Friday, February 26, 2010

That’s Entertainment: Adding Some Show Biz To Your Tradeshow Exhibit

What makes one tradeshow affectation memorable and addition so-so? What can exhibitors do to get attendees talking afterwards the show? What can actuate visitors who may accept had no antecedent ambition of visiting your berth adjudge that they absolutely accept to stop by?

Entertainment! According to tradeshow research, reside presentations are the third a lot of important acumen why humans bethink the exhibit. Numbers one and two? Berth admeasurement and artefact interest. If you’ve got a bound announcement budget, hiring ball may be a cost-effective way to allure absorption to your aggregation after arising for the larger, pricier affectation space. Continue reading....

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Falling into a Numbers Trap at Trade Shows ?

by Julia O'Connor:

Here’s the Scenario –
There is an attentive attendee in front of you. You two have chatted for a couple of minutes and now he says -

o Sounds good. How much is it ?
o What will the maintenance contract cost me ?
o What are your financing options over 3 years?
o What’s the best deal you can give me ?
o What are the dimensions of these three models?
o Can you up the capacity 14% ?
o How many hydraulic spring return actuator for 3200 psig
do you have in stock ?

WHAT TO DO?
Many folks fluster around if the question is not part of their direct expertise. Maybe you are an engineer but don’t know inventory levels or financing details. Maybe you know those answers but not the intricacies of engineering ABCs. You certainly do not want to look bad, so perhaps you come up with a quick retort or bluff or just lie. You figure maybe he won’t remember what you said, or you will have time to get the right info to him after the show. Chances he will. You will not. On the floor, Numbers may be money, parts identifiers, chemical formulas, shipment documentation, production schedules, or the time to meet for a drink. Numbers float
around and it is easy to fall into a Numbers Trap.

TRY THIS QUICK QUIZ. After you take it, read it out loud to
your fellow staffers. Allow 15 seconds for an answer.

Full Article

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

McPier's Fate Discussed In Closed-Door Meeting - cbs2chicago.com

McPier's Fate Discussed In Closed-Door Meeting - cbs2chicago.com: "What we need is transparency."

"That's been the rallying cry for those seeking to reverse the trend of trade shows fleeing Chicago.

But when Chicago's convention chief closes the door to a meeting with the key players, organized by a tax-payer-funded agency, it sends a very different message.

'I'm not answering any questions, this is a private meeting,' a woman who apparently works for the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau told CBS 2.

Among her duties, it seemed, was making sure doors were quickly closed, so we couldn't see who was inside. A list of participants was treated like a state secret.

We know who wasn't there: representatives of exhibitors who are leaving or left."
More.

Monday, February 22, 2010

What Every Exhibitor Should Know About Virtual Events

by Susan Friedman

In a recent webinar I conducted for TSEA (Trade Show Exhibitors Association), “What Every Exhibitor Should Know About Virtual Events,” I highlighted that virtual events can supplement, complement, or replace your physical event. However, I caution exhibitors not to replace their event without totally understanding what you are giving up. Realize that nothing can replace the face-to-face contact that you have at a physical event.

Nielsen Business Media (who organize many virtual tradeshows) have found that the virtual event experience might graphically mimic a tradeshow, but virtual events are currently primarily a social networking environment, especially for the under 50s (sorry to be an ageist).

Virtual events are gaining in popularity, which means as savvy marketers you just can’t ignore them, and hope that if you do, they’ll just go away. It’s just not going to happen. More.

Friday, February 19, 2010

What Makes a Great Tradeshow Advertisement?

At a tradeshow, your goal is to get the highest number of qualified leads to visit your booth. Standing out from the rest of the exhibitors is a real challenge. What you need is a GREAT creative, right? But before you jump into designing that great creative I’d say “take a breath.” Building a good ad to support your tradeshow exhibition should not be a one-off project or require all-new processes or elements. Tradeshow advertising is like any advertisement you create. You’ll need a clear strategy to engage the most qualified prospects – and that starts with a good plan, moves to a good analysis, inspires a good design and delivers with good media.

Start at the beginning and make a plan.

  • Identify what you are trying to accomplish with the advertisement.
  • Focus on the actual customers you are after – the overall market of the event is too broad to address.
  • Relate your message to your target.
  • Match your visuals to the message you have created.
  • Simplify your advertisement by cutting out unnecessary elements.
  • More
  • Select a display media that extends beyond your booth, leverages the digital elements you build for your other marketing efforts, and fits your budget.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

A Tradeshow Checklist, born of experience

A lot of tradeshows have been cancelled due to low attendance (which in turn is probably due to slashed travel budgets), but those which remain are that much more interesting.

It’s easy to waste time and money at tradeshows. It’s not just the booth ($2k-$20k) and travel expenses ($1000/day including airline, hotel, rent car, shipping, and buying an extension cable at an outrageously overpriced convention center office supply center), it’s the week of time spent at the show (including travel days) plus weeks of time spent preparing your strategy, crafting your sales pitches, organizing the booth crap, and chewing out the stoned guy at the print shop counter who claims to not see that the “red” in the color swatch is not the same as the “red” in your 6′ x 6′ banner.

Tradeshows are a combination of high-level strategy and low-level minutiae, so a checklist comes in handy. Continue to checklist.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Cost Comparison: Technology Gets Affordable

from Tradeshow Week:

The cost to rent a chair or a sofa for a tradeshow booth got cheaper this year. So did so-called standard carpet or a sound system. But the cost of Internet access on a showfloor took a steep dive, with the average price throughout the United States for the lowest cost option available dropping from $631.79 to $454.67, according to Tradeshow Week's 36th annual survey of furniture and accessory rates.

"The overall technology trend is to have quality go up and prices go down," said Michael Hughes, TSW associate publisher and director of research, who conducted the survey.

