Just a few moments cruising through Twitter and I grabbed a few good posts on how to draw more people to your booth and liven up your event. How? I just searched using the hashtags #eventprofs and #tradeshow.
Here’s what I came up with:
11 Surefire ways to get guests tweeting and Instagraming at your event. This list offers such cool ideas as making a tweet or an Instagram post a requirement for receiving a gift bag or goodie, creating photo-ready backdrops or props, and creating interactive installations.
Twitter is a great resource for virtually every industry. If you know the most-used hashtag for that industry, it takes just a few moments to track down great ideas. And don’t forget to re-tweet the good ones!
The following guest article was written by Chris Newkirk:
Tradeshows can be a huge expense for small business owners and although statistics show businesses can increase revenues and grow their customer base from events like these, many companies still struggle to attract attention and make trade shows worthwhile.
What are you doing wrong?
Networking involves a whole lot more than shaking hands and handing out business cards. If you view everyone as an opportunity and stop seeing them as people, chances are you’re going to strike out. Consider how you like to be approached. People can sense they are being targeted for a sale, opportunity or referral from a mile off.
Treat people like people and look to make friends and connections. Don’t approach people by asking them, ‘what do you do.’ Try asking questions that target them personally, can help spark a genuine conversation and can lead to a memorable discussion.
Ask open ended questions that are event specific and don’t bombard people with materials, information or sales pitches. After you engage them in conversation, before they leave ask them if they’d like to be added to your contact sheet, or what information they’d like you to send them.
Encourage visitors to find you on Facebook and if you have access to an IPad give people the opportunity to check you out your Facebook and Twitter profile. You can generate buzz by picking a hashtag for the event. Use banners to promote your hashtag—encourage people to help you get your hashtag and the event trending on Twitter!
Are you making a memorable impression?
Everything from the time you arrive and leave, the things you talk about and the way you use your display and products all can work together to make you memorable—or leave you dead in the water.
You’ve heard it a million times, arrive early and leave late, it really does work. Approach the early birds and try to become people’s ‘first friend,’ check back throughout the day and see how they’re doing. These people will remember you and can lead to referrals.
While you’re there make the most of your space. Do extensive preparation well in advance so you know what size the space you’re provided with will be and what regulations you might have for light and sound. Update your display if it’s old or if your banner stands are outdated or damaged. Consider spending more on displays that are less common and can draw attention to your booth. Even something as simple as a few laptops where visitors can browse products or the company blog will keep people at your booth longer and help draw a crowd.
A pretty booth won’t set you apart from the crowd though, they tend to be a dime a dozen. Try something fresh.
If you haven’t done it before, consider introducing the use of technology in your display. Informational kiosks are one way to remove clutter from your table and promote environmental ideals. IPads are a tool that you can use to display your entire product inventory or allow people to browse your company blog and interact on your social media sites. You can invite people to sign up for your newsletter or add their email if they’d like more information about your company, industry or product directly into a spreadsheet instead of using a paper sign-up.
The use of technology as allows you to engage with more people. If a larger group of people are visiting your space, you can invite some to use the IPad and kiosk while you engage directly with others giving you more time to form relationships without worrying about isolating other visitors.
Other ways to create an engaging space include:
-Enlarge your space using mirrors
-Use a projector to display video
-Take photos of your clients when they stop by and stream them on your projector or share them on social media throughout the event
-Suspend company products from the ceiling
-Incorporate lighting to illuminate your space
How are you following up after the show? Try reaching out through social media
If you have a company blog, writing a series of posts about the trade show and the people you met can be a great tool for networking. Share the post with people from the event and mentioned in the context via email and social media. Because they’re included they will be more likely to share the post on their own networks.
Don’t use follow-up emails to bombard people with a slew of sales information. Provide them with materials that demonstrate value like links to internet videos, industry information and special reports and educational white papers. Preface the email with things like, ‘I thought of you when,’ or ‘I thought you might be interested.’ The key is to keep in touch without coming across as pushy or simply trying to sell something.
Keep in mind some of your most valuable contacts may end up being people who have never been your customer, but instead end up sending a high volume of referral business to you.
The bottom line
Networking is about relationships. If you’re attitude, body language or display is unwelcoming or un-engaging people have no incentive to talk with you or form a relationship with you. Your end goal shouldn’t be to target everyone you meet to get their business. Instead your goal should be to form solid relationships so you can get business from everyone they know.
