One of the most effective methods to get involved in mobile marketing is to create a QR Code and display it openly at a tradeshow. It’s a somewhat familiar-looking graphic widget but not everyone knows exactly what it is or how it works.
Invented in 1994 by Toyota subsidiary Denso-Wave, the QR (Quick Response) code has graduated from a simple two-dimensional code used to track parts in vehicle manufacturing to much larger use. More and more companies are finding ways to use them in tradeshow marketing by including codes on booth graphics and handouts. One main use of the QR code seems to be to direct the viewer to a website where they are introduced to company-related information.
It’s easy to include a QR Code and it makes sense for at least a couple of reasons: first, it’s a great way to reduce the amount of printed material that you have to carry around and pass out. It reduces printed products that may end up on landfills or recycling bins. Secondly, the QR Code is still new enough that the use of it positions your company as a leader – or at least very sensitive to the spirit of reducing printed materials. By steering your visitor to a website to download PDFs, view videos or other material, you’re seen as much ‘greener’ than competitors that may still be handing out pamphlets (so last century!).
QR Code for Tradeshow Marketing Newsletter
Third, it’s cool looking!
In the Wikipedia entry on the QR Code, you can see that marketers are making use of the symbol in many ways: “Media where QR codes have been deployed include: billboard ads, in-store displays, event ticketing and tracking, trade-show management, business cards, print ads, contests, direct mail campaigns, websites, email marketing, and couponing just to name a few. QR codes are of particular interest to marketers, giving them the “ability to measure response rates with a high degree of precision”[20] allowing for easier ROI (return on investment) calculation, thus helping justify spending on marketing budgets.”
If you want to create a QR Code, there’s no cost. Even though Denso-Wave owns the patent, they are choosing not to enforce the patent rights. Search online for ‘create QR code generator’ and you’ll find several applications that allow you to create your own code in a few seconds.
Once the code is created, you can insert it in any marketing materials you may have.
To create a code, there are limits to the amount of text you’re able to insert:
QR Code data capacity:
Numeric only Max. 7,089 characters
Alphanumeric Max. 4,296 characters
Binary (8 bits) Max. 2,953 bytes
There are more creative uses of the QR code being developed. Businesses are linking to discount coupons, games, treasure hunt clues, mail-in rebates and more. Check here, here and here.
And if you want to see what a social media crowd thinks of the QR code and grab some more ideas, check this Facebook page.
How can you work with a partner at a tradeshow? What can collaboration do to cut your tradeshow marketing costs and help spread your company’s name around a bit more?
While there are some benefits to be gained by working with partners in any endeavor, there are trade-offs to consider as well.
Share a Booth
Let’s say you’re a small company that struggles to come up with money for booth space and exhibit rental. If this is the case you might consider contacting a company that, while not a direct competitor, is at least in your industry and would benefit from exhibiting at the same show.
By renting the booth space together, you’re splitting the cost of both the space and the exhibit. Of course, you only get half a booth. Depending on your offerings, however, that might be a good fit and a good way to get your name out into the marketplace.
Another benefit comes when staffing the booth. By paring down the booth size and splitting with a partner, you need less people overall. While you would obviously want to have your side of the booth staffed, in some shows and situations one benefit would be to spell the other guy while he’s on a break.
Promote Each Other’s Products
Here’s a promotion that I’ve seen done successfully. Find another 4 or 5 exhibitors that are complementary to your company – but not direct competitors – and create a traffic-generation promotion. Create a map of the show floor highlighing the five participating booths, print it on bright paper, give each booth a stamp. Offer prizes from each exhibitor to be drawn from all maps that are stamped by all exhibitors and submitted. This encourages more traffic to each booth. Of course it’s up to you to take advantage of the additional traffic with your own offerings.
Social Media Pumping
Whether you’re on Twitter or Facebook, you can easily work out a similar promotion. However, instead of doing it on-site, do it online. Each vendor sets up a series of tweets via Hootsuite.com to drive traffic to their own – and their collaborator’s – booth. By doing this, you’re taking advantage of each other’s community, exposing all of the separate exhibitor’s online communities to all of the others.
