Tradeshow Marketing Expert & Dynamic Public Speaker/Trainer
Our online exhibit-finder, Exhibit Design Search, would be hard-pressed to get much better. It’s chock-full of 1000s of exhibits, rental furniture, accessories, helpful article, photos and much more.
Yet it keeps improving. Over the last few months a few new things have made their way onto the site at TradeshowBuy.com, including virtual exhibits, interactive exhibits, protective shields and more. Take a look:
It’s pouring as I write this in my home office in Salem, Oregon. A guy just rode by my window on a bicycle, bundled up against the rain and wind. I took the dog for a walk this morning in the thankfully much lighter rain.
Ah, Oregon! I love it here! In 65 years, I have yet to find a good enough reason to move.
Technically, it’s still Autumn, but the dreary weather has kicked in full force with another four or five weeks until the official arrival of Winter. Seems my bicycle-riding days are over for a while although a sunny day may entice me out for a short ride.
No, my activity meter is revving up for ski season. It’s not that far away. My resort of choice, Hoodoo Ski Bowl, is 89 miles east and is a quick trip up for a day of skiing.
If this were a normal year, we’d likely be neck-deep in tradeshow exhibit projects at TradeshowGuy Exhibits. In the past, we often focused on exhibitors at Natural Products Expo West, which has in the past taken place in the first half of March. This years’ show, eight long months ago, was canceled a couple of days before the opening bell. Lots of exhibitors had their exhibits already set up and hundreds more were either in various stages of being set up or were sitting in unopened crates in their booth space. I spent a day and a half at the show coordinating return shipping for a number of clients then took a mini-vacation to Joshua Tree National Park and visited a few friends and relatives to fill out the scheduled week in southern California.
The 2021 NPEW has been moved to the end of May, although they’re still planning to hold the show live and in-person. Which makes sense, if for nothing else, it’s difficult to do a food sampling show on a virtual platform.
But of course, the possibility of a live food-sampling show six months from now presents its own issues and challenges, not the least of which is: will exhibitors and attendees be willing to commit to the show with enough time to actually pull it off? Given the reaction to a dozen or so NPEW exhibitors I’ve communicated with over the past week, it’ll be a tough call. Some are willing. Others are putting off all shows until 2022. Others are in a wait-and-see mode.
Which means that here at TradeshowGuy Exhibits, like so many other exhibit designers and producers, we’re just trying to make it through the winter.
Even without an active exhibit business, we have some income from other sources, which means we’re one of the lucky few. I know it’s bad for so many people.
I wish you well in 2021. Meanwhile, I’ll be waxing my skis soon, walking the dog in the wind and rain at times, waiting for sunny days.
When it comes to exhibiting internationally, you probably couldn’t find many people more experienced than Stephanie Selesnick of International Trade Information. In this week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, Stephanie and I talked about what it takes to exhibit overseas, what barriers exhibitors typically run into, how it’s going during the pandemic and more:
Find International Trade Information here.
This week’s ONE GOOD THING: Seth Godin’s new book “The Practice.“
When it comes to being a tradeshow marketing manager, a lot of different skills come into play. Let’s take a look:
This past week I’ve reached out to a couple of dozen former clients and prospects that have all exhibited for years at Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim. The show is usually in early March. You may recall that it was canceled on March 2nd this year, just a couple of days before it was supposed to open, just as the pandemic caused hundreds of exhibitors to pull out.
I happened to be sitting on a plane on the tarmac in Portland heading for the show that day when I saw the email from show organizers saying they were pulling the plug.
So what about next year? The show had originally been scheduled for early March again, but a few weeks ago it was pushed back to late May – a two and a half month delay, after a year in which it was cancelled due to the pandemic.
Will it happen? Obviously, organizers hope so. But who the heck really knows?
To get a sense of what exhibitors were thinking, I reached out to a couple dozen of them. The answers were varied, as you might imagine.
One said they’d signed up, but with the caveat that they could pull out and get their deposit back within a certain time frame. Another handful said they’re still in the wait-and-see mode, as final decisions are needed until sometime in January. I did hear from a pair of long-time exhibitors who said they would definitely NOT be there. In fact, one said they had decided to participate in NO shows through 2021.
Fits and starts. That’s what the tradeshow industry seems to be right now, working in fits and starts. And I suspect that will hold for all of 2021.
CEO and co-founder of Anura, Rich Kahn, joins me on this week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee to talk about ad fraud. It’s one of the conversations where you keep learning stuff you didn’t previously know – which made it really worthwhile. I hope you find it the same way.
Find Anura.io here.
This week’s ONE GOOD THING: a new album coming in February from the Foo Fighters. They did a couple of songs over the weekend on Saturday Night Live. Here’s their new single:
This week’s short video looks at a handful of ways that small companies can help themselves when compared to larger competitors:
Every now and then I cruise through Twitter looking for a handful of marketing tips for tradeshow exhibitors. Let’s see if there’s anything there now!
First up, TSNN gives us some planning tips to engage virtual attendees.
Next, Lotus823 links to a SmartBrief post that offers thoughts on pre- and post-show planning.
Then, SourceGroup links to an article with 7 Tips to Hosting a Successful Virtual Networking Event.
Ljubica Maletković tweeted out a link to an article that helps you make the most of your tradeshow marketing budget.
Finally, Exhibit Options linked to a TSNN article on how to embrace the new normal for 2021.
Twitter can be a lot of things, but when it comes to finding useful information for your industry, it’s pretty good most of the time!
It was an idea that I cribbed from David Newman of Do It Marketing: grab six great podcasts (or vlogs) from the recent past, and re-post them. But I took it a step further by picking some good snippets from each of them and doing a new vlog/podcast. Take a look:
Here are links to the full shows – all worth watching:
This week’s ONE GOOD THING: the return of Pac-12 football.
What does it take to get 300 leads over a 3 day show? Game it out in this short video.
