March 14, 2019

How to Use Instagram to Spread the Word About Your Next Tradeshow

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.

Reach out to industry figures to reach a wider audience

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.

Use hashtags to get your tradeshow noticed

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.

Combine Instagram with email for strong lead generation

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.

Embrace video to engage potential attendees

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.

February 25, 2019

TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, February 25, 2019: Ronnie Noize

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.”

February 21, 2019

Why Rent Tradeshow Furniture?

Renting furnishings at a tradeshow may or may not be a good fit for you. Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Pros:

Rental Furniture is new, and in top-notch condition
Lots of choices – you’re not stuck with the same furniture show after show
Cost is less than purchasing it new
You don’t have to pay to ship it – cost is all-inclusive
It’s delivered right to your booth space – when the show is over, just leave it there
You don’t have to store the furniture
Furniture you own will degrade, become damaged or dinged over time, and go out of fashion
By owning furniture, you have to pay to ship and pay to store

Cons:

Renting furniture might seem expensive to you; owning cuts costs in the long run
If you rent furniture 2, 3, or 4 times, you will likely have paid the full cost and don’t have anything to show for it except old bills
You own it, you only pay for it once and can use it as many times as you like
Less hassle – you own it, you have one less subcontractor and bill to deal with

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.

February 14, 2019

Tradeshow Competitor or Collaborator?

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.

Collaborate with a Competitor

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.

Create a Partner

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.

Pool Your Resources

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.

Beyond the Show Floor

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.

February 12, 2019

More Statistics About Tradeshows and Visitors

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:

88% of companies participating in tradeshows to raise awareness of their brand .
The cost of a face-to-face meeting with a prospect at a tradeshow is, on average, $142. The cost of a face-to-face meeting at a prospect’s office is $259.
92% of tradeshow attendees come to see and learn about what’s new in products and services.

Display Wizard from the UK has a list of 20 Tradeshow Stats that will Blow Your Mind! Some of these are:

Just 22% of tradeshow exhibitors start planning their tradeshow marketing 1-2 months ahead of the show. 22% start planning 2-4 months prior to the show, and 18% are getting ready 4-6 months ahead.
It takes an average of 4.5 sales calls to close a sale without an exhibition lead, but just 3.5 calls to close a lead from an exhibition.
81% of exhibitors use email to follow up on their tradeshow leads.

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:

Total attendance: 182,198. That includes exhibit personnel, media and industry attendees, domestic and international.
Social media mentions of the show reaches 1 million.
Views of the CES Snapchat Live Story reached 49 million.
CES received a total of 107,120 media mentions and more than 71 billion potential media impressions in January 2018 alone.

Watch that page for the 2019 numbers this spring.

Finally, the Event Manager Blog offers 100 Event Statistics (2019 Edition), which includes these:

B2B events revenue worldwide amounted to $30.3 billion in 2016, up from $29.3 billion a year earlier.
The average ROI for events is in the 25-34% range. But almost one in five companies don’t know their ROI.
93% use social media in their B2B marketing strategy, and 58% of marketers use social media before, during and after their events.

Dig into the numbers at your leisure – there’s a lot there to unpack and digest. And don’t forget the chocolate cake!

February 11, 2019

TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, February 11, 2019: Lindsay Anvik

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.

February 5, 2019

When Exhibiting, Talk to Other Exhibitors

As an exhibitor, try to schedule some time to talk to other exhibitors. Depending on how many other people you have on the booth staff, that may be easy or difficult. But give it a try. And I mean more than just the pleasantries with your neighbors that you’ll exchange when setting up and exhibiting. It’s easy enough to just show up, do your thing, and leave. But you’ll learn a lot when gathering information about other exhibitors’ experiences.

What to talk about and what information to look for?

At a recent show, I was curious to speak to exhibitors to get their sense of the show itself, and how they have fared. As a result, I spoke with quite a few exhibitors and got a broad look at the show. One exhibitor said she had exhibited at the show two years previously, and had written over $200,000 of business as a direct result of the show.

