Management of onsite activation teams is one area where experiential marketing plans can derail.  It’s a mistake for brands to leave the success of their investment solely in the hands of activation and staffing agencies.  There are several key questions you need to ask yourself in regards to optimizing your activation teams, including:

-Who is going to be on the activation team?  How experienced are they?

-Will the activation team need upfront training?  Who is doing the training?  On brand? On tech?

-Have activation team goals been set by event, by person?

-How will real-time performance be reported to management?

-Will the activation team need real-time optimization during event? 

The first critical step to ensure your activation team is successful is to clearly establish lead capture goals and objectives. This one seems obvious because goal setting should be the first step in all strategic planning, but the actual activation team is often left out of this step. That is a crucial error, as nobody has a bigger impact on your programs success than the people actually implementing it. By understanding your goals the onsite team will have targets to shoot for.

The second step is to get your teams ready with proper training.  You need to arm your team with all the information they need to fully convey your message to the masses.  This includes training on your products, corporate messaging, culture etc., giving them the tools needed to be your brand's voice.  They'll also need in-depth training on the technology that will be used onsite to capture consumer data.

Next, you need to track the results of your program in real-time and make adjustments if needed. If you notice that your team's results are lagging behind, you have the opportunity to determine the cause and remedy it.  Real-time tracking needs to happen program-wide, by location, by team and by hour.  Waiting until the end of the event to review is simply too late to address any issues you come across. You will likely notice that event behavior can vary substantially by the time of day. Attendee traffic is not a flat line from 9am to 9pm; there are typically wild swings from hour to hour.  Do you need extra staff, tablets or paper forms to help gather leads during the peak times?  Do you want to relocate excess staff members to other locations at the event during valley times, to help them promote and drive traffic to your display? Understanding these patterns can help you optimize staffing throughout the day, ensuring you have the appropriate amount of team members at all times.