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How to Manage Interactive Q&A With An Audience Response App

Event presentation app for successful question and answer experience

Several years ago, I was in Norway giving a presentation and using interactive Q&A for the first time in a conference. Previously, I had always used the microphone for my presentations. On this day, we had a new event technology that had a Q&A feature.

I discovered very quickly that if everyone had a chance to ask questions they would do it. I received dozens of questions via the interactive Q&A app.

Second, I learned that people were more willing to ask questions via the technology than stand up in front of the room with microphone.

Finally, I quickly discovered that I could easily skip questions that I didn’t want to answer… or the questions that I thought were irrelevant.

It was my first “aha!” moment with interactive Q&A technology. Since then, I have had a chance to work with lots and lots of marketers, leadership teams and event teams to help them structure interactive Q&A sessions in their events.

Here are my best tips for planning and managing Interactive Q&A.

Planning the Interactive Q&A Experience

Interactive Q&A can be as simple as – “hey post some questions via this app and we will answer them.” Or, you can make the process more involved. Here are five major considerations when planning Interactive Q&A.

  1. Will you allow attendees to post questions during the entire presentation or only at the end?

This question gets at your preferences. As an attendee, I like to be able to ask questions when I think of them. I once had a question on slide 21 or a 97 slide deck. I nearly forgot my question by the end of the presentation.  However, some event organizers prefer that attendees only ask questions during the specific Q&A period.

  1. When will the speaker address those attendee’s questions?

So, it’s one thing to allow attendees to submit questions when they think of them – but how will your presenter handle the questions? Will your speakers answer questions as they arrive in the app, or only during the designated Q&A time?

  1. How will you pick the questions that get answered?

Most likely, you are going to get more questions than you can address in the allotted time.  So, you need to have a plan for selecting the questions that will get answered. Will the speaker or the moderator pick the questions? To reduce the burden on the speaker, many people use either a moderator or a subject mater expert to filter through the questions and present questions to the speaker.

  1. Will the questions be anonymous?

It’s an important question. If you are dealing with sensitive subjects like facility closings and layoffs, then anonymous is best.

  1. How visible will the questions be to the audience?

You could present the questions on the screen for all to see or they can be available on a tablet for the moderator or you can put them on a confidence monitor. Each event organizer and speaker have different preferences here.

Planning the Interactive Q&A Technology

  1. Can the technology support the experience that you want to create?

You need to speak with your vendor to make sure that the technology has the flexibility and capabilities to support the experience that you want to create. In our audience response app for example, moderators can push questions to the screen from a tablet or queue a list of questions to answer on a tablet.

  1. How will attendees access the interactive Q&A app or audience response app?

You need to know how the attendees will access the app. Is it a website that they access or will you use an app that they need to download and install? Whatever you do, please try to make it easy for the attendees. Then, be sure to give them proper instructions.

  1. Who will be responsible for coordinating the audience response app onsite?

This technology is really easy to use, so you probably don’t need to fly in staff from the vendor. However, you do need to assign someone from your content team or the production team to support the technology.

  1. Do the attendees need internet or 3G/4G bandwidth to access the app?

The answer is probably yes. So, make sure that attendees will have access to either a mobile signal or Wi-Fi in the event space where you are working. Otherwise it’s all for not.

  1. How much is it?

Prices vary. Sometimes this technology is available with an audience response app or an event app. Other times it is offered as a stand-alone technology.

How to Manage Interactive Q&A Onsite

It’s important to run through everyone’s roles and responsibilities and the communication flow before each session.

Most likely, your speaker will be responsible for the “call to action” to submit questions.  It could be a verbal cue or a slide with instructions that is incorporated into the speaker’s slide deck.

If you have a moderator, they will be responsible for sorting through the questions and picking the best questions for the speaker to answer.  Make sure that your moderator has a tablet or technology that can access the questions submitted by your attendees.

Make sure that the speaker and the moderator coordinate how they will manage questions before hand. The moderator should understand the topics and themes that the speaker wants to avoid. This will save everyone from embarrassment.

To get off to a quick start, it’s helpful to have a few questions seeded in the system. The first questions prime the pump and help stimulate attendees thinking. In the mean time, the seeded questions allow you to start the Q&A while you wait for questions to come in. It usually takes about a few seconds for people to think about their question and type it in.