“Quite a Return on Investment!” I said.

“Yes, indeed. Last year, we wrote about $50,000 worth of business from the show. A big drop, but considering our minimal investment, still a great return.”

Another exhibitor told me that he thought that the show had shrunk each year for the last couple of years, and there was even a chance it might have been cancelled.

“Why do you think it’s shrunk?” I asked (I was not sure it had shrunk or expanded; I was just playing along to see where he was going with this).

“There are a lot of shows in the industry,” he said, as if that explained things.

I also asked exhibitors if they went to any of the various breakout sessions. Most said no, but one or two said yes. Those seemed to be aimed mainly at attendees.

Talk to other exhibitors at the show you're exhibiting at!

I asked several exhibitors if this was the only show they went to. Many said they do other shows, but not necessarily in this industry. Their company’s products and services can be pitched to other industries as well.

And finally, I asked if they were planning to come back to the same show next year as an exhibitor. A mixed bag: some said yes, others were noncommittal. But no one gave me a definitive NO.

Other things you can ask: how is job hiring going in your industry or your company? How well is your company doing against your direct competitors? Are there any companies here you would consider partnering with on any project or task? Are you looking to hire any positions soon? How many other shows do you plan on exhibiting at in the next year? Is this the only exhibit property you own, or do you have other elements you can set up to exhibit in a smaller or larger space?

When you find time to talk to other exhibitors, you’ll take away a larger sense of the show overall and how your fellow exhibitors feel about their place in the show and in the industry.

And you may make some good connections along the way!

January 12, 2019

Teamwork is the Key to Success

To most people I work with in the tradeshow industry, teamwork is the key to success. But many tradeshow marketing managers are saddled with the idea that if it’s going to get done, there’s only one person that can do it. The tradeshow manager.

Therefore, it becomes hard to delegate. Hard to give up control. They may not be a control freak, but they’re close enough to where it prevents the work of a good team from being as good as it could be.

You see this on sports teams. My sport, from when I was a kid, was basketball. When you are in control of the ball, a tendency for young players is to hold on to it until they good a good shot. Not all people, of course. There are always members on the team who don’t want the responsibility, so they pass the ball at the first opportunity. Often, the pass is the wrong move. It’s to the wrong person. It’s for the wrong reason. They might have even had an open shot but didn’t take it because they didn’t have confidence that they’d make it.

Great teamwork doesn’t happen overnight. But the longer you work with a team, the more you understand each team member’s strengths and weaknesses.

One person may be great at record-keeping. Another may be great at outreach to clients and customers. Another may have an easy time reaching members of the media to persuade them to feature the company in their publication. Yet another may have an intuitive sense of how to design graphics so that they attract the right people.

Every team is different. And teams are fluid. Even a team that’s been together for years can find things changing over time. And when new members arrive or when members leave, things get even more fluid.

But a good manager of the team recognizes how to best delegate tasks to different people for maximum results. A good manager of a team knows their own limitations and realizes that, no, they can’t really do it all.

They need a good team to do it all. And teams can always improve.

December 14, 2018

Increasing Tradeshow Success Through Awareness

You might think that when I mention “tradeshow awareness” that I’m thinking of how you make visitors aware of your tradeshow booth, so you can draw people in. Sure, that’s important, but that’s not what I’m getting at here.

Let’s look at the other side: the awareness you as a tradeshow exhibitor has. What do I mean?

There are a number of things that, if you’re aware of, can help increase your success.

An Example

Let’s give an example that’s not related to tradeshows. For example, let’s say you want to lose 10 or 15 pounds. Not an unreasonable goal, right? But how does awareness come into play and how does it affect your efforts to lose that weight?

The most obvious way is to be aware of how much we’re eating and how much we’re exercising. And thankfully in today’s digital world, there are a lot of apps that can help you be more aware. One app I’ve used, Lose It!, lets you track calorie consumption, water consumption, and your daily exercise habits. After using it for over a year, not only did I lose the 15-20 pounds I was aiming for, but I realized that the very fact of being aware of my calorie intake and my exercise habits was a big contributor to the success of reaching my goal.