Team Up To Impress
If you have a partner company that you work well with, float the idea of doing a ‘team dinner/party’ to expose each of the company’s to the other’s community. Company A invites a dozen or so clients, Company B does the same. The two companies split the tab. Everybody gets to know everyone else. Imagine if you could ramp this up to three, four or five companies.
Brainstorm
With all of the various companies that exhibit at any given show, how can you leverage the event to help your company and assist another company for the greater good? Can you come up with a single product together? Can you combine two products for a single offering? A real estate company might team with a home staging company to offer a special deal at a show. A software designer might team with one of his clients to create a custom version of the software for a larger, different market.
There’s really no end to the amount of ways that you can collaborate with other exhibitors to bring both (or all) of you more business.
After walking the floor of many a chaotic tradeshow, I’m always interested (and somewhat amused) by what catches my eye. And what doesn’t.
So what works to bring ’em in? What is like honey to the fly?
Here, in no particular order, are several things that made me stop and take a look at a product or service:
demonstrations: a professionalpresenter with a 5-7 minute presentation can do wonders for a tradeshow exhibit
eye candy: this can be large colorful graphics, something moving (rotating or spinning graphics/wheels/etc), booth babes, anything that says “STOP! LOOK! NOW!” Admittedly, the booth babes drew my eyes but rarely connect me to an actual product!
celebrity:
whether it’s Muriel Hemingway or Dr. Andrew Weil or anyone else that catches an eye, a celebrity gives your booth credibility and power – at least to a certain amount of the audience.
unusual product: a new or unusual product, even in a lousy-looking booth, can be enough to draw me in.
unusual booth design: a stellar, spare, unusual booth design is a very attractive piece. If it’s unusual enough it’ll have people stopping regardless of the product. Again, the product has to be worth the attention or the booth design fails. But with the right combination, POW!
giveaways or free samples: a typical giveaway gets me to stop for a heartbeat. A cool/unusual/clever giveaway that ties in with the product gets me thinking. If it’s damn yummy I will come back for more and figure out where to buy the product when I get home.
smile: a pleasant smile and non-threatening greeting from a booth staffer does wonders in getting people to stop and examine your offerings.
action in the booth: video or audio interviews draw a crowd. A simple camera/microphone set-up makes people curious. Curiosity helps draw a crowd.
The initial goal of your booth is to get a visitor to stop. Once they’ve stopped, they’ve mentally committed at least a smidgen of time to your offerings. From that moment, it’s up to your (highly trained) booth staff to positively engage them, qualify or disqualify them, grab contact info if interested and move them into the sales funnel.
Depending on what your company’s involvement is in social media, there are a number of approaches you can take to moving forward during the first quarter of 2011. And that’s the KEY: MOVING FORWARD from wherever you are at this moment. With the forward motion of all things social media, if you sit still you’ll get further and further behind!
If your company is NOT doing anything with social media:
If you’re at the very beginning, you’ll have to start somewhere. Starting anywhere is better than not starting at all. Ask around the office, and look for your company’s own ‘digital native.’ This is the person that’s already online with social media. They’re already on Facebook and Twitter. They may be posting fun videos on YouTube or Facebook. Perhaps they’ve got a LinkedIn account. They’re adept at discussing and moving around in the social media world.
Once you find that person, sit down with your marketing manager and the company owner (presuming you’re a small or medium-sized company and have easy access to these people) and discuss the following steps:
Where you are
Where you want to go in the next 3 – 6 months
What tools you’ll need
Who will be in charge of the company’s social media efforts
How much time it will realistically take to set up accounts and start to build your community
What are your goals
What are the steps required to meet those goals
What other internal or external help you’ll need
At this point, you’re really doing a full assessment of where the company is in social media. Find out what your strengths are, where the holes are in your knowledge and determine the best way to fill those gaps. Here is where you’ll also be appointing someone (or two or three) that have the capabilities to lead the company’s social media efforts.
From here, look to what how you can start to create a community, stay in touch with them and provide them with information, content and response to their feedback.
Then, start: get the Facebook and Twitter accounts going, check in daily, put up links on your website to direct people to the new social media outposts. At the outset, once the accounts are set-up (should take a very short amount of time), the initial involvement might be a few minutes a day. As you see more of your community finding you, you’ll have more opportunity to ask questions, look for feedback and find ways to respond to their comments and questions.