Final Point

If you can – celebrate the people who are asking questions. Your attendees like to be recognized as thoughtful and smart.

If you’d like to see how you can create more engaging and interactive presentations using our audience response app, 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.

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11 Social Media Wall Design Ideas for Events and Trade Shows

The concept of a Social Media Wall in of itself has great potential: Gather up all the relevant social media output around a company or organization at a trade show or special event, and put it on display for interested attendees to see!  Yet, clever design and execution are required to get the full value.

Here are 11 things that SocialPoint has built into the design of our Social Media Wall Event Displays, so that exhibit and event marketers can make a bigger impact:

1. Bring Content to Life

Instead of just showing content with traditional templates, we created templates that transform your attendees thoughts, ideas and photos into fun designs. Most companies are able to find a design template that fits their event theme or brand design.

Floating tweets as part of a social media wall used at events and trade shows

2. Images and More Images

There is only one thing people love to see more than their name in lights…it’s their pictures.  Photos of attendees and interactions are the most common element we see shared on our Social Media Walls.  But how do you present the photos? Big photos, square photos, circle photos, Little photos, scrolling photos, bursting photos, and much more. And most of all, photos that move – see the next point!

Social Media Wall at event with moving images of social share photos

3. Put Content in Motion 

Animation is one of the key elements to our successful Social Media wall, because it causes people to stop and look. Your audience’s messages and pictures float, flip, scroll, and pop, a constantly changing, more visually interesting display.  (To see what we mean – click the play button to watch the movie.)

4. Emphasize Your Brand

Our Social Media Wall becomes yours, with your brand colors, themes, art work and/or event logo, the hashtag you want people to share, and the main message or call to action you want remembered.

Floating quotes on a social media wall for events and trade show booths

5. Incorporate Branded Slide Shows

You can create slide shows out of full-screen graphics featured at specific intervals, to highlight your own products, offers, branding or other announcements. You can highlight speakers, key opinion leaders and much more.  If you show content on multiple screens, you can create and time slide shows to match your marketing objectives.

Featured content within a social media wall digital display

6. Create Games with Leaderboards

The most prolific and popular social sharers get their moment in the sun, and you get an ever-updating, competition-enhancing visual.  Ranks those who share the most messages, photos, retweets, or those who get mentioned and retweeted the most. Can also include prizes offered to entice more social sharing.

Leaderboards show who are the most prolific and influential social sharers

7. Social Videos

Your attendees are posting videos as well as social media photos and comments.  Watch the video above again, and notice there were even video social shares playing, too!

Video social shares inside of a social media wall

8. Cool Shapes

We can frame social shares in different shapes and sizes, from circles to squares to rectangles and quote shapes.  Pick what you like best.

Round social shares within a social media wall display at an event

9. Bright Colors

Make exciting messages and images even more vivid with bright colors, used in backgrounds, shapes, messages, and designs.  Not that you have to use bright colors, if they don’t work with your (#4) branding.

Bright and vivid colors add interest to a social media wall

10. WordClouds

Popular WordClouds let attendees literally see the “buzz” of the show, displaying the most shared words in your target audience’s social messages.  A great visual that reveals the wisdom of crowds.

11. Social Metrics

With social metrics, our Social Media Wall becomes a social media dashboard for both left-brain and right-brain attendees!  It reveals the amount and timing of social activity associated with the event, with cool graphics, colors, and design.

Social Media Wall metrics

 

With color, shape, movement, and more, we can help make your Social Media Wall a success, by employing great design along with your great company, event, and attendee social content.

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic with our social media walls and 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 more booth traffic.

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How To Write Successful Questions For Your Trade Show Trivia Game

Happy trade show trivia game player

Our Challenge Bar Trivia Game is perhaps our most popular game.  Trade show attendees love to play trivia to test their knowledge, compete with friends, and win prizes.  And we’ve made it easy for trade show exhibitors and event marketers to host this crowd-gathering activity in their booth, with our easy-to-customize software.

But while our technology is easy, the visuals bold, and the crowds eager, it takes some strategy in formulating the questions to get the best results.

Here are some guidelines when you are organizing and writing Challenge Bar Trivia Game questions:

Aim For Happy Attendees!