Author’s bio: Chris Newkirk works in marketing and sales consultation. Chris attends a number of trade shows a year and enjoys learning what methods work for companies in various industries and enjoys sharing his networking tips.
Roger Pike and I just completed a one-hour webinar this week on performing a Social Media Audit and creating a Social Media Policy. Every tradeshow marketer should be aware of these two critical pieces of the marketing puzzle.
Social Media Audit: This portion of the webinar guides you through the process of taking a basic social media audit. It’s something that every company engaged in social media (and if you’re not, why not?) should be doing. Determine your base line and set goals for each social media platform.
Social Media Policy: Every company is engaged in social media, whether they know it or not. Every employee represents your company. How are your employees representing you? Do they know what your expectations are? (go to 21:30 in the video to jump ahead to this section)
I must get two dozen webinar invitations a week. On average, I attend one or two a week. Some are useful, most are not that great.
So is the webinar-as-promotion tool saturated? Overused? I suppose it depends on where you’re coming from. Many attend webinars, but even more people do not. And most companies don’t use webinars to show their expertise on a specific subject.
Webinars are useful when they are narrow, drilled-down topics, when they’re used to show expertise or to promote a specific product or skill.
But I think the exhibit industry is missing one area where a webinar might prove to be a very useful promotional tool: to promote an appearance at an upcoming tradeshow.
Here’s a brief video I put together to explore this topic:
Among all of the various promotion tools at your disposal, one of the best branding and outreach tools is a personal or company blog. I admit that this blog has brought me business and gotten me speaking gigs, so as much work as I put into it, I think it’s worth the time.
So the question is: are you blogging? If not, why not? If you are, what are you blogging about?
Here’s a collection of short videos I put together recently on how blogging might be best approached. The whole collection of five videos come to almost an hour of training, so if you can’t watch them now, bookmark this page!
Blogging 101: WHY You Should Consider Blogging
Blogging 101: Naming your blog and more
Blogging 101: Creating Great Posts
Blogging 101: Nuts and Bolts of WordPress (and other platforms)
One way to learn is to see what other people have done. You learn from both successes and failures. Here are stories of three successful efforts at using social media to promote events or appearances at tradeshows.
Check out these three short videos.
Let’s start with Portland, Oregon’s gDiapers – maker of eco-friendly kid pants:
And then move on to a US company called Relevansi that managed a multi-country, duo-hemisphere event long distance:
Finally to Criterion, a company in the manufacturing sector that used social media to get more leads and attention at a tradeshow:
iPads and tablets are pretty cool. The concept of having a hand-held tablet with amazing computer power has apparently taken over the world (thanks, Apple!) and launched a dizzying array of imitators and competitors. In spite of the competition, the iPad remains the most popular tablet, especially among tradeshow exhibitors.
In fact, several companies are now vying for your business by designing and creating iPad stands or kiosks which present the iPad to your visitors so they can interact.
But exactly what all can you do with that iPad in a kiosk?
And why would you want one?
If you have a problem getting information to people in a timely way at a tradeshow, an iPad stand might be the answer. If you have a need to engage people in an entertaining way, an iPad kiosk might be the solution. If you have a goal in mind that fits with one of the following ideas, an iPad kiosk may be the ticket!
While this is certainly not intended to be the complete list, use it as a thought-starter. Perhaps you can come up with other ideas on how that iPad kiosk can be used.
Product Demos: a visitor stops and with a few touches, is seeing how others use your product and how they might envision how it would work for them.
Photograph album: people love photographs, right? Of course: just look at the success of photo-sharing apps and sites such as Flickr or Instagram. With beautiful photos, you can show how other customers use your product or engage in your service. Depending on what your product is, those photographs can show details they might otherwise see, or the inside story of how it’s made. Lots of possibilities here.
Sign up for newsletters: want to capture a visitor’s email or other contact information? Set up a sign-up sheet for your regular newsletter (you do have a newsletter, don’t you?).
Send information without having to print something: face it, a tradeshow can be burdensome if you’re collecting sell sheets or printed product information. But you can encourage people to sign up for free PDF’s that can be sent via email, thus avoiding having to carry home a piece of paper. Eco-friendly – and it ends up in their email inbox instead of the round file.
