Tradeshow Marketing Expert & Dynamic Public Speaker/Trainer
The tradeshow industry continues to show strong growth from year to year. Our friends over at Veloxity Inc. created a very informative infographic that shows loads of details about the tradeshow industry. Take a look:
Some companies upgrade their large island booths every year. Must be nice to have that budget!
Other companies hang on to their old ten-foot inline booth for a decade or more because ‘hey, it still looks good and we can still set it up! Why change?”
Why change, indeed? If it’s not broke, don’t fix it!
On the other hand, there are any number of reasons you might consider replacing, or at least upgrading, your old booth. In this short video, we look at some of those reasons:
Time for a new tradeshow booth, but you know it’s going to be a hard sell to the boss? Help is here!
In this short video I look at the steps you can take to pitch the boss on how a new booth will help sell the company’s products and services more effectively and deliver a solid ROI.
You may have done tradeshows for years, or maybe you’re just getting started. In any event, it’s important that you don’t lose sight of one of the key understandings of doing tradeshows: It’s a mountain of responsibilities.
If you’re the one who’s tasked with getting the booth from Point A to Point Z (and back), knowing what you’re getting into is almost as important as the series of tasks you’re facing.
Having stated that, it doesn’t mean that you should be overwhelmed by the mountain of responsibilities. In fact, if you take a closer look at all of those tasks and responsibilities, you can make it much more manageable, by putting it all in context.
You want a new tradeshow booth, but perhaps you don’t know exactly where to start.
You might consider issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) to a select group of exhibit houses. This gives you an organized process to judge which exhibit consultant might be the best fit for your company and your project.
Here’s a quick video that examines what it takes to issue an RFP:
Tradeshow Success is built on a lot of moving parts, and it’s often hard to know exactly how successful the show is unless you track the details. So let’s dive in a little and see what 8 essential tradeshow metrics mean the most to your overall success.
e levels: hot, warm and cool. This will give the sales team the information to correctly follow up on the hot ones right away and the warm and cool ones later.
There are other numbers you can track, but if you do nothing but track these metrics you’ll have a lot more insight into the kind of success your tradeshow marketing program is giving you.
Choosing an exhibit contractor can be a daunting task. Even though your current exhibit house might be competent, are they doing all they can to make your new exhibit experience as good as it can be? Often it comes down to knowing which questions to ask.
In this short video with Mel White of Classic Exhibits, our main exhibit manufacturer, we examine those questions that you should be asking any potential exhibit house prior to forking over large sums of money to them:
Still trying to figure out what exhibit fits your needs? Check out our Exhibit Design Search.
Marlys Arnold of ImageSpecialist is an exhibit marketing strategist who recently gave a webinar at Handshake.com titled “Reinvent Your Exhibit Marketing Plan.”
It’s a great look at all of the moving parts of tradeshow marketing, and is well worth your time. So stop wasting time, energy and money and get your marketing plan together! Check out the video here.
If your tradeshow booth is so big you can’t set it up yourself, you’ll need to hire a crew for installation/dismantle, commonly known as I&D in the industry. If you have an island booth, you’re much better off leaving the set up to the professionals.
Because the booth won’t listen when you yell at it, “Go on, get into place, you booth you!” Sorry, maybe on Harry Potter, but not in real life.
If you are going to set up your own inline or modular booth, make sure you arrive early at the event. This becomes much easier if you choose a manufacturer that designs products to be lightweight and easy to set up.
Generally you have a couple of choices for hiring: using the show services or hiring an exhibitor approved contractor that is familiar with local rules.
Some of the items that come up as you’re planning your I&D include making sure that the contractor is familiar with local rules where you’ll be exhibiting, making sure they have an accurate rendering (or booth set-up instructions) so they can give you an accurate estimate for installation, and any special equipment you might need for installation, such as a Genie lift, long ladders, electrical equipment and so on. If your contractor needs to buy anything you’ll need to know that upfront so that you can find yard ramps for sale or buy any other equipment needed.
Knowing some of the terms of I&D is helpful as you navigate your coordination with an I&D group:
Many clients we work with at TradeshowGuy Exhibits are in the process of moving from the comfort zone of setting up an inline booth to outside the comfort zone of working with an I&D company for the setup of an island booth. Believe me, it can be a challenge if you’ve never done it before. But having seen many of them go through it, it’s also a great growing experience for the company as their booth presence on the tradeshow floor increases and they make a bigger impact on their market.
Bigger is often better – but it takes more effort and coordination to make it happen.
When it is time for you to choose a custom tradeshow exhibit house with a designer and fabricator, you are facing a daunting choice. Especially if you’re new to the game.
So we put this brief video together to more closely examine the various ways to choose an exhibit house.
In this video we look at how you might communicate with your exhibit house, what goes into design, the consultant’s depth of experience and strategic partner resources if needed. It all boils down to a couple of things: what you need (and can they handle it) and how well you get along with the company’s reps.
Take a look:
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