When done well, trade show exit surveys can offer meaningful and actionable insights that will move your program forward and improved trade show ROI. If you are looking for greater understanding of perception, awareness, and intent from visitors who engaged with your company at an event, ask them while it’s all still top of mind.
It may seem disruptive to approach visitors exiting your booth space, but you’d be surprised how many people are willing to participate in a simple survey when approached in a professional manner, along with the promise that it will be brief. And that is a promise you must remember to keep!
Here are three tips to successfully deploy exit surveys:
- Develop a list of potential questions that offer meaningful insights to company stakeholders. Then, evaluate each question to ensure that the data captured will positively affect program decisions moving forward. Be sure to prioritize the most important points and narrow the list to no more than five questions to keep the interaction brief and as least disruptive as possible. Simple yes/no, more/less/same and item rank questions work well in this environment.
- Identify the most effective method to capture responses. Programming a survey onto a mobile device is efficient, and you have the option of using a cell service or housing it on the device offline. Alternatively, low-tech paper surveys are immune to unexpected technology issues, cost-effective, and offer the added benefit of capturing quick, qualitative data from the conversation that happens during the survey.
- Deploy the surveys at the show by stationing trained, dedicated facilitators at the hot corners of the exhibit. You can opt to use your own staff or work with a partner to hire professionals who are skilled in observing and approaching visitors for surveys.
Be sure to assemble and evaluate the insight data in a timely manner to then deploy to your stakeholders. Fold in their feedback as well to determine the next steps for the upcoming show.
If you find in the process that you require more information than what an at-show intercept survey can offer, consider doing a post-show survey via email where the visitor can spend a little more time answering questions at their leisure. If not subjected to regulatory restrictions common in some industries, you can offer a small token of appreciation to entice people to take the survey. That could range from providing a coffee card or being entered into a raffle for a larger item.
Use these tips to plan your next exit survey strategy. An effectively deployed intercept survey produces actionable insights that develop into the continual improvement of your program. For more information about conducting effective exit surveys and turning them into actionable results, contact Exhibitus Results Division today.