If your company IS ALREADY involved in social media…but you feel there’s a LOT more you could be doing:
GET CREATIVE: If you’re past the first few baby steps described above, this is where you can start to get creative with your postings. Take note of what other companies that ‘get’ social media do. Riff off of their efforts. Come up with ways to creatively produce short videos that show the human side of your company, such as this one from gDiapers that was a video birthday present where employees described what they liked about their boss Kim.
VIDEO is a great tool to share how-to’s, information, what-ifs and much more. It’s an invaluable tool to humanize your company. How can you be creative with your videos?
EVENT CALENDAR: Create an event calendar that outlines your company’s 2011 event schedule. Determine which of the events is the most important, and focus on putting together a significant social media effort into connecting with your community around that event. Don’t ignore the other events; but by choosing a ‘most significant’ event, your social media efforts will fall in line. If you choose to, for instance, do a lot of giveaways via Twitter at the big show, plan on supplementing your other shows with smaller Twitter giveaways. If you’re planning a Tweetup at the big show, think about putting together smaller Tweetups at your smaller shows.
LISTEN: Consider digging deeper with your listening tools. The more you listen to what’s being said online about your products, company and competition, the quick you can respond to issues that arise. Tools such as Radian6, Jive Software, Hubspot and more offer access to deep, real-time conversations around the important things in your world. Some are free, some are paid, but all can help lift the lid a little more on what people really think.
RESPOND: When you come across a conversation that relates to your product or service offerings, step in. David Meerman Scott, in his newest book “Real-Time Marketing and PR,” tells the tale of a company that saw a comment from someone who was not happy with the non-response from a company on a request for quote for a telephone system. The company politely stepped in offering to help on any questions or to offer a quote. Long story short: they sold a $250,000 phone system be responding to a tweet and asking if they could help. So yes, this stuff does happen. It is important and it shows that by responding to an issue in real-time, good things can happen.
BLOG: If you’re not blogging yet, this is an opportune time to figure out how your company can use a blog to stand out in the crowded marketplace. Blogging is not a casual commitment; it requires consistent time, energy and thought, and there’s likely no immediate payoff. But a blog is the best online tool to position your company as a leader in your field, share ideas, create community, and stake out ground.
If your company is neck-deep in social media:
If you’re already doing great things with social media, you probably have a good sense of how you got here, and perhaps where to go from here.
CONTINUE LISTENING: look at different tools that can help you uncover conversations that you previously didn’t hear about. Look at new tools. Keep your ear to the ground. Read blogs on social media such as the Social Media Examiner and Mashable.
BUILD YOUR NETWORK: The wider and deeper your personal and professional network, the more opportunities that will arise out of that network. You’ll find new knowledge, timely information and quicker access to new tools.
ENHANCE YOUR PRESENCE: Since you’re already blogging and you’re on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and perhaps other social media outpost, ask yourself: how can we enhance the connectivity of these tools? What can we do to show our community who we really are? What can we do to reach more of them? Do we share more of ourselves? Do we offer more how-to’s and tutorials? Do we do more webinars? Do we bring in experts in the field and interview them? Do we step up to a higher level of video production? No matter where you are, there is always room for improvement. How can you improve either in incremental steps or in a big leap?
Social media is many things. It’s a great learning tool. It’s an amazing real-time connectivity tool. It’s hard work; it’s fun. It’s unlike anything the world has seen up until this century and it’s changing the nature of business. It is leading to transparency in more company activities. It empowers consumers to gather information from unlimited sources before they commit a dollar to a purchase.
Social media is perfect for the event world. Events are inherently social. Business is social. By learning how to effectively use the social media tools at your disposal, you’re moving a step ahead of your competition and a step closer to creating a valuable community that will help support your business.
When speaking in Jacksonville at the EDPA’s annual conference earlier this month, I asked for a show of hands to see how many bloggers were in the audience.
A few hands went up. I expected more. Many more. Not sure why…maybe my expectations are unrealistic. Or maybe it’s that I’ve seen the value in having an active blog. It keeps your mind sharp, it keeps you in front of a growing audience, and it it lets people know who you are and what your expertise is.