Beginning with the end in mind, you want trade show and event attendees to be:

  1. Entertained by an enjoyable experience
  2. Challenged, but not too often stumped
  3. Educated about your company or organization
  4. Feeling more connected to your company or organization

To improve your chances of creating trivia questions that make your attendees happy and better connected, consider these strategies:

Choose Trivia Questions Content Focus

From our experience, clients use the game as another brand touch point to reinforce key messages and learning objectives.

By focusing the trivia questions on the content in their booth, players are able to “ask a booth staffer” or look at a brochure or look at the company website if they need help finding the answers to a question.

Here are 7 different kinds of trivia content we have seen during hundreds of events:

  • Product features and benefits trivia
  • Learning objective trivia
  • Company trivia
  • Industry trends and challenges trivia
  • Regional trivia (About the city or the region)
  • General trivia

The more specific your trivia questions are to your company, the easier it will be for your booth staffers to help the players answer questions. You are also rewarding expertise in your industry or company.

PRO TIP:  Most clients use a mix of product/company and industry questions with a few regional trivia questions.

Example of a digital trade show trivia game question

Organize Trivia Questions Into Categories

Organize your questions into 5 to 7 categories, with each category containing at least 5 questions, and potentially up to around 20.  These categories should cover different subsets within your overall area of knowledge.  For example, if you have overall questions about construction, you could group your questions into subsets about plumbing, electrical, masonry, roofing, and landscaping.  While those categories won’t be seen by players, when the event is done and the scores are tallied, you can see in which categories your players’ knowledge is strongest and weakest.

PRO TIP:  Some clients will start by identifying the categories and assign learning objectives to each category. Then, they create questions.

Consider Trivia Question Difficulty Level

If you make all the questions easier, then everyone can enjoy playing longer and not get knocked out so quickly they get frustrated.  This also works if you want everyone to win a prize.  If you make the questions harder, there will be fewer winners, but the winners will be very proud of having won.  The best games start with easy questions and have hard questions later to help separate the winners.  (By the way, SocialPoint’s Challenge Bar Trivia Game lets you assign greater point values for more difficult questions.)

Frustrated trivia game player

Choose Trivia Question Format

The most common question formats are multiple choice, and true or false.  Because multiple choice questions have 4 answers each, and true/false questions only 2 answers, it’s easier for players to guess the true/false questions.  If you want people to learn as well as win, you can have multiple choice questions with 3 choices that are all true, and make the 4th choice “all of the above.”

PRO TIP:  Some clients will borrow questions from their training and development department. It saves time!

Consider How Many Trivia Questions You Write

The more questions you write, the less likely that returning players, or players sitting next to each other, will see the same questions. Which keeps them from learning an answer and using it for their next game. We strongly recommend reformatting your questions to create 2-3 questions from each learning concept to save time. You can easily turn one trivia question from a multiple choice into a true/false question, or vice versa.

We recommend that you try out your questions with people on your staff or in your industry to ensure they are clearly written (so that people get them wrong only because they don’t know the answer, not that they can’t understand what you meant to write), and have the level of difficulty you want.

PRO TIP:  Encourage other team members to get involved in question creation. It’s a great way to divide the work and speed up the process. 

I hope if you’ve been considering using a digital trivia game in your trade show booth, you now have a greater comfort level that you can craft questions that will help you better meet your overall marketing goals with the attendees who visit your booth.

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic with our digital games and contests, feel free to contact us with questions or to discuss your event with one of SocialPoint’s Digital Strategists. We’ll help you generate more booth traffic.

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10 New Ways to Visualize User-Generated Content with Event Technology

Socialpoint Social Media Wall Hub

Mobile devices and social media technology makes it easy to create attendee engagement experiences in our events.

You can capture polls, votes, surveys, ideas, questions, photos and much more through event apps, audience response apps, social media, SMS, tablet activations and much more.

In return, there are many fun, animated displays that will display user-generated content in real time back to the audience.  Here are 10 user-generated content visualizations that will forever change the way you use event technology to show user-generated content at your events.

1. Circle Poll Chart

socialpoint-poll-results

The Circle chart is a fresh take on showing poll results from an audience response app. The circles and the connected bar at the bottom of the screen give your results more of a modern look.

Using bar charts to show poll results is kind of like wearing mom jeans to a fashion show. You can do it, but friends don’t let friends do that.

Use the circle chart instead.

2. Scrollable Idea Voting Screen (Mobile)

SocialPoint Event App Brainstorming

 

Businesses run on ideas and input from employees, customers and partners. Being able to capture and show ideas collected from the attendees in the room via your audience response app is powerful. Plus, you may want to allow people to vote on those ideas as well.

This screen is a simple way to visualize the ideas collected (and moderated) from the audience, then allow them to vote for their favorites.

 

3. Scrollable Idea Voting Screen (Big Screen)

SocialPoint Scrolling Idea voting display for audience response app

 

It’s one thing to show ideas on the event app. What if your session speaker or facilitator wants to show the ideas collected from the audience response app on the big screen? Using this visualization,  attendees will be able to see the collective ideas, while the facilitator and the group discuss a single idea.

This is helpful for two reasons: (1) You can focus the attendees’s attention on the screen instead of their mobile devices. And (2) you can include attendees who are not participating via the audience response app or your event app.

4. Interactive Q&A Question Display

SoicalPoint Audience Response App Interactive Q&A Screen

 

Interactive Q&A is a staple of every conference session. Today’s event technology and audience response apps makes it easy to collect questions from the audience, select the order of the questions to push those questions to the big screen or confidence monitor.

 

5. Wordcloud

socialpoint-wordcloud

Who doesn’t love a wordcloud? The Wordcloud is a great way to capture themes in attendee’s comments from the audience response app. People love to see how their comments can be summarized and presented in these types of visualizations. It’s great for attendee engagement!

We have noticed that wordclouds get the best results when you ask attendees to share 1 to 3 words in the audience response app.

6. Caption This

socialpoint-captionthis

One of the fun visualizations that we created is the ability for attendees to caption photos. “Caption This” is a simple and fun way to get the energy going in the audience and discover who has witty comments.

7. Trivia Leaderboard

SocialPoint Social Media Wall for Events Leaderboard

People love to see their name in lights. Putting an attendee’s name or a team name on the leaderboard will get your attendees excited. There are several ways to put together and brand team-based trivia leaderboards.

Trivia games work with individual or team game play. Also, trivia games can work well in conference sessions or in experiential marketing spaces.

Read: How Trade Show Booth Leaderboards Drive Repeat Booth Visits

8a. Social Media Wall and Digital Photo Wall

socialpoint-burst-example

The only thing attendees love more than seeing their name on the big screen is seeing their picture. Today’s social and mobile technology makes it easy for attendees to take selfies and share them publicly via social media or privately through your audience response app.  Social Media walls and Digital Photo walls make it easy to curate this user-generated content and show it on the big screen.

There are several different ways that you can create branded visual screens to show these photos.  The Burst visualization shown above displays content in bubbles that then explode into many smaller bubbles. This screen can be very mesmerizing.  Click to see more options.

8b. Social Wall (Flip Grid)

Flip Grid Top Banner

Corporate clients love grid-type templates.  Showing social media wall content in a grid that is animated is very popular. There are several different ways that you can configure these templates for branding, animation and look and feel.

 9. Social Media Leaderboard

socialpoint-leaderboard-example

If you want to drive audience participation and sharing with social media, a social media leaderboard is a great way to energize the audience. Leaderboards can be built out of several different types of attendee engagement behaviors. To make the social media leaderboards look alive — we recommend creating leaderboards around 3-5 different social behaviors, then set those leaderboards to scroll every 10-20 seconds.

10. Live Metrics

Screen Shot 2014-07-31 at 11.21.58 AM

Live metrics are a great way to show the scale of a social media conversation. These visualizations, compliment your social media wall and show the power of the collective attendees to contribute to a conversation online and have an impact.

BONUS:  Idea Voting Touchscreen

idea-voting-example

An Idea Voting Touchscreen is a great way to view content in an experiential space, whether you have a resource fair, lounge or even a hallway space. This touchscreen event technology creates a simple way to visualize ideas on a big screen and allow attendees to interact with them.

 

Conclusion

Tapping into the collective wisdom of your attendees and showing their user-generated content is a fun way to activate attendees and turn them into active participants.

While audience response polling has been around for more than 25 years, today’s mobile, social media and event technology creates many fun, new ways to visualize user generated content in your events.

Have an awesome next event!

If you’d like to see more about how you can integrate user-generated content into your event, 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.

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New Timed Trivia Game – and 2 More Useful Product Improvements

We’re proud to announce 3 significant updates to the SocialPoint suite of products. Our customers are constantly challenging us to improve our products by adding new customization options, new reporting options and improving the user experience.

Timed Trivia Game - New Product from SocialPoint

New Timed Trivia Game

We added a new timed trivia game in January, 2017. The timed game challenges players to see how many questions they can correctly answer in a short period of time. The game uses a new “winning streak” based scoring mechanism that awards the player more points for correctly answers multiple questions in a row.

This game helps you move people through your trade show or event booth faster. It is also easy to use with roving street teams at special events.

The Timed Trivia Game is a new selection you can make as part of our Challenge Bar Trivia Game.  The Timed Trivia game also ties into our overall admin system, that makes it easy to customize the game to your brand, and to track and compare your results against previous events.

 

Updated and improved survey customization tool for trade shows and events

Upgraded Survey Builder

Data collection has never been easier when you use our most popular games and contests. Our new survey builder is light years better than our old one.  The upgraded features provide two major benefits:

  1. Better Data: We now have field-level validation on certain key fields.  This makes your data more reliable, because people can’t enter an invalid format email address or phone number.  Getting you more value from your leads, and saving time for your sales and marketing teams.
  1. More Control: Now, we can accommodate mandatory and optional fields, plus give you a choice of how, if, and when you show your terms and conditions to survey-takers. So, you can make your surveys look the way you want.

Our New Survey Builder is immediately available for Challenge Bar Trivia, Audience Response Apps and Virtual Prize Wheels.

Now You Can Personalize Our Audience Response App Name and Icon to Your Brand

Brand your event app with Social Point audience engagement app
Now, Android and IOS users can save our web-based app to their home screen to get a full-screen, app-like experience. Attendees see the app icon with your name on, and click on your custom icon to launch the app.  So you get more branding value from using our Audience Response app.

And it’s easier for them to find the app on their device, since it’s tied to your brand and event, rather than SocialPoint.

Schedule a demo of these new products!
If you’d like to see a demonstration of these new products and product enhancements, click on this meeting scheduler and we’ll show you how these improvements work and can help your trade show and event marketing programs.

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What’s the Marketing Purpose of a Social Media Wall in A Trade Show Booth?

A 10 foot trade show booth includes a social media wall

Social Media Walls are big digital monitors that show a constantly-updated stream of filtered social media activity about an event. They were originally invented for special events, to give attendees a way to see the pulse of the event, keep up to date with what’s going on, and visualize the event’s energy.

Other benefits of Social Media Walls at events include:

  • Recognize and honor the most active and interesting event participants
  • Incentivize more social shares to help promote the event, both on and offsite
  • Promote more learning and networking
  • Enhance the modern image of the event and its host (be it an association, media company, or corporation)
  • Provide instant analytics about the size and changes of social shares about an event, especially during important moments such as keynote speeches

IBM at SXSW Social Media Wall

Social Media Walls are now being used by more and more trade show exhibitors, because they bring some of those same benefits, but also many new benefits to the individual exhibitor:

  • Demonstrate the exhibitor’s connection to the community, enhancing networking and relationship-building
  • Enhances the exhibitor’s image as a modern company
  • Networking opportunities with industry influencers who come to the booth to see their own social shares and possibly their ranking in number of social shares
  • Attract booth visitors who are drawn in by the impressive visual and want to see a digital representation of the pulse of the show
  • Offer a safe ice-breaker to start a dialog with attendees otherwise reluctant to enter their trade show booth
  • Conversation-starter about the messages shared on the social media wall to help identify a prospect’s pain points
  • Highlight the company’s own thought leaders as a part of the overall industry dialog on social media

Therefore, Social Media Walls can be more than pretty pixels and digital decoration. In a trade show booth, a social media wall helps exhibitors achieve multiple key sales and marketing goals: enhance their image, attract booth traffic, build relationships, generate leads, and ultimately, generate sales.

