The Spring tradeshow season is almost upon us. Are you ready for it? Here are five vital “tricks of the tradeshow” to help you turbocharge your company’s investment.
Wait. What? Tradeshows? Aren’t they obsolete?
Far from it. Despite the growing use of technology in our business communications, tradeshows, in mid-2014, remain one of the most effective tactics for face-to-face networking with customers and prospects. Better yet, trade show attendance is growing, according to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), and is forecasted to continue to grow steadily through 2015.
Tradeshows offer valuable opportunities to:
- Pitch your products and services
- Develop news sales leads (and sales)
- Scope out the competition
- Build relationships with trade media
- Observe industry trends
Having said that, tradeshow participation can be expensive and time-consuming, so planning ahead is critical. Although they may seem basic, make sure you’ve asked and answered the following questions well in advance of your event:
- Who will be attending?
- What will they be expected to do, before, during and after the show?
- Where should they be during the event?
- Why are they there?
- When do they arrive and when do they leave?
- How should they behave with customers, prospects, competitors and members of the media?
Working closely with your staff and colleagues to answer these questions is essential and creates a basic foundation for a successful event. Making sure they understand the goals for the show and the company messaging is vital. With that done, let’s look five things you can do to break through the noise and clutter of the event and make your company’s investment really pay off.
1. Invite your customers and prospects to meet with you.
Create a memorable and customized invitation for your customers and prospects. Don’t assume they know you’re planning to be there, or where they can find you. Offer them an incentive if they RSVP for a meeting before the event. Make it so easy for them that they almost can’t avoid coming to meet with you.
2. Integrate social media tactics into tradeshow promotions.
Build out a plan that includes the tried and true old-school methods: news releases, collateral materials, booth signage, business cards and branded giveaways. Then add social media tactics. Make sure your collateral materials have your social media addresses.
Post an announcement about your participation on your LinkedIn page, use the event hashtag and tweet the update. Follow the event in their social media and comment using event hashtags.
Blog about the upcoming show and include your booth address—talk about that chair massage or charging station or really cool contest or giveaway. Post images and video of the show itself to your social media profiles and pages during and after the show and use your social media to acknowledge the people you meet with.
3. Provide attendees something of value.
Tradeshows can be exhausting for attendees. The booths that offer something valuable to someone who’s tired and overwhelmed stand out. Be the booth that offers a place to sit down and get a foot or chair massage to ease stress and tension. Or provide a charging station for your customers devices. You’ll have a captive audience who is grateful to hang out with you for a few moments. Boom! You have their attention and their gratitude.
4. Reach out to trade media and top bloggers.
If you have something newsworthy, or of interest, to industry media and bloggers, tell them about it beforehand and offer to meet with them at the show to provide further insight. If you’ve already built a relationship, reach out and ask them if they plan to attend. Invite them to join you for a meal or a drink or even a cup of coffee. Have a cool contest or something unique in your booth? Tell them about it.
Remember though, before you reach out, think about your communication from their perspective: what’s in it for them? If you already know them, the invitation may be enough. If not, think through why they might want to take the time to swing by your booth or grab a cup of coffee with you.
5. Finally, FOLLOW UP after the event.
As crazy as it sounds, people still struggle with post-event follow up. Yet, taking the time to do customized, thoughtful, follow up can make you, and your company stand out in the crowd. Send handwritten thank you notes, time-consuming and seriously old-school but they stand out and are memorable.
After the event, send invitations to link to you and your company in social networks and remind them where you met them (please don’t send those awful boilerplate LinkedIn invitations) and who you work for. The time you spend after the event can make the difference between someone who ends up buying from your company (or buying more) and someone who goes with the competition.
While it’s true we rely on technology for business communications today, nothing ever really replaces face-to-face conversations. Your tradeshow will be worth its weight in gold to your company when it’s well-planned and implemented. And when you turbocharge it? Watch out! Great things will happen.
Allen Mireles is a strategist with an affinity for technology who lives/works at the intersection of social media and traditional marketing/public relations.Want to read more from Allen? Click here!
Image: Health Gauge, E2 Conference (Creative Commons)