Yet many companies simply don’t consider blogging as a valuable marketing tool. Here’s how I see blogging in terms of helping promote a tradeshow appearance or to enhance a tradeshow marketing schedule.
It gives you a place to tell your audience about the new stuff (products, service) that you’ll have at the show.
Blogging is a platform to invite any partners that may have at the show to discuss their products and how it ties in with yours.
It’s easy to insert a video into a blog.
You can easily post photos of visitors to your booth.
You can give reviews and opinions of the show and other products and services.
Your blog is a ‘home base’ for all things show-related. Post documents, downloads, press releases, etc.
Having said all of that, blogging is not to be taken lightly. It’s a significant committment in terms of time and energy. And if you are going to set up a blog for your company, it’s important to make sure that you have new material showing up regularly, whether it’s every week, three times a week or just a couple of times a month.
But once you’ve made the committment and the process of blogging becomes part of your routine, you’ll discover that it’s a great outlet for all sorts of things. You can post slides from a presentation, videos from your company, how-to’s and informational tidbits that educate and illuminate your audience.
It also allows you and your company to gain more visibility within your industry and target audience.
Blogging isn’t the end-all and be-all of online presence, but it’s a valuable marketing and positioning tool.
What is there to love about tradeshow marketing? After all, it’s expensive, it’s hard work and you have to travel and set up stuff. And then stand for hours a day talking to hundreds or thousands of people. And then tear it down, pack it up and head home.
So what’s to love? Let’s count the ways…
Opportunity: a tradeshow is a great opportunity to meet people who, in most cases, have PAID to be there and WANT to see what you’re showing off.
Learning: when you’re attending a tradeshow you’re going to be exposed to hundreds of new products and service offerings in your industry.
Competition: while the booth across the aisle may be competing with you, it’s easy to feel a kinship with him. After all, they’re in the same boat as you: trying to keep their business going and thriving. By sharing stories and getting to know each other, you can connect better to the community that you all share.
Travel: If you don’t like to travel, scratch this from your list. But if you do, getting on the road for several days is always great – if for nothing more than a change of pace.
Challenge: the simple challenge of putting your best foot forward at a tradeshow amidst all of the other exhibits is unlike other marketing challenges.
Challenge 2.0: If you approach the next tradeshow as a personal challenge, see how well you can do in your sales, your presentation skills, listening, answering questions. There’s a lot to learn about your interpersonal skills engagement on the tradeshow floor.
Opportunity 2.0: At a tradeshow you have access – if only for a few moments – to CEO’s company presidents, marketing managers, etc., any of whom can open great doors for you if make a good connection. So…how can you make a connection?
Market Research: Your booth visitors are a great source of information – if only you ask. Do a survey, hand out questionnaires, have people demo new beta products so you can get in a little product testing while pitching your newest stuff.
After Hours: Whether you’re in Vegas, New Orleans, Anaheim or Buffalo, there’s always a new place you can check out after the show. Take a client, get to know a colleague a little better. After hours at a tradeshow is a great opportunity for deepening relationships. And, uh, y’know…for having some damn FUN!
What can you add to the list? What do you love about tradeshow marketing?
In the wake of the presentation I gave last week at the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association Access 2010 conference, I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about what it takes to build community.
In the event industry, it’s my opinion that social media is an extremely useful tool to promote shows, create and connect with communities, and foster deeper connections while attending shows.
It seems that in one sense the social media world is just getting started with connecting at events. But with each new story, I sense that the ‘connecting’ is getting more involved and the ‘connectors’ are becoming more adept at the connecting.
And then this morning Paul Castain’s timely blog post on ‘How to Build an Online Community!’ shows up. Paul is a terrific connector and has built a large online community, and in this exquisitely useful post he shares what has worked for him.
If you’re looking to build a community around a specific event, there are some slight adjustments I’d make to his overall plan (which has a lot of great ideas).
If you’re attending a tradeshow, one suggestion might be to create a specific ‘virtual tradeshow website’ just for that show. It’s an approach that would make sense for those larger expo shows you attend, but likely wouldn’t be worth the investment of time or money for small, local or regional shows. Derek Mehraban of InGenex Digital Marketing shares his story in a recent TradeshowGuy Blog podcast.