Games: does your product or service lend itself to a short interactive game? You might consider having an app designer put something together that lets visitors learn about your stuff in a fun and engaging way by creating a game around it.
Product design: many items, such as clothing or house paint, lend themselves to an interactive experience where the user can compare one color with another to see how they like it.
Survey: want to do some market research? Setting up a short survey on an iPad kiosk allows folks to chime in on those questions which keep you up at night. You can keep it anonymous, or offer a small prize in exchange for their name and email address.
Quiz: perhaps your product can be positioned in such a way that a brief quiz is engaging. Come up with a handful of multiple choice questions or trivia questions to engage people.
These are just a few of the ways in which an iPad kiosk might help to engage visitors at your booth. Can you come up with anymore?
In the meantime, here’s a quick video from our iPad Kiosk supplier, Classic Exhibits, that shows how you might set up your own iPad kiosk. Remember, if this can solve a problem or satisfy a need if will be a worthy investment.
Check out the pricing at our Exhibit Design Search right now on iPad and Surface kiosks.
We haven’t met before, but I thought I might take a few moments to share some thoughts on your upcoming quest to find a new tradeshow booth consultant to assist with design and fabrication.
Bob’s Red Mill custom booth at Expo West 2013
First – congratulations! Tradeshow marketing is one of the most effective ways of marketing – IF you do it right. If you do it wrong, it can possibly be the biggest waste of marketing dollars you’ll spend this year. And if you do it wrong, you’ll have little to show for it. And if that happens, your mind will be poisoned with the thought that tradeshow marketing is a WASTE of TIME AND MONEY!
But…if done right, tradeshow marketing can be the BEST way to spend marketing dollars. Why? First, it brings you face-to-face with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people that are in the market for what you’re selling.
Second, it gives you a chance to establish a brand in visitors’ minds in just a few short seconds as they approach your booth. That brand can be reinforced by a well-trained staff once those visitors spend a few moments at your booth.
Third, it can cut the cost and the length of the sales cycle. By meeting people at a tradeshow and qualifying them (or disqualifying them as the case may be), you can quickly determine where they are in their pursuit of your product or service. That also quickly determines your next step – which can be confirmed with them before they leave your booth.
Finally, while tradeshow marketing can be exhausting, it can also be FUN. You can get your team away from the office to a far away city. By getting people out of their comfort zone, they tend to depend on each other. By focusing on the exhibiting task at hand during the day, you build trust and respect and confidence in your team. By letting off a little bit of steam after hours with each other, you help each of them appear more real.
So, what to do first?
Here’s a quick checklist before you choose an exhibit and design team.
Know your goals. Define those goals and be specific. Even though the overall goal of tradeshow marketing – any kind of marketing – is to grow the business and bring in more sales, each show may have a slightly different goal because of the nature of the show. If you plan to exhibit only once a year, it may work to try different exhibit companies out. But if you plan to exhibit several times a year, take your time to work with an exhibit consultant that you are comfortable with and enjoy working with personally. If an exhibit house is competent – and certainly most are – the most important factor is how well you get along with them.
Understand the timeline. If you are looking to purchase a small ten-foot inline booth from a catalog, you really don’t need much time to do that. Graphic design will usually take the most at this point. On the other hand, if you’re building a 30×30 custom booth, plan on several months. A recent large custom booth our company worked on took about 8 months from the kick-off meeting to the set-up at the show. Know your timeline and build in extra time for reviews and speed bumps – you’ll always have them. A good tradeshow project management knows what a realistic timetable is and can advise you on what it will take depending on what you want.
Know your budget, and remember that exhibits can be expensive. If you don’t have a realistic idea up front what your company is able to spend for a tradeshow booth for design and fabrication, it can get awkward awful quick! Any reputable designer will not start on a design until he knows how much a company has to spend. A good consultant will likely start the conversation by sharing industry averages, and then explaining how their company’s pricing compares to those numbers. For a quick rule of thumb, for inline booths, expect to spend around $100 a linear foot. For custom island booths, the price can range upwards from about $140 per square foot. Electrics and special lighting can drive the cost up, but those are good rules of thumb to start with.
Plan on training your team. Even if it’s a small show with just a couple of staffers, it pays to be prepared. When your team knows how to quickly qualify and disqualify visitors, it will immediately increase the lead count. Booth etiquette is important, too. No eating, talking on cell phones, standing with arms crossed, etc. All of those behaviors – and more – keep visitors away.
