Big video is, well, BIG. It seems like ‘the bigger, the better.’ Admittedly, the quality of big video walls has improved noticeably the past few years. I can’t speak to the price – if the increased competition and quality has driven costs down, like it has for other products such as LED lighting. But it’s impressive. Let’s take a look:
This is a guest post by Kayleigh Alexander from Micro Startups.
So you’ve had a successful tradeshow, meeting lots of new potential customers and contacts and generated awareness and sales for your product or service.
But the work doesn’t stop there. The post-event period is crucial for capitalizing on your tradeshow success and promoting your next event.
Read on for five cool ideas for great post-event content that will grow your business and ramp up attendance for your next tradeshow.
One great idea for some stellar post-event content is a review piece by your attendees. During your tradeshow, you were probably laden down with business cards, coffee plans, LinkedIn requests, and Twitter follows.
Consequently, you’ve got a huge bank of people to source post-event reviews from. Reach out to your new contacts with a personalized message and ask them how they found your event, what they took away, what the most memorable point was, and so on.
Compile all these quotes into a single piece, crediting your attendee and linking out to their LinkedIn page or website. It’s quick content that serves as the perfect marketing piece for your next tradeshow.
As well as reaching out to your contacts and attendees, why not reach out to notable industry figures for a post-event review too? These influencers are respected in their field, and can provide insightful opinions on your tradeshow.
When you contact these influencers, bear in mind that they probably receive a lot of contact from their peers. Keep it professional and to-the-point.
If they’re happy to provide a quote, do the same as you did with your attendees and ask for their insights, favorite exhibit, and any actionable takeaways they can provide. Again, this makes for some valuable post-event content that’s easy to collate.
The key here is immediacy. Don’t wait a week after the event to make this content — the sooner after the event, the better.
Beyond reaching out to your attendees and industry influencers for their thoughts, just as valuable are your own opinions. Break down your tradeshow and describe how the day went, who attended, and what attendees were able to take away.
A post-event review from your own perspective keeps your tradeshow in the mind of your attendees. Invite comments from those who attended your event and encourage them to respond with their own thanks and thoughts.
And as well as providing some useful post-event content, this also helps those who weren’t able to attend your tradeshow see what they missed.
After your tradeshow, the chances are that your attendees have a lot of questions. While many of them were asked during the event, plenty of attendees will turn to Google afterwards for more information.
This gives you the perfect opportunity to create content that addresses these questions, directing people to your blog after your tradeshow to drive up engagement. Use search data trends to spot what your attendees and customers are searching for online after your tradeshow.
For example, you might spot spikes in certain search terms related to a new product you demonstrated. Create content that goes into greater detail about this, and share it across your marketing channels. This addresses your attendees’ questions and keeps them engaged with your business.
Video is a powerful content format that’s popular with your audience and great for post-event marketing. It’s cheap to source and with the proliferation of free online video editors, it’s easy to create a slick video piece too.
Hopefully, you will have recorded plenty of video during your tradeshow. Interviews with attendees, product demos, meet and greets, talks and Q&As — these all make for strong post-event content that you can
If you used Instagram to promote your event on the day, it’s still possible to download it and reuse it across your website and email channels. Use the Repost For Instagram app to download the original clip from your social feed and cascade across the rest of your post-event marketing.
One piece of post-event content that is guaranteed to delight your audience is a quiz. Quizzes are fun, engaging, and great for creating discussion after an event.
Use a free quiz maker to create a quick test of your attendees’ knowledge. Write questions that reveal more about your business, product, or service. For example: “how many states did we expand into in 2018?” or “what was the number one reason why customers used this product last year?” — it’s up to you.
This doesn’t need to be particularly demanding — the emphasis here is on fun rather than competition. You could even turn this into a lead generation exercise, offering people the chance to win if they provide their email address when they complete the quiz.