If you choose not to create a virtual tradeshow website, make sure that you’re online with a variety of platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. If you have a good presence on LinkedIn, include that as well.
Don’t forget the media: connect with industry bloggers and trade publications ahead of time. Let them know what new products or services you’ll be unveiling at the show. The press are attracted to new and shiny objects, so if you can offer something new you have a much better chance of getting some press mentions.
In the run-up to the show, collect your in-house list of clients, friends, acquaintances and prospects. Send out an e-mail blast a couple of months ahead of time asking people to ‘like’ your Facebook page, and follow you on Twitter and YouTube (if you have a YouTube channel).
With the show a month or so away, send another email reminder asking people to connect with you online. At this point, it would be appropriate to include a link to a short video about what they might expect at the show or a blog post promoting your appearance. Remember, you’ll get more response if you slant the article or video to ‘what’s in it for THEM’ and try not to make it so much about YOU.
Keep publishing: videos, blog posts, tweets, Facebook updates/photos, etc. During your planning, be sure to use a tool such as Hootsuite.com that allows you to schedule posts ahead of time. This will free up your show time to focus on the actual show, interacting with folks and sending out real-time tweets or posts (“just met @clientXYS at the show!”). Make a point of mentioning people by name or Twitter handle so they’ll feel loved.
With a couple of weeks to go, invite people to your booth (if you’re exhibiting), or to connect with you at a Tweet-up or other meeting. Find opportunities to connect face-to-face.
During these face-to-face meetings, collect business cards or other contact info. Schmooze! It’s fun!
During the show, try and shoot some timely videos, such as testimonials, customer or visitor interviews and post a few of them. Hold back a few for posting after the show.
Once the show is over, do a wrap-up or two. Post a few videos. Send out a thank-you e-mail with links back to your show follow-ups. Send physical thank you notes to those folks that you felt you made a great connection with – and those that you’d like to make a better connection with. A cool tool for card follow-ups is SendOutCards.com (yes, that’s an affiliate link).
As Paul points out, it’s great to have all of those online platforms, but the key is to keep engaged. INTERACT with those folks in your community. Respond to their questions. Reach out with an offline thank-you or phone call. Give content away with no strings attached. Find out what your community’s ‘pain points’ are and work to resolve them. Work to move those online connections to an offline relationship or friendship.
When it comes to building a community around a tradeshow, keep in mind that those folks you’re connecting with will become more active during show time. Work to leverage those folks to stay connected with you via Facebook or your newsletter.
You’ll find that the first show will likely fall short of your expectations. Don’t worry. Social media connections take time. Keep at it. From my observation, as exhibitors and organizers keep at it, each show becomes more successful than the last and the connections get deeper and wider.
With social media connections, you’re in for the long haul. Or you’re likely not in at all.
The International Manufacturing and Technology Show is a bi-yearly affair that attracts 80,000+ attendees and thousands of exhibitors to Chicago’s McCormick Place every other September. This year saw an explosion in the use of social media to enhance the experience for attendees and for those folks who would like to have attended but were unable to.
Monica Haley is the Marketing Communications Manager for AMT – The Association for Manufacturing Technology – and was part of a small team that coordinated the social media marketing effort at this year’s expo.
Social media proved to be an extremely useful catalyst to drive engagement at the show. The numbers of people posting content from the last show in 2008 jumped significantly, according to Haley. In ’08 there were only 50 people at the show who joined in posting content on Facebook or Twitter and other networks; this year the confirmed number was over 350.
The social media effort started with a strategy planning session. Out of that session grew a plan for using social media on many platforms throughout the show, including scheduled blog posts, many of which were solicited from speakers and other industry voices. The intent with the pre-show blogging was to offer unique content with a thread back to the show.
They also scheduled Facebook posts and Twitter tweets before hand using Hootsuite with a plan to offer ‘live’ ongoing posts off-the-cuff as they happened during the show.
They set up a separate social media/blogging areas where attendees could watch the Twitter Roll with the hashtag #IMTS on a large flatscreen TV, as well as plug in and log-on with laptops to engage (if they weren’t already doing that with a smartphone).