Part of the reason, he added, is simply that Internet use and technology in general is becoming more ubiquitous on the tradeshow floor.

"We surveyed exhibitors in a separate survey," he said, "and 50 percent said they'll need more and higher quality telecom and Internet connections over the next year."

Elsewhere in the survey, it was a mixed bag as some products and services required by tradeshow exhibitors went up, and some went down. For instance, the cost of a basic three-seat sofa was down to a $461.90 national average this year, compared with $517.84 in 2006. An upholstered armchair would have cost an average $82.42 this year, compared with $90.52 last year. Full Article

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Use Technology to Boost ROI at Your Next Trade Show, Expo, or Convention

Are you going to be participating in a trade show, expo, or convention? Reach more people before, during, and after the event by using some tech tools. When we look at our ROI (Return on Investment) we tend to look at the expense of the booth, marketing materials, and time put into the event and divide that by how many clients we got from that event. Well in marketing it is not just about conversion (converting prospects to clients) it is also about exposure and creating opportunities that can grow your brand to reach more people. Think long term!

An expo can potentially put your business in front of thousands of people during the event and if you think long term it can exponentially grow from there. With all the new tech toys tools; smart phones, web cams, flip cams, laptops, netbooks, wifi, etc. it has never been easier to turn a local event into a global one. You may just be a small or medium business owner but if you think like those big corporations and turn your every day marketing portals into long term media events you will get more out of everything you do.

The first thing to remember is that one event has three parts……Before, During, and After.You need to be working your marketing and exposure to capitalize on all three parts. Full Article.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

7 Steps to Tradeshow Crisis Management

by Susan Friedman

As we all know, life has its wonderful way of throwing curve balls at us to test our endurance, but most importantly to test how well we’ve planned the event.

What is your Plan B if something untoward happens unexpectedly? Do you have a Plan B and even a Plan C?

Here are seven steps for preparing for the unforeseen:

1. Brainstorm with your team what possible scenarios could occur.
2. Ask other employees for their thoughts on unpredictable situations.
3. List all possible circumstances.
4. Map out each one of the unpredictable situations outlining what and who is needed.
5. Generate a crisis planning checklist.
6. Hold a crisis meeting with everyone who needs to be involved.
7. Create a written plan of action and distribute it to all necessary team members

Follow these seven steps, and then pray very hard that you don’t need to use anything you’ve planned for.

Having a contingency plan in place will give you peace of mind so that you’ll sleep better knowing that everything is under control, whatever happens! Full Article.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Convention officials to show cost-cutting plans to customers

Chicago's beleaguered convention officials will meet next week with more than 40 trade show customers in an effort to explain plans to overhaul McCormick Place operations and cut exhibitor costs.

The Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, which books shows into the facility, will hold the roundtable Wednesday. The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the state-city agency known as McPier that owns and operates the convention hall, will participate as well. More.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Five New Rules for Trade Show Technology

1. Online is not an add-on.

The virtual component must be integral to every step of your trade-show planning. Select the best online communities to reach your customers. And maintain your brand voice and image in every message.

2. Accessibility is key.

Make sure your trade-show web page is optimized for all the browsers, including those on smart phones. The design that looked great on Internet Explorer may be unreadable on a Droid. Three more.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

What’s the Difference between a Shopping Mall and a Trade Show?

The customer service is often better at the mall.

To be fair that’s not always true. But, what is true is that most retailers devote far more energy to training their employees in customer service and sales skills than most companies devote to training their employees on how to behave in their exhibit. We take for granted that everyone knows how to act like a professional at a trade show. We assume they possess polished sales skills. And, by and large, that “should” be true and here is why. Full Article.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

How to Launch a Social Network

It’s easy to create a social network website these days. However, having social network software is not the same as having a social network. For that you need people. More.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Revitalizing participation in events by reducing pricing and eliminating cost-shifting

By Jack Thompson, CMP, CEM, EXPOexpert, inc.

Until the middle class gets back to work and has money to spend…regardless of whether economic soothsayers tell us the recession is ending…business is still sucking wind. This situation has brought further various problems into the spotlight, problems which have been issues in the meeting, tradeshow, and special event industry for some time. However, as my friend, Bob Dallmeyer, recently stated during a presentation at the Midwestern Chapter of IAEE, the resurfacing of these issues is good because it gives us an opportunity to see if something beneficial can come from healthy dialogue.

Help with pricing!

We have seen the retail market respond to the economy by implementing dramatic discounts and price reductions. This is really smart. After all, if they didn’t cut costs, very few people would be able to afford their goods and they could price themselves out of business. Full Article.

Monday, February 1, 2010

iPad: Will it Work for Events

Today, at events, we already have event applications built around laptops, mobile phones and purpose built devices. What if anything would the iPad be good for at an event?

  • Larger Screen = bigger fonts = easier readability for all types of attendees (like baby boomers). This means that you could create e-versions of your Show Daily, conference guide and exhibitor guides. This would make it very easy to make an event paperless AND preserve your sponsorship revenue.
  • Incorporating Multimedia. There will be a clear opportunity to include multiple photos and video clips from the show floor in the e-versions of the Show Daily. Electronic Exhibitor guides could contain video demonstrations of products. Electronic Conference binders could contain speaker videos. The kicker? If you are recording sessions these sessions could be setup online and available for viewing/downloading on the iPad right away.
  • Interactive Demos. Today – interactive demos can be a challenge to run on the show floor. I think that we will see more and more interactive marketing companies creating demos, games, quizzes, etc that get attendees engaged on the show floor (or in the street). These apps will help companies capture new leads, qualify them, and feed them into the CRM system right on the show floor. In my opinion, the iPad – as a hybrid of the iPhone and the laptop – will be perfect for this type of application. More.