The period immediately after your tradeshow is ripe for boosting your business and marketing your next event. Use the ideas above to create a great post-tradeshow content strategy that will keep you going for time to come.
MicroStartups helps aspiring entrepreneurs achieve their dreams, however big or small. We love sharing the microbusiness message around the world.
I’m guilty of sometimes thinking that once a tradeshow is over for the year, it’s over. For a long time. Until next year! But that’s not really the case, no matter how much I’d like to be done!
As a tradeshow manager, or someone who attends or exhibits at tradeshows on a regular basis, it’s easy to compartmentalize each show:
“Got another show in two months, but it’s a small regional one. I can wait another couple of weeks to make sure I get it all together in time.”
But now that the show is over, it’s a good time to start planning – or at least thinking about – the next time you’ll exhibit at the show. Look at your preparation time from how much of a splash you want to make, how much “new” stuff you’ll implement in your exhibit, and of course, budget. Budget drives everything. Almost.
If the biggest show of the year just ended, and you’re back in the office, you have another 11.5 months before you pack up and head to the airport again (and that doesn’t take into account another half-dozen smaller shows that may keep you on the road).
What now?
Give yourself time to breath. There’s still follow-up and record-keeping to be done from the last show. File and share data such as photos, visitor comments, leads, etc. with the proper people. Go over the metrics you collected, identify important information that will help you make decisions for next year’s show. Whatever you chose to document, make sure it’s archived and available for your team to review, digest and understand. As they say, if you didn’t write it down or document it, it didn’t happen.
But before too much time passes, look at the show from a new angle: if you’re going to do something new, exciting and impactful (and why wouldn’t you?), you need time to brainstorm, plan, research, talk with partners such as exhibit houses, tech and AV vendors and more.
Most of your time will go into planning and design. Once the plan is set, the implementation starts. Depending on your plan, that could mean working with a designer or exhibit house to create a new exhibit from scratch, or it could mean adding some unique element to your current booth (like we did with our client Bob’s Red Mill when they wanted a 42” touchscreen with several videos that visitors can pull up with a touch of a finger).
During the planning phase, you might be addressing the launch of new products, new branding, redefining your objectives and goals, and identifying how you’ll communicate your messaging, capture new leads and so on. It’s a long process, and you should give it the time it deserves.
Many companies approach a new exhibit project as just that: a new exhibit and nothing more. Which means they don’t give all of the other items enough time and space. The exhibit is not a standalone item; it’s integral to everything else that your company is doing for the show. New products require proper display space, adequate space for graphics, and perhaps space to sample or demo them.
If you have a social media marketing director, make sure you bring her into the mix during the process. They can pass along photos and videos from the recent show and use them to build interest in next year’s show. During the lead-up to next year’s show, focus on building interest in the event, building interest in your appearance at the event, and finally on building interest in the products or services you’ll debut or feature. Yes, this deserves a much longer discussion, but don’t let this element slip away. Make sure, as a tradeshow manager, that you’re involved in the discussions on how this will unfold.
This subject could be the topic of a complete book (maybe I’ll make this my next book!), but suffice it to say at this point that, all other things being equal, a well-trained dynamite booth staff will perform head and shoulders above a staff that isn’t properly trained. Your staff should be outgoing without being pushy, engaging without being trite. Know what questions work and what don’t. Always have a smile. Don’t take rejection personally. If you haven’t trained your booth for a while, consider how good of an investment it can be.
Before undertaking a new large project, make sure you are communicating properly with all of the various entities: management, marketing team, sales team, production team, outside vendors and partners. They should all be aware of the project from the beginning and what their potential part in the dance might be. Communicate often and do it well. It’s hard to over-state the importance of your ability to communicate!
This is a guest post by Tania Longeau of InkJet Superstores.
Setting up a booth at a trade show is a great way to build awareness of your brand and gain new leads. On the busy floor of a trade show, however, you only have 6 to 10 seconds to catch the attention of a passerby and draw them into your booth. You are lined up alongside several other businesses and, depending on the size of the show, you could have several thousand people walking past over the course of just a few days. If you want them to stop by your booth, you need eye-catching signage to draw them in.
