use more than one device these days and may view an ad on their smartphone but register on a desktop which would not attribute their registration to the ad. Unfortunately, this challenge still persists even when implementing sophisticated tracking measures.