There’s more than just the show – there’s pre-show marketing and post-show follow up. Before the show, your company should be reaching out to potential visitors, informing them of the tradeshow appearance, and what you’ll be doing there: new products/services, special appearances, contests, etc. A social media marketing full press before the show will help draw interest and people to the show and to your booth. A good tradeshow marketing consultant will be able to assist you with planning and execution of your pre-show marketing. Post-show follow up is twofold: sales and marketing. Sales will be following up on all of those leads based on urgency; marketing will be taking content created from the show (videos, photographs, etc) and dripping them out via social media and other outlets to not only remind people of your appearance, but to tease them a bit for next year’s show.
Designate a point person for all ‘official’ communication between your company and the consultant company. While your company may have a marketing team all chiming in with their opinions on the design and fabrication process, when you designate a single person to funnel all communication through, decisions become easier – and final. If the team decides that the color is blue and the point person communicates that to the consultant company’s point person, then that decision is final and the process moves forward.
Jump in! Once the kick-off meeting is underway, trust the process. If you’ve never gone through the process of designing and fabricating a tradeshow booth that fits your company’s needs, keep in mind that your consultant has done it – many times. They’re professionals. Trust them to stay in touch and guide you through the many decision points you’ll have along the way. Follow the designer’s lead and offer your candid assessment of the design and watch how it changes until it becomes a final product ready to be fabricated. Trust your graphic designers. Trust your instinct.
By following this checklist, you’ll go into your booth project with eyes open.
Tradeshows can wield a terrific impact for businesses. The effect of waves of people coming to your tradeshow booth to find out more about what you do – and buying from you – can be great for the bottom line.
The thing is that trade shows can be crowded, and you need to work hard to set yourself apart from the competition. That can be accomplished in person with great banners, marketing materials, and branding. But there are things that you can also do with social media to generate a buzz that will keep people talking for a long time.
Use Twitter Hashtags to communicate – Twitter hashtags are a great way to make sure that the conversation keeps going. If people have a question after they leave your tradeshow booth, or simply want to talk about what they saw, they can leave a tweet with the tradeshow hashtag. That way they can be sure that the right people see what they’re talking about.
Hashtags are simply the pound sign immediately before a word on a tweet. It makes them searchable in Twitter, so anyone attending the show, or looking to find out more information, can find it.
Use giveaways – Are you giving some promotional products away at your Nimlok tradeshow booth? You can use these items to spark a little interest online. Mentioning them on your Facebook page or in a tweet can motivate people to make an appearance, and see what you have to offer in person.
Why not let people know that you’ll have a free _____________ to the first 100 people? If what you’re giving away is truly valuable, it may just be the incentive to get them to come earlier, creating a demand.
Preview your exhibits at the show – Do you have something great planned for your tradeshow booth? Facebook and Twitter are the perfect place to give your customers and fans a little taste of what they’ll be in for on the tradeshow floor.
What aspects of your industry or business are you highlighting? Is there something specific that you’re looking to promote? This is the place to expand your reach and get in front of people. Letting people know what they can expect ahead of time can increase the crowd.
Use QR Codes – Your marketing doesn’t have to be strictly from the online world to the trade show floor. You can use your tradeshow presence to drive people back to your website and social platforms and create more long term relationships. This can be achieved easily through the use of QR codes. You can put these simple codes on any of your marketing materials, and when your customers scan them, it will return them to a specific website of your choice.
You can send them to your Facebook page, if you want them to become a fan. You can send them to your blog if that’s where you’re publishing your best content. You can send them to a Pinterest page, if that’s where some of the best pictures of your work reside. The possibilities are endless. This is a great way to keep people wanting more.
Use The Same Graphics And Logo – You worked hard to come up with the perfect banners, branding and message for your offline tradeshow presence. Don’t throw that all away. Make sure that your Facebook and Twitter cover photos incorporate the same design. This will help keep a consistent look and feel between your offline business and your online presence.
About the author: Matthew Brennan is a marketing writer based in the Chicago area. He regularly writes about content marketing, blogging, and engaging with your audience. He has been published on ProBlogger, Soshable, and Business2Community. Connect with Matthew on his website, www.matthewlbrennan.com, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+.
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.
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?
