Technology companies love exhibiting at trade shows:
We are a good fit with tech exhibitors, whether it’s for a single large show, or as part of their annual show schedule. While every exhibitor has their own objectives, they often tell us this is their motivation for choosing us:
Tech exhibitors know they need to host an activity to stand out from their neighboring exhibitors. But, that activity can’t be a glass fishbowl to catch leads, or an old school prize wheel, or any other activity that works without the power on. They need something tech-driven, to fit with their tech-centric products. They understand their image will be tarnished if their booth attraction doesn’t match visitor expectations.
So, technology company exhibitors want a cool activity, but one that displays on big flat screen monitors and works on iPads. Interactive trade show games give tech exhibitors fun that fits their image.
In this respect, tech exhibitors are similar to most exhibitors. They want to get visitors out of the aisle and into their booth. They don’t want to stand around waiting for attendees to come in. They want to make their booth such a fun place with lots of activity, which then attracts even more attendees who are drawn to the commotion. The offering of fun, prizes, and bragging rights from our digital trade show games helps bring them in:
Technology is always changing. The tech knowledge worker is a life-long learner. That makes education both a powerful draw for trade show attendees, and a powerful goal for exhibitors. With our Challenge Bar Trivia game, exhibitors teach attendees about their products, test attendees on their technical knowledge, and ask questions about underappreciated problems that their products just happen to solve.
Tech buyers, motivated to win prizes, show their tech knowledge, and make it to the top of the Leaderboard, end up learning lots of facts that help support the value proposition of the host exhibitor.
Tech company exhibitors can integrate more digital tech into booth activities with interactive trade show games that attract and educate visitors. Interactive trade show games can help build their brand, generate more leads, strengthen relationships, and boost sales. Which makes these games a perfect addition to tech exhibitors’ trade show exhibits.
If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic and capture leads with our fun interactive trade show games, feel free to contact us with questions or to discuss your event with one of SocialPoint’s Digital Strategists. We’ll help you generate a serious increase in excitement, crowds, and leads.
“I want 100% of the attendees to participate in this activity!”
It’s a phrase that I hear from meeting planners all the time. They are convinced that the attendee engagement experiences won’t work if only 60% of the people do it.
I have an alternative point of view.
First, understand that there really isn’t any single activity that will get 100% attendee participation:
Second, I believe that there are different types of attendees that have different types of preferences in your event. Here is a list that we adapted from the book Groundswell years ago. The list has held up pretty well:
These different attendee types have different needs from technology and your audience engagement experiences:
Creators – This is the person that can take a white piece of paper and make something magical out of it. They represent about 10% of your audience.
Critiquers – These are the people that couldn’t do anything with a white piece of paper. However, they are more than willing to write 40 pages of reasons why the creators creation is really bad. You have them all around you. They represent about 30% of the audience. (In an event – you can use this skill to your advantage.)
Collectors – These are the people that like to collect a set of something. You know they want all the badges, or to get to all of the stations, etc. These people are about 25% of your audience.
Sharer – These people prefer to share the ideas of others, rather than come up with their own.
Joiners – These people like to join. Sign up for this, that and the other thing.
Inactives – These people don’t want to get involved. They want to try and hide. They represent about 20% of your attendees.
Now the percentages are just rough estimates – some crowds vary in size. In our experience – if you use these numbers as a guide post – you can increase your outcomes.
Knowing that, if only 10% of the audience willing to create videos and other content, you’re winning! Even though almost everyone carries an astounding content-creating tool called a smart phone in their pocket, they won’t all want to use it. Sure, they’d love to see a picture of themselves with their arm around their friend’s shoulder, but 90% won’t go to the effort to create videos.
You can increase your overall participation rate by giving opportunities and rewards for attendees to behave the way they prefer, whether it’s to create, critique, collect, share, or join.
Also, rather than trying to get maximum involvement within a single session or workshop, instead go for layered engagement. When designing your meeting, we have different types of activities that appeal to these different audience behavior types. Sprinkle these different kinds of engagement activities throughout your one day or multiple day event. Eventually you’ll get a higher percentage of your audience participating, just not all at the same time.
So, you’re not going to get every attendee to create, but if you can focus on appealing to these different groups and accepting the percentages won’t reach 100 percent but perhaps 30 or 50 percent, you will succeed.
If you’d like to see how you can create more engaging and interactive content using the wide variety of choices within our SocialPoint Audience Engagement System, feel free to contact us with questions or to discuss your event with one of SocialPoint’s Digital Strategists. We’ll help you generate greater attendee engagement at your events.
Our award-winning game just got even better.
Our Digital Fishbowl Game won the Buyers Choice Award last year at EXHIBITORLIVE 2018, as an easy kiosk game that motivated attendees to self-enter their lead data to win a prize.
Now we’ve radically expanded the capabilities of this game to create engaging, big-screen digital content, too.
Here’s how it works: As attendees enter their contact info on iPads or other tablet computers in order to win a prize, they also engage in one of 5 possible activities (listed below). It’s very quick for them to answer a question. Their answers create digital content that displays on a large results screen.
Most attendees will want to make their contributions to the digital content. But for those that don’t, the digital content on the big screen is still a great icebreaker for booth staffers, who can ask attendees which answer(s) they like best, and why.
Here are the 5 digital booth activities you can do with the Digital Fishbowl game:
Ask visitors to choose what’s their biggest challenge, goal, or desire from up to 5 possible answer choices. Poll results are immediately visible in a cool chart on your big monitor screen, and constantly updated as new attendees take the poll. Set up live polls ahead of time or on the fly in your booth.
Ask booth visitors for words that best describe their main challenge, their job, the product category you market to, and more. Put results on the big screen to stop attendees and start conversations. You get a great interactive, and insight into the language your prospects use.
Ask attendees for their ideas on a relevant subject to your booth experience, such as what new product would they like to see from your company next. Attendees’ answers are shown on the results screen, and you can download the attendees’ ideas after the show.
Let attendees vote on ideas you already have captured, such as what product idea they like best, or what tagline best describes your company brand. Results on the screen give you great talking points with all your booth visitors.
Put up fun photos for attendees to caption. Then choose the best captions to display in your booth on a scrolling screen. This entertaining activity helps break the ice with attendees.
There are also two more activities you can host with the Digital Fishbowl without the digital results screen. While there is no big screen of content, you still get a fun interactive activity for more traffic and engagement with your booth visitors:
You can ask attendees to give you their best guess on the number of something you have in your booth, such as the pieces of candy in a jar. The Digital Fishbowl records attendees’ answers with their names, so you can quickly look up who is closest to the right answer and name the winner.
You can add a single question to the Digital Fishbowl kiosk screens that booth visitors must answer correctly in order to go on to the next step, be it eligible to win a prize or prove their knowledge.
If you are looking for a simple way to create digital interactive content that’s easy to implement, customized to each show’s attendees, and helps boost your tech image, then consider the enhanced Digital Fishbowl game. You’ll get more traffic and engagement as you offer up your prize drawing.
If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic and capture leads with our fun interactive trade show games, feel free to contact us with questions or to discuss your event with one of SocialPoint’s Digital Strategists. We’ll help you generate a serious increase in excitement, crowds, and leads.
