Best tradeshow marketing tips and case studies. Call 800-654-6946.
Best tradeshow marketing tips and case studies. Call 800-654-6946.

Social Media

10 Ways to Stand Out at a Home Show

Smaller, regional or city home shows are where local residents go to see the latest in roofing, home repair and improvement, HVAC, landscaping, and more. It’s not uncommon for exhibitors at these smaller shows to lack experience in exhibiting that their national show exhibiting brethren might have. If you are going to set something up at a home show, how do you attract the attention of attendees? Let’s look at a few different ways.

First, have an outstanding exhibit. This can be done in many ways. I’ve seen, for example, exhibits that are unique and custom. They were possibly designed and assembled by the company’s work crew using a little creativity and a lot of ability, and they reflect the company’s brand and personality. Sometimes they’re done by an exhibit house, but not necessarily. By presenting yourself with something that’s attractive to look at and delivers a strong message, you’re ahead of the game. Examples: companies that sell leaf gutter blockers who have a small room sample showing their gutter blockers with water running down the roof with leaves caught on top of the leaf guards. Also, a landscaper that decks out their entire space with rock, sod, waterfalls, small creek bridges or whatever. It’s time-consuming, yes, but it catches people’s eyes.

IDEA! Have a Polaroid camera, take people’s pictures and put ’em on a corkboard!

Second: Have a well-prepared booth staff. Make sure they understand the goal: gather more leads, capture their contact info for follow up. They need to know the basics: no talking on their phones in the booth, no eating in the booth, no sitting on a chair. The do’s and don’ts also include offering a smile to visitors, asking pertinent questions (are you looking to improve your landscaping? etc.) and being present with visitors when the ask questions. Tell people thanks for coming by, even if they didn’t show much interest.

Three: have something for visitors to DO. Interactivity keeps visitors in your booth and if it’s really good they’ll stick around long enough for you have a good Q&A. You see a lot of spinning wheels where people can win a prize, and while I’m not a big fan of these because virtually everybody that wants to win something stops, and they’re not all potential customers. But they do get people stop long enough so you can ask them a few questions. Other things you can have them do: find something quirky about your business, or even get a life size cutout of a famous figure like Frank Sinatra or Elvis and put up a backdrop with your company name and the show hashtag and invite people to snap photos and post on social media for a chance to win something. It gets people involved and helps promote your booth number. Another idea: have a really big Jenga set, where each block has a question that relates to your business, and when they pull it out, give them a chance to win by correctly answering the question. Give away LED flasher buttons with your logo and booth number and tell them a secret shopper is wandering the hall and if they spot you with the button you could win something. Another way to promote your booth away from your booth space. One more: custom printed flooring that invites people to take their picture with the floor (another variation of the social media back drop/life size figure).

Four: Make sure that you give your visitors what they want. And what is that? They want to see what’s new. They want to speak to someone who knows their stuff. They want to be treated like a friend and with respect. A warm smile goes a long way. They don’t want their time to be wasted.

Five: Have your booth staffers stand out by wearing unusual or different clothing. Could be that all of your staffers at an HVAC booth don tuxedos. Or everybody wears colorful branded t-shirts. Purple one day, orange the next, red the next, and so on.

Six: Have a magic word of the day (or hour). Put up a sign on the front counter that everyone can see. If someone says the magic word, they win a prize. It’ll intrigue people enough so that they stop and start a conversation. Have a few ready-made hints for what the magic word might be.

Seven: Put on a small white board and invite people to write a short Haiku (a short three-line unrhymed verse of five, seven and five syllables. Have a few examples for starters. Give away prizes.

Eight: Shoot a commercial at the show. Invite visitors that are customers to record a short testimonial. Interview one of the managers and ask her how things work.

Nine: Conduct a survey. Make it very simple, maybe two or three questions. Ask people to fill in the answers. If they want a chance to win, give them a space to put in their name and phone number or email address, but don’t require it for the survey. Find out what people really think about some of the things you do.

Ten: Make sure your graphic messaging is very simple. One of the keys to delivering a good message is to make it easy to understand. On tradeshow back wall, use no more than seven words. Put the more complicated stuff in a handout or a download.

No doubt you can think of more. What comes to mind?

TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee, October 7, 2019: Francis Friedman

The digital world has enveloped tradeshows as much as it has any other part of the marketing world. And who better to discuss that than author and marketing expert Francis Friedman, who gets into his recent book, The Modern Digital Tradeshow. Check out the show here:

Download a free copy of the Modern Digital Tradeshow here.

