Capture Lost Overflow Trade Show Leads With Our Digital Fishbowl

Let me tell you a story about how our Digital Fishbowl saved us from losing potentially lost trade show leads during the busiest times in our own trade show booth. And why you should, therefore, consider adding one or more Digital Fishbowls to your own booths at your busiest shows, too.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: Day 1 at EXHIBITORLIVE 2018. 

Within less than an hour of the start of the EXHIBITORLIVE 2018 show, we had 13 visitors at the same time in our 10 x 20 booth!  Hooray!  Just one problem — we only had 4 staffers to talk to them all!

It was awesome to have so many interested visitors, but agonizing to see interested prospects ready to walk away.  Especially when you know (thanks to Exhibit Surveys) that the average cost per trade show lead is $283 each!

This was the peak traffic moment, but not the only time all our staffers were already fully engaged while show attendees were continuing to stop at our booth.  Every day we had sustained busy periods.

Fortunately, we had a secret weapon: The Digital Fishbowl

The Digital Fishbowl is a modern take on the old-school glass bowl fishbowl, with a few great twists:

• Whereas visitors dump their business cards into a glass fishbowl to enter a prize drawing, the Digital Fishbowl improves that by having visitors self-enter their own contact data, so that data goes into the cloud and is immediately accessible by you and your marketing team.
• Visitors can get an immediate lead response and digital download of your product literature.
• The Digital Fishbowl lets you also ask visitors to answer one or more qualifying questions, so you can prioritize lead follow up post-show.
• The Digital Fishbowl presents a more modern image and can be designed to match your company’s brand look and messaging.

We introduced the Digital Fishbowl at the EXHIBITORLIVE 2018 Show, and it won the Buyers Choice Award for the best new product.  Judges liked most of all how it helped solve lead management issues with regional trade shows.

But this benefit of saving otherwise lost trade show leads during peak traffic time?  We didn’t even realize that until after the show, when we looked at the analytics reports that come with our games:

We saw how high the Digital Fishbowl lead counts peaked.  The activity in the green box was during the times we were beyond staffer capacity. The purple box is the time we could handle the traffic and were demonstrating the Digital Fishbowl to attendees ourselves. (Green and purple boxes added for emphasis.)

Our booth staffers were engaged in the back of our inline booth, in conversations with visitors and demonstrating our other interactive trade show games.  We simply couldn’t get to some of the people standing in the aisles wanting to talk.

But our Digital Fishbowl did – it was on the booth corner, atop an iPad kiosk with a “PLAY TO WIN” graphic. Attendees could self-enter to win Bose Noise-Cancelling Headphones.  And so they did, again and again. It wasn’t until we saw the analytics that we realized the Digital Fishbowl was quietly gathering lead after lead after lead!

Imagine not losing overflow trade show leads during busy times!

Has this story struck a chord with you?  Do you have shows where your booth staff is right-sized for most of the show, but unable to handle the traffic flow during peak trade show hours?  Have you watched potentially valuable trade show leads walk away?

Then consider adding one or more Digital Fishbowls in your booth.  The cost for an annual plan (unlimited shows for one year with the same game configuration) is $3,000 – that’s just $250 a month.  And whether you have one or three or ten or however many iPads, it still costs the same for our software.  Imagine that – the monthly cost for the Digital Fishbowl ($250) is less than the cost for the average trade show lead ($283)!

Two Digital Fishbowls In A 10 X 20 Trade Show Booth

Here’s how adding two Digital Fishbowls could look in a 10 x 20 trade show booth, with one on each corner.  The kiosks pictured have our SocialPoint graphics; you source your own kiosks and customize them with your own brand colors, logos, and messages.  We will load up game graphics used on the iPads to match.

Four Digital Fishbowls In A Small Island Trade Show Booth

Here’s how adding four Digital Fishbowls could look on the corners of a 20 x 20 island trade show exhibit.  Those 4 Digital Fishbowls can scoop up trade show leads whenever your staff is too busy, or your attendees are too shy to engage with a staffer directly:

Multiple Digital Fishbowls In A Large Island Trade Show Booth

Here’s how adding even more Digital Fishbowls could look in a larger island show booth, with one on each corner and even fishbowls in the middle of one or more sides:

Trade shows are a great marketing medium because they allow you to meet prospects face to face.  But there will often be times that the number of interested visitors far outnumbers the number of your booth staffers.  For those times, have one or more Digital Fishbowls at the ready, to capture and qualify trade show leads that would have otherwise been lost.

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic and capture leads with our fun interactive trade show games (such as the Digital Fishbowl), feel free to contact us with questions or to discuss your event with one of SocialPoint’s Digital Strategists. We’ll help you generate a serious increase in excitement, crowds, and leads.