The biggest challenge of tradeshow marketing, it seems, is to draw attendees to your booth. There are hundreds of ways to do that. On today’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, Sam Smith of Social Point joins me to discuss the many ways his company has devised to get people to stop at booths and stay engaged.
Here’s where to find Sam and Social Point.
This week’s one good thing: the legal cannabis industry.
Y’ever have one of those days or weeks where it seems like nothing is happening? Yeah, that can happen. Uh..
This week’s edition of TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee takes a look at the concept of “nothing happening” and a few ways to break out of that.
Also, check out this week’s tradeshow tip.
And this week’s ONE GOOD THING is a turn of the 21st century novel by William Gibson: Pattern Recognition.
What’s it like to compete with bigger companies in the tradeshow marketing world? It might not be exactly what you think. In this week’s podcast-slash-vlog, I take a look at what has worked and what hasn’t for this small company over the past few years:
This week’s ONE GOOD THING: Prime Video’s Goliath, starring Billy Bob Thornton.
Okay, we can look at a lot of different things to help us along the way to a successful tradeshow appearance. I’ve posted on this blog about 6 classic rock songs to help you become a better tradeshow marketer, or the music inspired blog posts post here.
Let’s try something a little softer and head for the soft rock or pop rock side of things from the 70s.
Gotta greet your visitors! Say hello to those passing by to start a fruitful engagement with them Follow it up with a pertinent question and you’re off to determining if they’re a potential customer or not.
Friendliness goes hand in hand with engagement. Andrew Gold’s classic echoes the idea of being friends, or at least extending a friendly face to those in your booth.
After hours often means dinners with clients, parties and other gatherings. England Dan and John Ford Coley make the perfect expression of the invitation.
Whether the show is in Las Vegas, Anaheim or Boston, part of the process of getting potential clients to the show is to invite them. You can insert the city name in the title of this song to match the destination you’re headed for, but the sentiment is the same, thanks to Dave Loggins.
Selling is all about having a product or service that people actually want! Yes, in this song Lobo is looking for love, but the idea is similar: I have a desire to have you want what I’m offering!
Similar to Logo, Badfinger takes this Paul McCartney-penned ditty and invites all visitors to just come on down and get it! Samples, demos, in-booth activities – come and get it!
After all is said and done for the day, for some people it’s a relaxing and restful night in the hotel room. For others it’s a quiet chill down at the local watering hole before calling it a night. Maria Muldaur makes that invitation.
Walking the show floor means walking line after line of exhibits. Gerry Rafferty takes it one at a time, right down the line.
You tried hard to make that sale. But you came up short. And now she’s gone. Hall and Oates know that even though she is gone, the sun still rises and another prospect is just around the corner.
There you have it – nine songs that look to capture the sentiment of tradeshows inside the bars of a song and the rhythms and rhymes of a lyric. Maybe you can come up with your own playlist and share. Or at least do a little slow dancing along the way!
The digital world has enveloped tradeshows as much as it has any other part of the marketing world. And who better to discuss that than author and marketing expert Francis Friedman, who gets into his recent book, The Modern Digital Tradeshow. Check out the show here:
Download a free copy of the Modern Digital Tradeshow here.
And this week’s ONE GOOD THING: Soundcloud.
Do you avoid things that you shouldn’t? Do you prefer to pretend that something coming up isn’t really important when it is? Avoidance is a challenge all of us face at some point. This week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee looks at avoidance.
This week’s ONE GOOD THING is the BBC Radio 2 Beatles program archive. They have been doing a lot of programs related to the Beatles over the week of the 50th anniversary of the release of Abbey Road. Check out the archive but don’t wait too long – these programs will only be up for 30 days.
What’s going on in the music industry? Admittedly, the music world is only tangential to the events world, but they are related. And to learn more about how streaming and technology have changed the music world, especially for up and coming bands that are trying to break in, I sat down with Jay Gilbert of Label Logic to get his take. Jay is a long-time veteran of major labels in the music world, and has run his own company for the past five years. His insight is worth a look:
Find Label Logic here.
This week’s ONE GOOD THING: Roger Steffens’ “The Family Acid: California.” It’s a new coffee table book chock full of great images of the counter-culture, all from California. A one-of-a-kind book.
What is control? Lack of control? What about being a control freak? Turns out we all have some relationship to control, whether it’s our own or someone else’s. On this week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee I take a look at control:
And this week’s ONE GOOD THING: Clockwise, starring John Cleese of Monty Python.
It seems like almost every tradeshow exhibit has a big video screen these days. But what about the content? How do you create content that is actually seen and delivers a message that’s critical to your brand amidst the chaos of a tradeshow floor? On this week’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, I chat with Holly Paige of Wave One Films in the Portland area about how to approach creating video for tradeshows:
Check out Wave One Films.
And this week’s ONE GOOD THING: Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Ventriloquism,” from last year. (NPR review)
Sometimes it makes sense to visualize everything you are planning to do in your next tradeshow appearance. I thought it might fun to put the mindmapping to video and see how it went:
