When Merck Animal Health Conference & Event Manager Amy Gregory called her boss just after the start of the 2018 Veterinary Meeting and Expo, and said, “We have a problem,” it made her 3D Exhibits Account Executive George Furman surprised -- and at least a little nervous.
It’s no surprise: Many larger B2B companies have also become small trade show owners. These big companies host their own trade shows to provide their partners, vendors, distributors, and end user customers an opportunity to learn best practices, see what’s new, discover what’s available, and to network.
We have recently helped private shows, such as Cisco Live and private events hosted by Allianz, Thermo-Fischer Scientific, and Thomson-Reuters, by setting up trivia games for attendees to play on the show floor. These trade show games provide show owners 5 ways to deliver value to their sponsoring exhibitors:
If you are reading this blog post, you are probably considering an interactive trivia game for an upcoming trade show (or a series of trade shows). This post will outline 5 different trivia games we offer and help you select the best one for your booth. Each version is made to better help you achieve your trade show goals of booth traffic, awareness, and engagement.
All of our interactive trivia games include game play on iPads and Leaderboards. In addition, you should assume that the branding and game theme will be based on your branding. All games tie into our data and analytics backend to measure player performance, content understanding and measuring learning objectives.
It’s unfortunately far too easy to make mistakes with trade show lead retrieval.
That’s because trade show lead retrieval systems and booth staffers are often different from show to show, and because it’s not something you manage every day.
But because trade shows leads are some of the most valuable sales and marketing investments your company makes, it’s so worth your time to prevent making these mistakes.
Here are 8 preventable trade show lead retrieval mistakes we’ve seen our trade show game clients make. We’ve even made some of these mistakes ourselves (fortunately not anymore)!
It seems like such a little thing, adding a tradeshow game to your booth. Just an idea you are considering to make your trade shows a little better.
Yet, adding a tradeshow game to your booth can make a surprisingly huge positive impact to your company’s booth traffic, booth staffers’ success, company brand image, lead counts, lead data gathered, sales generated, R.O.I. — and much more.
So if you’ve ever asked yourself, “Why do I need a tradeshow game?”, here are 17 reasons a tradeshow game will make your trade show program vastly better:
More and more exhibitors are ditching paper and instead of using a trade show app to capture lead data from their in-booth conversations.
Many shows provide a lead retrieval app that allows exhibitors to scan a badge and capture data digitally. Some exhibitors are going a step further and are purchasing lead capture software that they can use across many shows.
There are advantages to using a trade show app to save time entering and exporting data. However, too many exhibitors fail to go one more crucial step and include valuable qualifying questions in their digital lead capture.
Chances are you’ve used trade show giveaways to drive more booth traffic. It’s a time-honored tactic that gets attention and lets attendees go home with a souvenir to remember you by.
But your giveaways can do even more to help increase your trade show results. You can boost their marketing impact in 4 powerful ways, by combining your giveaways with our Virtual Prize Wheel.
Here’s how our Virtual Prize Wheel adds impact to your trade show giveaways:
When you show a colorful prize wheel on a big flat screen monitor, complete with photos of your big prize, it clearly signals to attendees that there’s a fun and beneficial reason to visit your booth. Attendees get more excited to try to win a prize – even if it’s the same giveaways you would have given them anyhow! And attendees love to smash the big button that drives the prize wheel on the screen. As people spin to win, their enthusiasm and squeals attract attention from other attendees. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd!
Research suggests that only 18% of trade show leads are followed up after a show. Further, hot leads and warm leads turn cold the longer you take to follow up with those leads.
If you are B2B exhibitor – then you are probably doing the following:
Time is money, my friend. Speed is the name of the game. If you don’t follow up on your trade show leads fast, your chances of winning the sale plummet drastically. According to InsideSales.com, 35–50% of sales go to the vendor that responds to leads first!
Note: This is the latest post in our series of audience engagement posts.
One of the challenges of corporate events is to break out of the cycle of sameness. A series of speeches, presentations, panel discussions and an uninspired trade show can have a hypnotic effect on attendees.
So why not shake things up a little and create some fun, energetic activity with a Virtual Prize Wheel? Here are 5 ways to use a Virtual Prize Wheel for audience engagement at corporate events:
Instead of drawing a name out of a hat and announcing the winner on stage, use a Spin to Win Virtual Prize wheel to take things to a howl new level. Instead of putting prizes on the prize wheel, put drawing entrants on it. Then, as the wheel spins the crowd excitedly watches to see whose name pops up – is it their name, or one of their friends? Finally, as the wheel gets close to stopping it slows down increasing the tension and excitement.
Let me tell you a story about how our Digital Fishbowl saved us from losing potentially lost trade show leads during the busiest times in our own trade show booth. And why you should, therefore, consider adding one or more Digital Fishbowls to your own booths at your busiest shows, too.
Within less than an hour of the start of the EXHIBITORLIVE 2018 show, we had 13 visitors at the same time in our 10 x 20 booth! Hooray! Just one problem — we only had 4 staffers to talk to them all!
It was awesome to have so many interested visitors, but agonizing to see interested prospects ready to walk away. Especially when you know (thanks to Exhibit Surveys) that the average cost per trade show lead is $283 each!