Once you’ve gotten their attention, you need well-designed marketing materials like brochures, flyers, catalogs, and cards that they will take and look at again after the event. It sounds difficult, but learning how to make eye-catching signs, brochures, and other branding and marketing materials isn’t as hard as you might think. Keep reading to discover a few of our favorite trade show tricks.
Businessman Alan Lakein once said that “failing to plan is planning to fail,” and he was absolutely right. If you fail to do extensive planning prior to attending a trade show, you are very unlikely to have a particularly successful event. Goals and desired outcomes need to be established months before the date of the event to ensure that you have time to create everything you need.
Set SMART goals and come up with a solid plan of attack for meeting them. Think about what advertising and marketing materials you will need. Figure out whether you will make those materials in-house or have them printed elsewhere. If you plan on making them yourself, make sure you are stocked up on printer ink, paper, and other essential supplies. Trust us. Few things are worse than running out of ink at 11 p.m. the night before a trade show because you failed to plan and waited until the last minute!
When you only have a few brief seconds to grab someone’s attention, a sign or banner with lots of words just won’t do. A picture says a thousand words and, when you use images that are eye-catching, your signs will say a lot about your business, products, or services without needing to say a word. Keep the wording on your booth graphics short and to the point. Your signage should mostly consist of attention-grabbing images. Text should be kept to a minimum. On a busy trade show floor, very few people are going to stop and read an entire paragraph or a long list on a sign. Keep your message short and sweet.
You may love the look of the fancy font you use on your website or logo, but it may not be the best choice for creating trade show signage and displays. When you are designing signs, banners, and anything else that will be viewed from afar, choose fonts that are simple and easy to read. Remember that, on the trade show floor, your booth is competing for event attendees’ attention. If your advertisements aren’t easy to read, those attendees are just going to look elsewhere.
Be careful when choosing fonts for printed brochures, too. If most of your marketing materials currently exist online, adjustments may need to be made to ensure that they print well. Fonts and colors that look great on a computer screen or a smartphone might not look so good on paper, so be sure to do some experimentation to make sure everything is flawless.
There is a lot that you can do with the inkjet printer or laser printer in your office. Many of today’s higher-end models are capable of creating prints that rival professional quality, and you may be able to get away with printing many of your own signs, flyers, brochures, and pamphlets. It’s also important, though, to know when to hire a professional. Unless you have a high-quality inkjet printer that’s capable of printing large-format banners and other big displays, you should definitely work with a professional printing company. You only get one shot at making a good first impression, so the signage and displays you put up at your booth are extremely important.
Unless you have professional graphic design skill, working with an expert designer is a smart idea, too. A design may look awesome to you, but it may not actually be all that great. There is a lot more that goes into a successful design than just making it look pretty. A good designer can help you create brochures and signs that are eye-catching, tell your brand’s story, and evoke emotion. It takes a lot more than a copy of Photoshop to do all that!
When you are attending a trade show, setting your booth apart from all of the other ones around you is extremely important. There will be hundreds or thousands of people passing by your booth over the course of a few short days, and you will only have a few seconds to grab each person’s attention. With eye-catching signs, banners, and displays, you can let event attendees know what your business is all about and encourage them to stop by. With eye-catching brochures and pamphlets, you can encourage them to pick up your marketing materials and check them out after the event. Keep the above listed tips in mind, and you will be well on your way to meeting your goals for the event!
Tania Longeau serves as the Head of Services for InkJet Superstore. Tania oversees a team of Operations and Customer Service Reps from the Los Angeles headquarters. Before joining InkJet Superstore, Tania was a team leader and supervisor working for one of the biggest mortgage and real estate companies in the country. Images are provided by the author via Shutterstock.
This is a guest post by Kayleigh Alexander from Micro Startups.
Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms out there today. With more than one billion monthly active users and a diverse array of features, it offers plenty of scope for getting your tradeshow noticed.
Read onto discover how you can use this visual social platform to spread the word and drive up attendance to your next tradeshow.
Industry influencers are the perfect way to spread the word about your tradeshow. Notable figures within your business niche that command significant influence online are great for getting attention (and attendees!) to your event.
You likely already know scores of renowned individuals in your industry. Indeed, you might even have connections with them from previous tradeshows. Reach out to them with a friendly email and ask if they’d be happy to share an Instagram post promoting your event. Be sure to include your contact details so they can find your website and social profiles easily too.
Of course, this is two-way street. Offer your influencer contact something in return, such as a free piece of content or even just a coffee. You could even offer to promote their event, product, or service on your own social channels too.
Hashtags are the foundation of a solid Instagram strategy. People use hashtags to find the people and content they love, and the same applies for your industry too.
Find hashtags related to your niche by using a hashtag research tool. Simply enter the keywords relating to your business (for example, if you’re a grocery wholesalers, you might choose “grocery wholesalers” or “grocery distributors”), and search.
This will throw up a whole list of hashtags that you can use in your tradeshow promotional campaign on Instagram. Use a blend of both generic hashtags (e.g. #retail or #tradeshows) with more specific hashtags (#wholesalerstradeshow or #callcenterevents) to get your content seen by a wide audience.
While Instagram is a marketing powerhouse, it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) exist in a bubble. Social media and email actually work in tandem with each other, with the former sourcing your leads and the latter locking them into your marketing funnel so you can promote your tradeshow to them time and again.
Use your Instagram as the launch pad for capturing attendee information. Grab your followers’ attention with eye-catching posts promoting your event, and include a trackable link in your bio that your followers can use to sign-up to your newsletter.
To boost the chances of people signing up, offer a freebie such as a downloadable ebook in return for their email address. These are easy and virtually free to create, and gives your followers a real incentive to sign up.
Video is a popular content form that’s great for engaging customers. By simply using your smartphone camera, you can quickly and easily create videos to share on your Instagram and promote your tradeshow.
Video is highly versatile. As this article on Instagram marketing from Moosend explains, video offers a staggering variety of formats, and there are plenty ideas you can use to spread the word about your event.
A simple piece to camera in which you let your followers know about your tradeshow is simple and easy to do. But beyond this, you can also share clips of your previous events, as well as sneak peeks of product demos you’ll be displaying.
And when the day of your tradeshow rolls around, you can use Instagram’s IGTV feature to live-stream your event as it happens. Your followers receive a notification when you start a live video, so it lets people who couldn’t attend experience your event too.
Sharing clips on your Instagram feed and Story makes for great adverts for your tradeshow.
Armed with the knowledge above, you’re now ready to launch your Instagram marketing campaign for your tradeshow. Follow these tips, and you’ll see your event attendance soar. Get started today and start promoting your tradeshow.
MicroStartups helps aspiring entrepreneurs achieve their dreams, however big or small. We love sharing the microbusiness message around the world.
There are a lot of basics to marketing, and we all often think we’re doing everything we should. Then we hear someone like Ronnie Noize spelling out some simple steps and we think “hmmm…might have missed something!”
Ronnie Noize of DIY Marketing Center in Vancouver, Washington, joins me for today’s TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, and shares not only her top five marketing tips, but her top five “prosperity” tips as well. Good stuff!
This week’s ONE GOOD THING is the documentary on Polish sculptor and artist Stanislav Szulkalski, called “Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szulkalski.”
Renting furnishings at a tradeshow may or may not be a good fit for you. Let’s look at the pros and cons.
Depending on what appeals to you, or to your financial or storage situation, renting furniture may be the right thing. Or not!
Take a look at some of the possibilities of rental furniture here.
You may think the difference between a competitor and a collaborator is easy. Pretty cut and dried. But is it?
