08 Feb 14 Tactics to Drive More Attendees to Exhibition Booths Part 1
How can you help drive more attendee traffic to booths? Sharing tips on how to increase the booth traffic should be a must for savvy conference and trade show professionals.
1. Competitions
This is the most adopted and abused tactic to increase footfall at exhibitions. There is a space for competitions but only for smart ones.
Competitions should be aligned with the product and/or brand. They should help to communicate the selling proposition of what is being promoted.
It is a smart idea to run competitions over social networks during the event rather than asking for the vintage ‘business card in a bowl’.
Success goes to those who offer services around their product as rewards. It is a great way to preserve the value of your core service while giving something away.
2. Share Knowledge
One of the most effective online lead generation tactics in B2B is to share free knowledge in exchange for contact details.
White papers, eBooks, reports are just few of the traditionally valuable weapons to gain qualified leads.
There are not many reasons why this tactic should not be similarly effective online. The process is the same. Attendees get a copy of your quality piece of content, you get their data.
Delivery can happen via USB stick, NFC, RFID or email (as long as you remember to send it).
3. Online Like
Inviting attendees to like your product on Facebook is a great way to generate long term value online.
4. Online Tweet
Similarly effective is the online Tweet on Twitter. This is an even better tool to power competitions. It can be easily achieved with simple NFC tags or QR codes.
The key here is to make it super simple for the attendee to action the Tweet (or Like that is). If it takes more than 30 seconds it’s not worth it.
If you are able to work out a simple process to get your attendees to tweet online you will have quite a disruptive competitive advantage. But, fellow exhibitors are going to hate you.
5. Photo Booths
Taking pictures and streaming them online is a great start, but you are required to push it a bit to make an impression.
6. Social Ads
A quick look at a random exhibition hashtag over Twitter will give you an immediate idea of how clogged hashtags are becoming.
‘Come and visit us, we are so cool’ messages flood the tiny screens of our mobiles while we try to make some sense of the intrinsic chaos of the show floor.
Social advertising is a great way to gain competitive advantage and secure prime real estate in the event stream. Utilize multiple social media outlets; LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Twitter Ads help you to target specific hashtags and audiences, making sure you focus only on relevant prospects. This is an overlooked opportunity with quite some potential.
7. Wifi Party
Smart exhibitors can capitalize on the lack of good coverage most exhibitions have by providing their own wifi for free to attendees.
Not being a fan of freebies, complimentary wifi needs to be tied in some way to your product and service. You can collect leads by giving free accounts and present branded splash screens to login to the service.
To be continued. . .Part 2