And this week’s ONE GOOD THING: Soundcloud.

11 Ways to Attract Attention at a Tradeshow

Wear colorful branded clothing. Whether it’s a staff of two or three, or twenty, having colorful branded clothing will immediately let visitors know who’s working the booth and who’s a guest. Bright colors attract, so put your logo on the front and an enticing message on the back. And to change things up from day to day, create a different colored set with a different message for each day of the show, and make sure your crew coordinates. Bright colors, especially if they’re tied into your brand work well: yellow, red, orange, blue, fluorescent.

Setup a giant prop and invite people to take a photo. Could be anything: a mascot, a giant purse, a full-size model of one of your products (if it’s small, for instance); something that stops people in their tracks. I’ve seen mascot, angels, musicians, giant hanging props, exhibits made from bicycle frames and more. They all had one thing in common: they begged to have their picture taken.

Once that photo has been taken, invite the visitor to spread the word on social media and include the show hashtag to make sure the post gets seen. Offer prizes to people that photo and share online.

Give something away and offer an incentive to wear it. One way is to print up a few hundred t-shirts or hats with your logo along with a fun message and tell people that if they put it on right there, they can also take home another gift. And tell them if you catch them wearing it at an after-hours show (be specific as to which one), you’ll be giving away $50 bills to random shirt wearers. This type of promotion gets others involved and spreads the word about your booth and products throughout the show.

Have a unique exhibit that begs to be seen. Sounds straightforward, but to break out of the cookie-cutter mold, it takes a designer that’s willing to create something unique and wild and a company that’s willing to spend to make it a reality.

Give visitors something to DO. Interactivity goes a long way. At the NAB Show, there were several exhibitors that gave visitors a chance to learn new software by joining them for a free class. Not only are you drawing interested people in, you’re keeping them involved for up to an hour and showing them exactly how the product works.

Contests. Give people a chance to win something by guessing the number of beans in a jar, answering a quiz, spinning a wheel or something else increases the chance you’ll get visitors to stop at your booth. Make sure to engage them in a brief conversation to uncover their needs regarding your product.

Famous mugs. Lots of companies hire famous (or at least semi-well known) people to be a part of the show. Authors, speakers, sports stars, actors, and so on can all draw a crowd. Authors in particular, if they’re in your industry, can be a good draw if they have a new book out. I’ve seen dozens of people in line to pick up a free copy of a new book and get it signed by the author (and snap a selfie!), and I’ve waited in line to get a prop soft baseball signed by Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith.

Comment wall. I see these more and more. Ask a bold question or make a bold statement and invite people to chime in with their thoughts on a wall. Invite people to snap a photo of what they wrote and share it on social media (make sure the wall is branded and has the show hashtag on it).

Bring media production to your booth. Know someone that is a podcaster in the industry? Invite them to record a few episodes of their show in your booth, and make sure to provide some good guests for them, whether it’s people from your company, or others. The simple act of recording a show in your booth will make a lot of people stop. That’s a good time for your staff to engage those visitors politely to find out if they’re prospects.

If someone in your company has written a book, offer free copies of the book along with free printed photos with visitors and the author. This has worked great for years for Bob Moore of Bob’s Red Mill, one of our long-time clients at TradeshowGuy Exhibits. Every time they exhibit at the bigger expos, Bob spends time signing books and posing for photos while a photographer takes photos and has them printed up in a few moments for the visitor.

There are literally countless ways to draw crowds to your booth. It all boils down to creativity and execution. What can you do to improve the traffic at your next show?

Beyond The Tradeshow: 7 Cool Ideas For Post-Event Content

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.

Collate attendee quotes for some quick content

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.

Reach out to industry figures for their thoughts

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.

Offer your own post-event takeaways

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.

Check out search trend data to create targeted content

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.

Cascade tradeshow video across your marketing channels

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.

Invite interaction with a pop quiz

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.

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.

10 Types of Instagram Posts to Use When Exhibiting at a Tradeshow

Trying to find some new and different posts the next time you’re on the road at a tradeshow? Try a few of these and see what you get:

  1. Clients and Customers in Your Booth: Click a quick photo or if they’re up for it, videotape a brief testimonial.
  2. Your Staff: You should make sure that you show off how much fun your staffers are having, even in the midst of a busy day. Nothing communicates your company’s brand more than your people having a good time.
  3. Demos of Products: A series of stills, or a brief video works here.

  4. Type of Instagram Posts

    Your Exhibit: Have a great exhibit? Show it off!