In tradeshows you can meet all sorts of other companies. As an exhibitor, you can probably identify the direct competitors pretty easily. They’re selling either the exact same thing you are with a different name, or something that’s so similar that most people couldn’t tell them apart.
Coke vs. Pepsi. Nike vs. Adidas. Ford vs. Chevy. Classic competitors all.
There are a number of ways to work with competitors, as there are many ways in which you can identify potential partners for tradeshow promotions.
As competitors, one easy way to team up is to both promote a non-profit that is important to your industry. For example, if two outdoor clothing makers partnered up to help raise awareness for a non-profit that was working for, say, public access to forest lands, that would be a good way to position both companies as aligned and working toward similar goals.
Similarly, competing companies could team up at a tradeshow to fight for attendees’ rights. Bigger voices can have a bigger impact, especially if those voices came from well-known companies.
When it comes to collaboration, it’s a bit easier to dream up ways to work with other companies that will be exhibiting at the same show. You can come up with joint promotions (you sell coffee, they sell pastries; you sell cars, they sell high-end floor mats) that are a good natural fit.
Before the show, get together with the other exhibitor and brainstorm ways you can move traffic around, or benefit from each other’s booth visitors. For example, you may have a newsletter sign-up sheet: on the paper, give people the option to sign up for your collaborator’s newsletter, too. Spell out the benefits of doing so.
However you approach collaboration with a competitor or a partner that’s not a direct competitors, realize that it will take more time and energy to make it happen, and likely a sign-off from managers to move forward. But the right collaboration can help raise brand awareness for both companies.
If both companies are small but want to make a bigger impression, consider pooling your resources to grab a bigger booth space. Instead of 20 10x20s, share a booth and make it a 20×20. Of course, in this instance you’d want to really be ready to show visitors that you’re working together in a very significant way. But by doing this, the booth can show off more of each company’s strengths, and since it’s probably going to be a one-time appearance, it would make sense to save even more and just rent a booth instead of having a new custom booth created.
Come up with contests, or ways to involve more than one exhibitor that moves attendees from one booth location to another. Invite visitors to pick up a Bingo-like sheet with a handful of companies on it. If they go to all booths mentioned and have the sheet stamped, they can have the completed sheet submitted for a chance to win a prize package from all the companies involved.
Off the show floor, you could throw a dinner or party and invite both (or more) company’s customers. By doing so, the underlying and unstated message is “We’re proud to be associated with this company and stand by their services and products.” It shows visitors something new about one company that that they may not have known before and raises the level of trust and integrity for all.
Some people digest statistics like they’re eating chocolate cake. Others would rather eat a bug. But you have to admit, knowing the numbers can help you in your preparation and execution of your tradeshow marketing program. So let’s look at a few statistics and see which way they’ll lead you.
First, Spingo.com offers a collection of 20 Powerful Stats, including these:
Display Wizard from the UK has a list of 20 Tradeshow Stats that will Blow Your Mind! Some of these are:
If you really love numbers, you’ll love digging into the data on one of the country’s largest shows, the Consumer Electronics Show. While 2019 numbers are coming soon, the 2018 numbers are impressive enough:
Watch that page for the 2019 numbers this spring.
Finally, the Event Manager Blog offers 100 Event Statistics (2019 Edition), which includes these:
Dig into the numbers at your leisure – there’s a lot there to unpack and digest. And don’t forget the chocolate cake!
When tradeshow, conference and event organizers hire speakers, they should make sure they get speakers that aren’t stuck in the same old speaking rut. That’s according to this week’s guest, Lindsay Anvik of SeeEndless.com. We also got to talking about public speaking itself, and the idea of using speakers from your company to raise your profile at a tradeshow:
Check out Lindsay Anvik’s company, SeeEndless.com.
You’ll also find this week’s tradeshow tip and this week’s ONE GOOD THING: Daily Yoga.