Events are important for B2B marketers: 41% say they are “very valuable” and 33% say they’re “extremely valuable”, according to research by Cvent.
For that reason, a great portion of the marketing budget can be allocated to events. For example, 17% of marketers say at least half their budget goes on events.
But these sums are being frozen or reduced, Forrester Research reports. They found that two-thirds of B2B event leaders have seen budgets remain flat or decrease in 2025.
When you need to make every dollar or pound count, you must find new ways to maximize the ROI of your events — and website visitor identification is an untapped tactic that can help you do just that.
What is Website Visitor Identification?
Website visitor identification tools help identify the companies that are browsing your website. They turn anonymous website browsers into actionable sales opportunities and can be a powerful source of lead generation, help you win back lapsed customers, build your own first-party data source, and more.
Before the Event
As every seasoned B2B marketer knows, your pre-event preparation is paramount to ensuring you make the most of every opportunity. There are 5 key things you can do before the event starts that will set you up for success.
1. Know Your Wish List of Attendees
Ahead of the event, it’s a good idea to research the attendees and build your wish list of everyone you want to speak to. Once you have this list, you can upload it to a website visitor identification tool like Lead Forensics, so that if anyone from that business happens to browse your site before the event, you can send them an invitation to come to your stand or arrange a meeting.
You can combine this with social media tracking to get an even better understanding of who might be interested ahead of the event. For example, if you share a news story about your attendance on LinkedIn and use UTM tracking, you might notice that your social posting has lured even more qualified prospects to your website.
2. Invite Website Visitors to Attend the Event
As the event approaches, you can keep an eye out for visitors to your website who are local to the event or whose job role means the event would be interesting. When you see a relevant business on your website, you can reach out to the most appropriate contact and invite them to attend and join you for a meeting while they’re there.
After all, events can generate a quarter of all new opportunities, according to Adobe for Business reports.
Event leads are quicker to close, too. CEIR research found that it takes an average of 4.5 sales calls to close a sale – but that drops to 3.5 calls if it’s a lead from an exhibition.
3. Attract Qualified Booth Visitors
Marketers spend a huge amount of money preparing their booths with the perfect lighting, setup, and location to attract visitors. But what do you do when visitors enter the show with their booths of choice in mind?
To attract qualified attendees, get ahead of the competition and start scheduling appointments with predetermined time slots before the event starts.
4. Let Attendees Self-Schedule Appointments
Use a tool like Calendly to create a shareable link that attendees can use to book appointments directly into your calendar.
Not only does it save a lengthy back-and-forth about availability, but you can also include specific links in the invite that can help the prospect research and prepare ahead of your meeting.
During the Event
Your focus will undoubtedly be on the event itself, but there are still things you can do to help improve the ROI of the event while you’re there.
1. Drive Traffic to Your Website
Make sure that all of your marketing assets link back to your website. Whether it’s QR codes that send people to eBooks or landing pages where they can enter competitions, the more people you send to your website, the more easily you can quantify your event ROI.
2. Capture Leads Instantly
It’s vital that you capture as many leads as you can during the event. Not only is this an essential metric for your event ROI, but it also allows sales reps to qualify leads on the spot and follow up immediately.
3. Track Everything
Log and measure everything. From the number of business cards given out to the number of stand visitors, leads captured, and meetings arranged, it’s essential that you have a record of as many useful metrics as possible. This will give you something to benchmark your event ROI against, so that you can measure any changes between different events and years.
Tracking also means adding UTM parameters to all of your links, so you can more easily see – and attribute – the behavior of event attendees. This will prove even more valuable if someone first hears of you at the event but doesn’t convert until they’ve had weeks of nurturing.
After the Event
The activity doesn’t stop when the event’s doors close, and neither does your ROI tracking. There are two main things you need to do post-event to keep an eye on how impactful it’s been for your lead gen efforts.
1. See Who’s Visited Your Website
You most likely won’t get a chance to monitor this while the event is happening, so when you’re back in the office, make sure you review your website visitor tracking reports and see which businesses have been looking at your website.
With Lead Forensics, you can even set up alerts so that you’re notified if one of your event lead prospect companies checks out your site. This can be a good buying intent signal and a great opportunity for your sales colleagues to follow up with them.
2. See What Prospects are Interested in
While conversations at the event can be helpful in finding out what a prospect is interested in, their website behavior can tell you a lot more. Website visitor tracking tools can tell you what content the company has viewed, which helps the sales team to personalize their pitch and consider up-sell or cross-sell opportunities.
Improve Event ROI Attribution with Lead Forensics
Lead Forensics can show you which event leads return to your website, track what they’re interested in, and help you to follow up at the right time. Start your free trial today and prepare to maximize your event ROI.
