Roadshow Marketing: What It Is and How It Benefits Your Business

What is roadshow marketing?

Roadshow marketing or just roadshow, is a marketing tool that involves a series of marketing events that help your brand reach target audiences in a nationwide or worldwide scale. Roadshows are effective in increasing brand exposure, giving your business a competitive edge. What differentiates a roadshow from other marketing events is its scale and duration. Roadshows can last for weeks, months, or even years. They aren’t confined to one location, occurring in different cities to ensure a wider reach.

Why are roadshows relevant today?

As digital marketing becomes increasingly crowded, roadshows give brands something online campaigns can't fully replicate: direct, face-to-face interaction with their audience. They allow customers to experience products, speak with brand representatives, participate in memorable activations, and build a stronger connection with the business behind the campaign.

Roadshows aren’t a replacement for digital marketing and vice-versa. Both marketing types have a role to play in the success of your business. They are significantly different in their approach, but they can complement each other. You can also incorporate interactive brand activations, including photo and AI experiences, to give attendees something to participate in while generating branded content they can share.

It brings your brand closer to your audience

TWhile digital campaigns can reach audiences at scale, in-person events give brands an opportunity to create deeper, more personal interactions. You can think of roadshows as long-lasting field events that are dialed up to 11. It facilitates face-to-face interaction between your marketing team and your customers. It also provides an effective platform for showcasing products and services.

Roadshows provide an entirely different customer experience as they feel more personal and more memorable. To make the most of a roadshow event, make sure you include ground-breaking content that will have attendees leaving with a smile. You can also enhance the event experience by creating a lively environment through live performances and delicious food. There are endless possibilities with a roadshow, and you can do whatever fits your brand.

Some examples include:

• Product launches - an opportunity for your customers to experience new products and services personally; also presents a great opportunity for your sales team.
• Exhibitions - helps give your entire line of products more exposure and educates customers.
• Brand experience lab - roadshows are perfect for showing your audience what new innovations you have in store.
• Training center - engage customers by providing in-depth presentations or workshops related to your products, services, or industry.

It’s perfect for your sales team

Roadshows are a perfect platform for product launches as they provide everything that your sales team needs. By being on the field, salespeople can do away with the digital channels and interact with potential customers directly, making it easier to build connections with them.

Your sales team wouldn’t need to force conversations as the people present there are most likely interested in whatever’s happening at the event — there will be no shortage of conversation topics. Most of all, conversations that take place during roadshows are less likely to happen in other scenarios. Roadshows create a social environment where conversations can flow freely, giving your sales team plenty of opportunities to work their magic.

It energizes your demand generation efforts

Roadshows are fantastic for kickstarting your demand generation campaigns. Unlike other customer acquisition tactics, demand generation prioritizes long-term results. This requires building strong connections with your clientele, which is a lot easier to do in environments such as a roadshow event.  The engaging content you can provide on roadshows, such as workshops and exhibitions, can easily turn a person, who only has a vague idea of your brand, into a loyal customer that will stick with you for a long time.

Launching roadshows is a perfect way of keeping numbers up during times of low demand. One practice you should never forget is to have your sponsor companies advertise the show using their own networks. This can boost your brand exposure even further.

How Do You Measure Roadshow Marketing ROI?

Roadshow marketing ROI can be measured by tracking the results that matter most to your campaign goals. These include visitors and participants at each location, leads and opt-ins captured, cost per lead or engagement, product interactions, meetings generated, and overall performance by city or location.

For experiential roadshows, engagement metrics are also important. Track participation in photo or brand activations, social shares, user-generated content (UGC), and email or SMS engagement after the event to understand how the experience continues to perform after attendees leave.

Interactive photo activations can make many of these metrics easier to capture because participation, content creation, digital sharing, and lead capture can happen within the same experience.

• Visitors/participants per location
• Leads and opt-ins captured
• Cost per lead/engagement
• Photo or activation participation
• Social shares
• UGC generated
• Product interactions
• Email/SMS engagement after the event
• Meetings or opportunities generated
• Performance by city/location

Interactive photo activations can make some of these metrics easier to capture because participation, content creation, digital sharing, and lead capture can happen within the same experience.

Conclusion

In summary, roadshow marketing allows you to cover the gaps in your other marketing efforts. It brings your brand closer to your target audience and creates a perfect environment for your sales team. When executed properly, roadshows can strengthen your brand’s relationship with your customers and even attract more patrons. If you want to include roadshows in your marketing strategy, it’s advisable to start small. Run shows in your local community before going nationwide or abroad.

Planning a multi-city roadshow? OutSnapped creates branded photo, video and AI experiences designed to attract participation, capture shareable content and turn event engagement into measurable marketing results. Explore our brand activation experiences.