When you eat a cookie, let’s say, if you want to track the calories, you have to know how many calories it contains. Which means you have to look it up. If it’s a package of store-bought cookies, as opposed to home-cooked, the calories per cookie are listed on the package. If a cookie is 150 calories, log it when you eat it.

Same with breakfast, lunch, dinner and any other snacks you have. Once you’ve inputted your data (age, weight, sex, goals, etc.) the app calculates a daily calorie regimen. Stay under the daily allowance, and you’re likely to see your weight slowly drop. Go over the allowance consistently, and you won’t! Easy enough, right?

Then when you exercise, such as take a bike ride or go for a walk, enter that data, and the app calculates the amount of calories you’ve burned. Which means you can either increase your calorie intake or not. You get a visual reminder of everything. It works great.

But the key is awareness. If you weren’t aware of how many calories that cookie contains, you might not care. But now that you’re aware, you realize that each and every bite you take adds to your calorie count. Given that an adult needs approximately 2000 calories a day to maintain an even weight, it’s easy to go over that amount if you don’t count calories. If you’re not AWARE.

How does awareness play into your tradeshow success? Same principle. If you’re not aware of certain things, you won’t be impacted. If you are aware, the simple fact of being aware can likely make a positive impact.

What to Be Aware Of

What things are important to be aware of on the tradeshow floor?

Traffic: I would wager that most people don’t count the number of visitors in the booth at any given tradeshow. They may have a sense that the visitor count in their booth goes up or down year over year, but without an actual count, it’s just a feeling, and not actual data. Imagine if you could know exactly, or within a reasonable number, how many people visit your booth per day, or per hour, or per show.

Engagement: this might be a metric that is a little harder to measure, but if you are aware of what a good engagement with a visitor is, and you work to create better engagement through staff training, demonstrations or sampling, you’ll have a good idea of what outcomes those engagements lead to. Remember, you can’t control the outcomes, but you can control the behaviors that lead to outcomes. If your lack of engagement with visitors keeps your lead generation and engagement low, figure out what it takes to increase visitor engagement.

Leads: lead count is important. But so is the quality of leads. If you collect 300 leads at a show, but haven’t graded them as to hot, warm or cool, your follow-up will not be as good. But if out of those 300 leads, you know that 75 are HOT and need to be called within two days of returning from the show, and that 155 are warm and should be followed up within three weeks, and that the final 70 are COOL and need only be put on a tickler file or an email-later list, then the follow-up is going to be more consistent and likely more fruitful.

Booth staff: if you have a booth staff that is trained on how to interact with visitors, and how to be more aware of who’s in the booth, your results can only improve. Booth staff training is one of the key factors to success. Do you have a booth staff that is aware of what they need to do, how they need to do it and, how to engage with visitors?

Competition: awareness of competition may seem secondary to your company’s immediate success at any given tradeshow. But look at it this way: you have a lot of competitors at a show. The more aware of who they are, how they present themselves, what products they have (what’s new and what’s not) and the way those products are branded, the more well-informed you’ll be about the state of your competition. In a sense it can be a bit of a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) from the floor of a tradeshow. If you’re good at gabbing, you can pick up all sorts of insights about competitors: personnel changes, strength of company, management moves, new products and so on. After all, every exhibitor is showing off their best and latest, and if you’re not aware of your competition, don’t you think its time you paid more attention?

Finally, awareness of how your actual exhibit looks compared to your competition. Gotta say it: everyone compares their exhibits to their neighbors and competitors. How does yours stack up? Is it normal, staid, complacent, expected? Or is it sparkling, engaging, new and different than others?

Awareness is critical to success in so many areas of our lives. Being aware of how things are working on a tradeshow floor is one of those things. Awareness will naturally help you make better decisions and as a result, show more success for your efforts.

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