Best tradeshow marketing tips and case studies. Call 800-654-6946.
Best tradeshow marketing tips and case studies. Call 800-654-6946.

Presentation

Tradeshow Marketing IS Your Brand

Are you going to a tradeshow simply to sell products?

Right! Of course you are!

But seriously, there’s more to a tradeshow than just selling. Among other things, there’s no doubt that you’re there to build brand equity and credibility.

From a practical standpoint, your tradeshow booth not only has to function to meet your exhibiting goals, but the booth itself should shout “THIS IS US!” without anyone saying a word.

From the look and feel of your booth to the style of interaction with your visitors, anyone who drops by should go away with a distinct feeling of what your brand is all about.

Aqua Show
Marquis Spas at Aqua Show

Having seen the design process from initial discussion to final fabrication and set-up, I can say that creating a booth that helps build brand equity is not an easy thing. It’s also not that hard. Anyone who’s been with the company for a few years knows the brand inside and out. They know who their customers are, they can describe the brand in a sentence or two and they know how their products are perceived in the marketplace. They also know how they separate their brand from their competition.

All early discussions in a booth-building process should focus on the brand: who you are, what you do, how does the marketplace perceive you, etc. You have collateral on hand that aptly demonstrates the brand. All of this will be communicated to the designer, who – if she’s competent – can craft a design that does indeed should “THIS IS US!” to any tradeshow visitor.

Beyond the look and feel and function of the booth, though, when you exhibit at a tradeshow, you are giving visitors the most important aspect of your brand: your representatives. These are usually employees, although some reps may be hired professionals, which should know your business and product line inside and out. They should be 100% aware of the company’s goals at the show – and how those show goals may differ from other shows – so that if any visitors pops an unusual question, they can address it confidently, whether it means finding someone who knows the right answer, or if it’s even a question that should not be answered at all.

A visitor will not stop at every booth at a tradeshow. That’s impossible – there’s not enough time! A visitor will leave the booths they visit with a strong impression of the company. That impression will be gathered from the few moments they stop at a booth: the look and feel of the booth and the interaction of the staff, and the product offerings. Miss one of the links in the chain, and the impression may be easily outweighed by one or more of your competitors.

The way you draw your visitor to your booth also plays into their perception of your brand. Did they receive an email invitation? A direct mail piece? Did they see a tweet or read about your appearance on Facebook or Google+?

Every bit of the pre-show invitations and post-show follow-up should adhere to the line of building brand equity.

The sum of all of these efforts is the final impression that your visitor receives from your show appearance. How many pieces are you missing? How many are complete?

What Gets You Noticed at a Tradeshow?

After walking the floor of many a chaotic tradeshow, I’m always interested (and somewhat amused) by what catches my eye. And what doesn’t.

So what works to bring ’em in? What is like honey to the fly?

Here, in no particular order, are several things that made me stop and take a look at a product or service:

  • demonstrations: a professional presenter with a 5-7 minute presentation can do wonders for a tradeshow exhibit
  • eye candy: this can be large colorful graphics, something moving (rotating or spinning graphics/wheels/etc), booth babes, anything that says “STOP! LOOK! NOW!” Admittedly, the booth babes drew my eyes but rarely connect me to an actual product!

  • What Gets You Noticed at a Tradeshow

    celebrity: whether it’s Muriel Hemingway or Dr. Andrew Weil or anyone else that catches an eye, a celebrity gives your booth credibility and power – at least to a certain amount of the audience.

  • unusual product: a new or unusual product, even in a lousy-looking booth, can be enough to draw me in.
  • unusual booth design: a stellar, spare, unusual booth design is a very attractive piece. If it’s unusual enough it’ll have people stopping regardless of the product. Again, the product has to be worth the attention or the booth design fails. But with the right combination, POW!
  • giveaways or free samples: a typical giveaway gets me to stop for a heartbeat. A cool/unusual/clever giveaway that ties in with the product gets me thinking. If it’s damn yummy I will come back for more and figure out where to buy the product when I get home.
  • smile: a pleasant smile and non-threatening greeting from a booth staffer does wonders in getting people to stop and examine your offerings.
  • action in the booth: video or audio interviews draw a crowd. A simple camera/microphone set-up makes people curious. Curiosity helps draw a crowd.