  5. The Hall You’re In – Include Your Booth Number: Share your location at the beginning of each day (at least) so that people can find you.
  6. Educational: Inform your audience how your product or service can help them. A picture with a useful description goes a long way.
  7. Questions or a Short Quiz: People will respond to questions if they’re interesting and engaging.
  8. Promotional: Give something away. Try offering a prize for show-goers to get them to come to your booth. And offer a prize for people watching from afar that can’t make it.
  9. Dinner out with Client (or not): Okay, food photos are usually boring unless it’s really a stunning photo. But if you’re out with a client or friend, post a photo and include the hashtag.
  10. Local Tourist Stops: Making a few side trips during your busy show? Snap photos and share.

Follow me on Instagram here!

Is This the Golden Age of Tradeshow Marketing?

I’ve been in the tradeshow industry for almost 20 years, and it seems like we’re moving into what may be the Golden Age of Tradeshow Marketing. Usually when you think of the “Golden Age,” you’re thinking of that long-forgotten past. A time of fun, peace and prosperity and good times. Us older folks might think of the Golden Age of Rock and Roll, for example, as the time when Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly were making music and leading the music charts. Or maybe we think of the Sixties as the Golden Age of Rock and Roll, when the Beatles led the British Invasion and with the help of bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Yardbirds and The Searchers dominated the music charts for years.

golden age of tradeshow marketing

What about movies? Was the Golden Age the days of great movie stars such as Clark Gable, Dorothy Lamour, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Greta Garbo and others lit up the big screen?

Or is the Golden Age something that might be happening today, and we won’t realize it for decades to come?

Tradeshow marketing may, in fact, be moving into something of a Golden Age. Look at what’s happened in the past decade or so: an influx of a variety of new products and technologies that is impacting the bottom line and exhibiting capabilities and impact in unforeseen ways.

Fabric graphics, for example, have pretty much taken over the tradeshow floor. Sure, you could see fabric graphics ten years ago, but they weren’t much to look at. The printing quality was suspect, and the fabrics were not all that great. But technology has improved fabric printing by leaps and bounds, and the same has happened to the fabric that is used for printing.

And what about light boxes or back lit fabrics? Just a decade ago salesmen would come through our door pitching the next generation of LED lights, which were definitely impressive. But the past ten years have seen a drastic drop in the cost of LED lights, and a sharp uptick in the quality of the lights.

And what about social media? Fifteen years ago, social media frankly didn’t exist. Online promotions were barebones at best. Email marketing was fairly well established, but preshow marketing stuck mainly to traditional channels such as direct mail and advertising. But now, any company that doesn’t engage in using Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and add on some elements of their outreach via YouTube and LinkedIn is increasingly rare. All of those social media channels have matured greatly and can be used to drive traffic and move people around a tradeshow floor.

Video is also part of the renaissance of tradeshow marketing which contributes to the idea that we’re experiencing a Golden Age. More and more exhibits show off one or more video monitors, and you’ll increasingly see video walls, which grabs visitors’ eyeballs with a visual impact that was previously unobtainable, or only at an ungodly price. Video production has also come down drastically in price and obtaining great footage to go with your video messaging at a lower cost means more exhibitors can show off a lot more of their brand for less. Drones, for one example, have given anyone the ability to drop in aerial footage into their brand videos for a few dollars, instead of the thousands of dollars it used to cost. Most brand videos I see at tradeshows have at least some drone footage, and I suspect that most people don’t even give it a second thought (I do – drone footage is freaking cool, man!).

golden age of tradeshow marketing

Add to all of that the coming-of-age of Virtual Reality, which will open doors to creative people getting involved to do more fantastic VR for tradeshows. The VR I’ve seen so far has been disappointing, as were the first few VR games and programs I’ve seen. But lately the bar has been raised, and the quality and creativity will come up.

What about data tracking and electronic product showcases, such as ShowcaseXD? This and similar programs will not only allow exhibitors to show off products in an easy format, the data that comes out of these systems proves to be extremely useful to companies. Didn’t have anything as sophisticated as that only a decade ago.

Automated email has been around for perhaps a couple of decades, but that also gets more and more sophisticated, and combined with a data entry, product catalog or context on a tablet, marketers can send out detailed, personalized responses based on visitors’ interests.

All of these – and more technologies that I’ve either missed or are in their infancy – are having a great impact on tradeshows and giving exhibitors the ability to maximize their dollars, create a bigger splash, take home more data and find an edge in a very competitive marketplace.

