The more people find the TradeshowGuy Exhibits Exhibit Design Search tool that allows them to share ideas with team members, the more they like it! Check out the video:
Yes, I occasionally post an absolutely blatant product placement. But let’s face it – when it’s a cool customizable charging station like this one, it’s worth plugging. Classic Exhibits just posted this video on their blog, and since we are a distributor and work with Classic all of the time, I wanted to share. Here’s Mel from Classic Exhibits explaining what’s going on with this:
Learn more about the charging station and how you can make it work for you here.
“…Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest.”
That’s a line from a Paul Simon song, The Boxer, recorded by Simon and Garfunkel.
And it happens all the time. “Selective hearing,” according to my wife, and perhaps many other spouses.
But does that sort of thing happen on the tradeshow floor? Do people see what they want to see and disregard the rest?
Do people see that cool, shiny new product and disregard the great support that your team offers for every purchase?
Do your visitors see the famous author in your booth, wait in line for a free autographed copy of her new book, and yet fail to see the great products that you’re selling?
Do attendees see the giant spinning logo above your booth but fail to see how your company’s story relates to them?
Of course, there’s no way that everybody at a show will see every aspect of your (or other) booths.
So what are they missing that you might do a better job at communicating to them?
How many ways can you use an iPad kiosk at a tradeshow? Let’s count at least 8 ways here:
WARNING! ALERT! BLATANT PLUG AHEAD!
Now that you’ve Want to check out some of our iPad kiosks?
Check our kiosk selection on the Exhibit Design Search site here.
What’s the single most important thing you can do prior to your next show to save money? You might be surprised.
Tradeshow exhibiting can be expensive. So as an exhibitor, you’re always looking for ways to cut costs!
Just in time for 2016 planning, Mel White of Classic Exhibits recently teamed up with Handshake.com and gave a webinar aimed directly at you if you’re trying to cut costs in your tradeshow marketing.
From rental exhibits, to non-hanging-hanging signs (yes!), to cost-cutting in your graphic production, Mel gives you two dozen-plus items to consider.
Well worth your time:
If you’d like to download the slide deck, get it here.
Oh, BTW..the single most important thing? It has to do with filling our forms. Yeah, boring, but very critical.
As part of the promotion of my new book Tradeshow Success: 14 Proven Steps to Take Your Tradeshow Marketing to the Next Level, I assembled 14 videos. Each short video focused on a specific step as detailed in the book. If you hang out on Twitter or LinkedIn and follow me, you may have seen them. They’re quick and descriptive, and are good introduction to the book. Here’s the playlist of all of the videos:
If you weren’t able to join us last week for the Handshake.com webinar, here’s a replay. Lots of good things in here, as I covered everything from booth design and function to graphics, pre-show marketing, staff training, lead generation and follow up and more. Each of the 10 steps had 3 takeaways or discussion points for your team. Check it out here.
Mel and Kevin of Classic Exhibits take some time to answer questions about the very popular charging stations. There are a lot of reasons to consider adding a charging station – and maybe you’ve thought of a few. But what about customization, set-up, packing and shipping and more? Check out this interview and then take a look at our online catalog selection of charging stations here.
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.
In the swirl of the tradeshow marketing soup, you’re working to create a potent mix of trained staff, an awesome-looking and appropriately-functional booth, interactivity, social media engagement. When all is said and done, the ONLY important thing at most shows is: bringing home the bacon.
When you get back to the office, the big question that determines the success or failure of your tradeshow marketing effort is this: did you get enough warm and hot leads to justify the expense of going to the tradeshow and planning to go again next year? Because if you haven’t, there’s something missing. But what?
When you examine the various and disparate elements that go into a successful tradeshow marketing experience, you may be reminded of the famous question attributed to Henry Ford: “I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted, but which half?”
Make no mistake, if you can’t identify the wasted parts of your tradeshow marketing efforts, you’ll continue to leak dollars and leads and return from shows with half-empty cups of leads.
It behooves you to examine all of the elements of your tradeshow marketing to determine where the inefficiencies lie:
By hitting all cylinders properly, you’re actually doing two things: one, you’re putting a much more effective tradeshow marketing machine on the tradeshow floor, and two, you’re positioning your company at a much higher level than most of your competitors.
Given the stakes at risk and the amount of money you’re investing in your tradeshow marketing, I have one question for you:
Why wouldn’t you want to do all of these things properly and with excellence to significantly increase the odds of bringing home the bacon?
If you’re not willing to do that, perhaps you are not yet ready for tradeshow marketing.
Oh, and if you want to know where the inspiration for the title for this post came from…
