One of the biggest decisions for our clients who use our Virtual Prize Wheel game in their trade show booths is: What kinds of prizes should they give away? After seeing some clients struggle with this choice, I want to share with you some advice, so you can have a smoother experience and get more people into your booth.
One of the strengths of SocialPoint interactive trade show games is that they capture so much attention that they essentially promote themselves. But that doesn’t mean you can’t throw some extra fuel on the fire.
Our client Syngenta PPM did a fantastic job using Twitter to promote their use of our Challenge Bar Trivia Game at the Pest World 2016 Show. I’m sharing what they did to inspire you and reveal some of the smart things they did.
Let’s break it down, dividing their tweets between pre-show and at-show messages:
It is no secret that having a reliable Internet connection can make or break an event. Nothing brings life to a screeching halt quite like having a PowerPoint presentation freeze during a speech or a live video stream suddenly cut out for virtual attendees around the world. The goal is simple: Just make sure the Internet works without interruption and content is accessible to the people you want it to be.
If only there was a check box for that option. There’s not.
When filling out the order form to get Internet in your booth or event space, all of the different options can be a bit confusing. But, in the end, most of the Internet options really boil down to 4 key deciding factors:
Over several years of creating interactive digital games for event producers and trade show marketers, we’ve evolved our business model towards configurable digital trade show games, because it provides far greater value to our clients, and makes both of our lives easier.
We used to do mostly custom programming, creating one-off solutions that required weeks if not months of work, 5-figure budgets, and a lot of late nights and weekends. After years of stress, we realized that we could change the way we serve clients by building a game platform where choices and customization was done via a simple interface, not programming.
People come to meetings and conferences for lots and lots of reasons. Here is my list of 20 reasons people come to conferences – in no particular order:
Why do I think this list is important?
I like to look for “hidden” insights that might help me change my perspective and challenge me to think differently. If I can learn something new that changes my perspective – then I might be able to come up with better recommendations, new solutions, etc.
For example, once this list was assembled, the following words jumped out at me: Try, Share, Meet and Discuss. To me, these are action words used by people that like to engage in dialogue at conferences. They are not the words of people that want to sit and be entertained for 8 hours.
In a recent study, 60% of trade show booth organizers said that “Closed Sales” is their #1 measure of success at their event. Yet, there are many, many more ways that meetings add value beyond revenue generated. How are you measuring the business value that your meetings and events create for your organization?
In MPI’s Business Value of Meetings research, they identified 41 different metrics that can be used to help you measure and track the business value of your meetings. Take a look at the list below – you might be able to find a few new metrics for measuring your success:
So you see, there are many more ways to measure the business value of a meeting beyond sales (which was still the first item on the list!). Most likely, some of these are measurement metrics you had not previously considered — yet are metrics you now find viable. Perhaps now you can demonstrate even greater value from your meetings than you thought!
Event technology, event apps and audience response apps are offering several new and improved ways to create conversations with your audience.
Here are some of the things you can do: poll, play, create, capture, share, vote, survey, comment and smile. Yes, smile, because you can share photos too.
With all of these capabilities at your disposal, here are 10 ways you can use event technology to create attendee engagement experiences
1. Energize Sessions & Create a Conversation
Caffeinate your audience by adding polling, interactive Q&A and online discussion to your conference session.
Trade show games are not all just, well, fun and games. They also help solve serious business problems, such as capturing data about your trade show leads that was getting lost before.
Here are 6 familiar challenges with getting all the data from trade show leads that we repeatedly hear about from our clients. After that, we’ll talk about how interactive trade show games can help you capture that data.
1. Stacks of business cards slow down lead follow up
While we are proud of how strong the technology is behind our interactive trade show games, we fully understand that it isn’t the tech alone that makes them so successful. What makes our games and contests really gather a crowd, and keep people engaged, is how well our games play on peoples’ very human emotions.
I’ve witnessed how people, individually or in groups, react when they play our games and contests. I’ve seen players in the thrall of these 6 emotions again and again:
Attendees get jazzed when they play our games. It reminds me of a Las Vegas craps table when the dice are hot. Groups of friends shout, dance around, and cheer as they really get into the games and contests. This is especially true when they are playing our Virtual Prize Wheel, and they win a big prize.