If not a new Golden Age of Tradeshow Marketing, at least a Renaissance or resurgence.

13 Tradeshow and Event-Related Twitter Accounts to Follow

Hey, doesn’t everybody use Twitter? Okay, not everybody, but certainly a lot of folks do. It’s the go-to immediate social media platform to post quick-hitting comments, links and videos. You can track chatter about topics galore, and if you’re trying to keep up with social media interaction relating to a specific tradeshow, just plug in the show hashtag and you’re seeing dozens and dozens of tweets, photos and videos.

Frankly, it’s tough to find a tradeshow-related Twitter account that doesn’t commit one of the sins of tweeting: too much self-promotion, nothing but retweeting, or just ignoring the ability to personally relate by tweeting our photos or individual comments.

Let’s get highly subjective and track down a baker’s dozen of tradeshow and event-related Twitter accounts that you might take a look at:

Julius Solaris, Editor of Event Manager Blog, Author.

 

Melissa P. Michel, tradeshow and event specialist, and in case you didn’t notice, a softball fanatic!

 

ExpoStars: Team training, booth staff, effective engagement.

Sarah Michel, The Wonder Woman of Networking, VP of Connexity, CSP at Velvet Chainsaw.

 

Kyle Hillman, CMM, Hillman Events, wearer of all hats

 

Liz King. NYC based Event Planning Superhero

 

BizBash: Ideas, News and Resources for Event Planners & Experiental Marketers

 

EventBrite: The world’s largest event technology platform.

 

Shawna McKinley, Event Sustainability

 

Sparks Marketing: Brand experience agency.

 

Corbin Ball, CSP CMP, Event and Tradeshow Technology Analyst

 

Rachel Wimberly, TSNN,  Editor-in-Chief of the Tradeshow News Network

 

Adrian Segar, Conferences that work, consultant for interactive, innovative, attendee-driven events.

 

MelmWhite, Classic Exhibits, VP of Business Development for exhibit manufacturer Classic Exhibits

 

Anders Boulanger, Tradeshow Crowds: Infotainer that draws crowds

 

There you have it. Take a closer look. And let me know about other Twitter tradeshow and event activists that I should know about!

7 Ways to Create Social Media Buzz Before the Tradeshow

So you wanna create social media buzz before the tradeshow but aren’t sure exactly how to pull it off? Of course there are dozens of strategies and tactics that will raise your profile above the average company, but not all will work in all situations and of course nothing is guaranteed. Your tweets and Instagram posts could be swept away by an unforeseen event or distraction that swoops up the eyeballs you were hoping to grab!

Create Social Media Buzz
Bob Moore of Bob’s Red Mill marches into Expo West with a dixieland band.

One of the most memorable methods was one I saw years ago when Griffin refurbished an old VW bus and drove across the country for a couple of weeks, tweeting and posting photos and videos all the way. By the time they drove the bus onto the tradeshow floor, hundreds of people were waiting for them. So you might consider how to play up your travel to the event. It might grab attention if it’s different than the norm. Anyone want to bounce from SF to LA on a pogostick wearing a branded shirt? Hey, just a thought!

So here are some more thoughts and ideas on how to create a little social media buzz prior to the show:

  1. Know the show hashtag, so that everything you put out is trackable and findable by show followers, whether they follow your actual account or not.
  2. If you have new products or services, create a teaser video or three and get them out onto your social media platforms.
  3. Maybe you’re going to debut a new exhibit at the show. Work with your exhibit house to tease elements of the exhibit with photos prior to the show.
  4. Consider creating a special landing page on your website just for the show. Let people make appointments, view more videos, learn about new products, get invited to parties, sign up for email or text notifications, whatever.
  5. If you have a company CEO or other management member speaking at the show or being part of a panel, be sure to include that in any information you post. And if you’re sponsoring a specific event or area of the show, don’t forget that.
  6. Got a contest or something else to draw people to your booth? Start promoting the contest online a week or so prior to the show. Any sooner and it becomes old quickly. Wait too long and you won’t reach as many people.
  7. Create a special hashtag just for your company for just this show and invite people to post photos of themselves wearing your product using the hashtag. Draw several prize winners from among the photos during the show and give away a bunch of your products to both show attendees and those that weren’t able to attend.

By engaging with attendees prior to the show, you create social media buzz that increases the odds you’ll draw more people to your booth during the show. If you manage to come up with this year’s VW bus promotion that goes viral, you might even get a raise!

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