As an additional tool, Haley and her crew used SCVNGR for booth check-in (a location-based service somewhat similar to Foursquare and Gowalla), a mechanism to push people around the show who were willing to participate; it got people to the corners of the show and provided another aspect of experience to the show. She says it helped people that couldn’t come to the show feel a part. Haley says they first looked at using Foursquare but it proved to be unwieldy for the task.
SCVNGR is a location-based service game played on smartphones, which was utilized to bring people to various booths looking for specific items.
Having the social media in places helps facilitate movement of the people at the show, and helps engage people who aren’t able to attend. “One of the biggest benefits of social media is humanizing the people behind the scenes,” said Haley.
Looking ahead, Haley says in 2012 (and likely for the European version next year) they’ll be looking to engage online attendees in many ways. If successful, she feels the show could draw another 20,000 virtual attendees.
When Knoxville, Tennessee’s In10City Interactive planned a B2B one-hour seminar on event marketing with social media, they first reached out to their clients, colleagues and partners with a typical direct-mail piece. They sent out 1500 postcards a few weeks before the September 9th event earlier this year. Scott Spaid, the VP of Marketing for In10City Interactive, said that they had just a handful of RSVP’s less than a week prior to the event.
In other words, the postcard direct marketing piece was a bust.
So they jumped headfirst into social media to reach their audience. They started with an e-mail invitation blast to the same 1500 folks, and then posted frequently on their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
By show time a few days later they had received over 70 RSVPs and some 50 attended the event, which included a free lunch (hint: offer free food if you can!). Twenty of the RSVP’s came directly through Facebook, said Spaid, which they deemed a win.
According to Spaid, the event “was not a ‘101’ event; we assumed that they knew what we were talking about.” Instead they discussed social media marketing, shared anecdotes and networked. They discuss ‘Why should someone be friends with your brand? What is the value you add?’
In10City Interactive’s goal was to move more folks into their sales pipeline with the outreach event. From that aspect, Spaid called it a success: “We have four appointments on the calendar that came out of the show.” He says their typical sales cycle is 3 – 6 months.
In10City Interactive focuses on building websites, refining SEO and CRM for clients. They have some 55 employees in 5 locations in the eastern and southern US.
Denise Quashie shared so many ideas on how she’s utilized social media in conjunction with events that it’s not surprising to discover that her pet dog on Twitter led to the launching of a successful conference.
In my recent call for social media tradeshow success stories through HARO, Denise contacted me saying she used Twitter, Facebook and more to market shows, sell sponsorships, promote exhibitors and drive onsite traffic. And more.
Her company, Events by Canvas, is an event consultancy focusing on social media events, social media ghosting, and event consulting and training. They also produce several social media driven start-up events. Denise is always looking at ways to offer additional value to her clients with social media: sponsored Tweet-ups, platforms for press releases, Twitter mention packages, offering education benefits to attendees at her events and more.
But one of the more intriguing stories came about when she told me that when she put her dog on Twitter, which prompted hundreds of pet-lovers to start networking and helping each other. That then inspired BarkWorldExpo, a social media expo in Atlanta for pet lovers and the pet industry.
The first BarkWorldExpo, held in August of this year, drew 250 attendees and 30 exhibitors. Tickets were $129 for the event, held at Atlanta’s Atlantic Station. BarkWorldExpo featured several speakers who talked about aspects of social media; there were sponsored Tweet-ups and other gatherings, and plans are underway for a follow-up event in 2011.
Some of the successful ideas for promoting events via social media that Denise and Events by Canvas have used in the past for other shows and clients include:
Sending out tweets for scavenger hunts down empty aisles (first person to spot the green back pack on aisle 7 gets $100 on the spot!), which caused a stampede
Speakers incorporating a live Twitter wall during the speech
Sponsored Tweets during the event
Tweet lounges where several screens showed running tweets from the show
A Big (Twitter) bird to draw traffic to a specific area
Just chatting with Denise – and furiously jotting down ideas – inspired me to believe there is really no limit to what you can do with social media. The only limit is lack of imagination.
Besides…if a dog on Twitter can inspire a successful conference…?
