If you're like me and you see social media as the next great health care B2B marketing frontier, why not extend and lengthen your trade show interactions online?
On the heels of my last post on trade show lead gathering, the thought occurred to me that in the social age, health care B2B marketers may want to be gathering more than just the standard trade shows contact information.
As customer and prospect interactions on social networks increase in volume, health care vendors should be augmenting their CRM data with their social network interactions. CRM service providers such as salesforce.com are already integrated with Twitter and Facebook. If you’re like me and you see social media as the next great health care B2B marketing frontier, why not extend and lengthen your trade show interactions online?
Trade shows and Twitter. Booth interactions at trade shows should be short and low-commitment, two qualities that are inherent in Twitter’s micro-blogging platform. Plus, the culture of Twitter is more open to meeting new people than LinkedIn or Facebook, so it’s the right venue to use to start a social media relationship.
When you’re asking gathering information from a prospect, ask if they’re on Twitter. If they are, ask for their Twitter handle. Chances are, they’ll be happy to give you their handle. Twitterers love followers.
Another way to get trade show participants Twitter handles is to integrate your giveaways with Twitter accounts. Offer a special raffle for people who re-tweet your trade show tweets.
So, what do you do once you have all this information? That’s the subject of my next post.
