January 5, 2011

What Gets You Noticed at a Tradeshow?

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 professional presenter 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.

Easy, right?

November 15, 2010

Speaking on Social Media and Event Marketing – Preparing for EDPA

In my preparation for speaking at the Exhibit Designers and Producers Association annual conference in Jacksonville, Florida in a few weeks, I’ve been digging deeper and deeper into social media and how it can be used in coordination with event marketing.

First I put out a request to HARO, which resulted in a number of stories including Barking Up a Tree with Social Media, Social Media Rescues a Social Media Seminar, Social Media Marketing Tips from AntiSocialGuy, Twisplays Brings Twitter Streams to Your Tradeshow Booth, Taking Your Event to a Virtual World with Social27, and an update on Schmoozapalooza, the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce’s semi-annual business gathering that’s been doorbusters since incorporating social media.

Not that all of those stories will make it to the final presentation. It’s hard to cut good stories out – but there are time constraints and a goal of covering the actual topics of the presentation as advertised:

Everybody’s talking about social media. And you just nod and smile–but have no idea what they’re talking about. Get a detailed breakdown of the ‘four’ main social media platforms and how to best use them–as well as how to get started if you’re still on the sidelines. Learn how to leverage social media for your own marketing, but more importantly how to talk social media with clients who want it baked into their exhibit programs.

Given that I’ve spoken in public numerous times over the last several years, many times about social media and tradeshow marketing, the challenge isn’t so much putting the presentation together. It’s making sure the information is relevant and important to the audience.

Speaking about social media brings up a lot of challenges. As Steve Farnsworth (@steveology on Twitter) told me earlier this year, ‘social media is still the wild west’ in a lot of ways. Some companies really get it and are neck-deep in their social media engagement. Other companies have a lot of political resistance to even the thought of getting involved, viewing social media as ‘kid stuff’ or toys of some sort that an honest-to-god serious marketer shouldn’t even consider.

Crafting the content then becomes a balancing act between getting the neophytes interested enough to seeing the possibilities and helping the folks already engaged with tools, techniques and examples of how to engage.

Along the way I’ve had the good fortune to stumble onto three books which have been invaluable to crafting the presentation.

Nancy Duarte’s two books on presentations, “Slide:ology” and “resonate” have offered an enormous amount of guidance and I cannot recommend them enough (yes those are affiliate links; one book – ‘resonate’ – was given to me by Nancy and I purchased “Slide:ology” but I would recommend them anyway because they’re both excellent).

John C. Maxwell’s “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect” has also proved to be extraordinarily helpful in the preparation of the final presentation. I can quibble with a few of his cut’n’paste examples of communication, but his message and a majority of examples ring true.

If you’re working on a presentation, or ever have the opportunity to put one together, you would do yourself well by grabbing any or all of those books.

As for Jacksonville on December 2nd, well…we’ll see if they helped me as much as I hope they will!

Presentation

What Gets You Noticed at a Tradeshow?

EDPA Slides and Audio Playback

Speaking on Social Media and Event Marketing – Preparing for EDPA