The initial goal of your booth is to get a visitor to stop. Once they’ve stopped, they’ve mentally committed at least a smidgen of time to your offerings. From that moment, it’s up to your (highly trained) booth staff to positively engage them, qualify or disqualify them, grab contact info if interested and move them into the sales funnel.

Easy, right?

EDPA Slides and Audio Playback

Due to popular demand (okay, I had a couple of people ask if these items would be available and for some unknown reason I’m able to accommodate them), here are the slides and the slightly edited live audio recording of the recent presentation I made on social media at the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association annual conference. This was in early December in Jacksonville, Florida. I had a damn good time. I hope you enjoy this.

Note: you should be able to listen to this in ‘real-time’ and follow along with the slides. The presentation is about 45 minutes (with Q&A) and there are 90 slides so you’ll be clicking through, on average, about two slides per minute.

PS. If you listen closely to my advice about blogging, you’ll notice that I’m breaking my own rule with this post.

Speaking on Social Media and Event Marketing – Preparing for EDPA

In my preparation for speaking at the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association annual conference in Jacksonville, Florida in a few weeks, I’ve been digging deeper and deeper into social media and how it can be used in coordination with event marketing.

First I put out a request to HARO, which resulted in a number of stories including Barking Up a Tree with Social Media, Social Media Rescues a Social Media Seminar, Social Media Marketing Tips from AntiSocialGuy, Twisplays Brings Twitter Streams to Your Tradeshow Booth, Taking Your Event to a Virtual World with Social27, and an update on Schmoozapalooza, the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce’s semi-annual business gathering that’s been doorbusters since incorporating social media.

Not that all of those stories will make it to the final presentation. It’s hard to cut good stories out – but there are time constraints and a goal of covering the actual topics of the presentation as advertised:

Everybody’s talking about social media. And you just nod and smile–but have no idea what they’re talking about. Get a detailed breakdown of the ‘four’ main social media platforms and how to best use them–as well as how to get started if you’re still on the sidelines. Learn how to leverage social media for your own marketing, but more importantly how to talk social media with clients who want it baked into their exhibit programs.

Given that I’ve spoken in public numerous times over the last several years, many times about social media and tradeshow marketing, the challenge isn’t so much putting the presentation together. It’s making sure the information is relevant and important to the audience.

Speaking about social media brings up a lot of challenges. As Steve Farnsworth (@steveology on Twitter) told me earlier this year, ‘social media is still the wild west’ in a lot of ways. Some companies really get it and are neck-deep in their social media engagement. Other companies have a lot of political resistance to even the thought of getting involved, viewing social media as ‘kid stuff’ or toys of some sort that an honest-to-god serious marketer shouldn’t even consider.

Crafting the content then becomes a balancing act between getting the neophytes interested enough to seeing the possibilities and helping the folks already engaged with tools, techniques and examples of how to engage.

Along the way I’ve had the good fortune to stumble onto three books which have been invaluable to crafting the presentation.

Nancy Duarte’s two books on presentations, “Slide:ology” and “resonate” have offered an enormous amount of guidance and I cannot recommend them enough (yes those are affiliate links; one book – ‘resonate’ – was given to me by Nancy and I purchased “Slide:ology” but I would recommend them anyway because they’re both excellent).

John C. Maxwell’s “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect” has also proved to be extraordinarily helpful in the preparation of the final presentation. I can quibble with a few of his cut’n’paste examples of communication, but his message and a majority of examples ring true.

If you’re working on a presentation, or ever have the opportunity to put one together, you would do yourself well by grabbing any or all of those books.

As for Jacksonville on December 2nd, well…we’ll see if they helped me as much as I hope they will!

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Tradeshow Guy Blog by Tim Patterson

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