With the new social distancing requirements set forth in the wake of COVID-19, industry tradeshows have been put on hold until further notice.

Considering the ROI created between branding and recruiting, not only does the cancellation of these gatherings prevent building quality personal connections, but also the financial impact of not recruiting can be downright devastating.

With so much lost until things return to normal, what can companies do to continue spreading their message and connect with agents?

To answer that, it’s important to recognize what exactly creates an effective tradeshow atmosphere.

Raising brand awareness

This is pretty obvious. With so many IMOs, FMOs, NMOs, insurance companies and carriers to choose from, getting your branding in as many places as possible at these events – often attended by some of the nation’s top producers – is a wildly effective strategy to give your company highly concentrated doses of exposure to the specific audience you want.

Between raffles, banners, swag, presentations, booths, meetings and generally walking around introducing yourself as a friendly face, it can be incredibly easy to leave an enjoyable and lasting impression.

Building instant personal connections

Let’s face it. Very few practices are more effective than having face to face conversations with people – especially when trying to impress and sway other agents and advisors to work with you. Tradeshows are known for this powerful style of networking. Whether you land someone during the event or not, if you make a great, friendly impression, and have their contact information, those in-person leads can easily convert to a stronger workforce.

Highly targeted marketing

Speaking of leads, tradeshows are – quite obviously – the ultimate targeted marketing opportunities. You get masses of your prospects all in one single location for you to work your magic on with very little risk of speaking to someone not in the industry.

But tradeshows do have some drawbacks

Let’s get the first drawback out of the way: There are no in person tradeshows for the foreseeable future. So as great as they are, they simply don’t exist for the time being.

There’s more though. You see, while you have the opportunity to launch a surround-your-prospects campaign at tradeshows… so do hordes of other companies looking for these same people.

In other words, there’s quite a bit of competition.

And while just a booth at an event is expensive enough (especially when you’re adding the costs of swag plus hotels, food and flights for everyone you bring), investing enough to ensure that you stand out more than your competition gets pricy really fast.

So what alternatives do companies have these days?

Right now, almost everything the industry is doing is digital. Agents and advisors are holding (or at least trying to hold) virtual appointments, signing digital contracts and placing business over their phones and computers as much as possible.

That, however, means that they’re spending an even greater amount of time online, checking emails, reading industry news sites (InsuranceNewsNet.com’s web traffic has seen steady astronomical growth during this time) and unwinding for much longer than ever on social media.

So if you are looking to surround your ideal recruits with an effect similar to that of being at a tradeshow, launching an intense digital campaign that targets and retargets the right agents and advisors through emails, banners and social media for a steady amount of time is sure to grab their attention.

And when you perform a blitz campaign like this effectively, something amazing happens, unlike at tradeshows, your competition is greatly reduced. In other words, if you surround your market with your message, they won’t be as easily distracted as when they’re walking through a tradeshow.

In other words, the right digital campaigns could be more effective at showing your target market precisely how you can help them than if you fought for their attention at an industry event.

So what is the right digital campaign?

Contact our sales department for more information! Email [email protected] or call 717.441.9357 ext. 125.