Multiple social media walls in a 10 foot display

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic with our social media walls and 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 more booth traffic.

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Meet SocialPoint At ExhibitorLive 2017 Booth 1812

Visit SocialPoint at ExhibitorLive 2017

Fun Booth, Big Results!

Have Fun, Win Prizes, & Test Drive SocialPoint’s Results-Boosting Digital Trade Show Games At ExhibitorLive 2017

  • Come mix business with pleasure at ExhibitorLive 2017!
  • Compete with your friends for “Top Dog” honors as you test your trade show knowledge!
  • Feel the rush of endorphins as you win prizes small and large!
  • Stave off trade show coma as you stagger though the hall!
  • Experience for yourself the crowd-drawing power of our digital games!
  • Salivate over our beautiful digital screens that are surprisingly easy to customize to your brand!

You could win this at ExhibitorLive! Win a Bose Bluetooth Mini Speaker!

Two lucky (or perhaps more skillful and smart than lucky) booth visitors will take home a brand-new Bose Bluetooth Mini Speaker!  It could be you, so come visit our booth and play to win! One prize for our Digital Prize Wheel game and one for the Challenge Bar Trivia!

 

See Our New Product, The Virtual Prize Wheel

SocialPoint Virtual Prize Wheel(It’s an Entry in the New Product Showcase contest!)

Attendees like to spin and win.  Exhibitors like to have happy attendees flock to their booth.  Sounds like a win-win situation.  Come see for yourself.  Take it for a spin.

Our Virtual Prize Wheel also automatically monitors your prize inventory so it doesn’t giveaway prizes that are out of stock.  It can be visually customized to your brand and brand colors.  It has detailed analytics that let you compare event performance, day by day, show by show, so you can find your own winners.

Come see our other digital games and contests, too.

 

Still Not Sure You Will Visit Us At ExhibitorLive 2017?

Sure, you could come and visit our booth and have a few laughs and win some prizes and enjoy yourself, yada, yada, yada.  But you’re more the serious type and want to make sure you get lots of worthwhile business done while you’re at the show.

We feel you. Your time at the show is precious, and you need to make the most of it. Just know we’ve helped trade show and event marketers at over 1,000 events boost their image, draw more traffic and capture more leads.

Why Exhibitors Love Us

We have seriously powerful software that creates amazing experiences, customized with minimal effort, that allows for greater lead capture and show performance evaluation.  And we back it up with expert, responsive service to ensure your event goes off smoothly.

That’s why our digital trade show games have been so successful for major exhibitors such as Starkey, ThermoFischer, and Delta Vacations:

“The SocialPoint game was an innovative interactive approach to drawing attendees to our booth. But the care and set up approach by the SocialPoint team also make this a win. They think of everything and make it easy to get help along the way.”

 

“We contacted them with not much notice and they pulled through despite all of the issues with being the first event in a new space. They asked the right questions and delivered exactly what we asked them to. Hiring them was a huge sigh of relief on my end as the event planner to know the content on the screens was taken care of.”

 

“SocialPoint allowed us to stand out among the masses of “info” vendors thus allowing us to attract more visitors than most. Everyone LOVED the digital prize wheel!”

 

Digital B2B marketing agencies

Marketing Agencies Welcome!

Marketing agencies that help their exhibiting clients look and perform better love working with us, too, so if that’s you, don’t be shy, stop by and play our games and introduce yourself.  You’ll be glad you did.

 

 

Follow the orange shoes to the SocialPoint booth at ExhibitorLive

Just follow the orange shoes to booth #1812.  It will be hopping with the excitement of the best digital trade show games money can buy! 

Schedule A Meeting To Meet Us In Our Booth

(We’re SocialPoint, in case you forgot)

The exhibit hall is only open for 12 short hours over three long days.  Be sure to claim your chunk of it by clicking here and scheduling a meeting in our booth with our team.  We hope to see you there!

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Why Digital Trade Show Games Make Better Promotions Than Other Alternatives

Digital trade show games make better trade show promotions

Exhibitors have a lot of choices when it comes to promotions at trade shows.  When they talk with us about the choices they are looking at, these are the choices they compare us to, again and again.  However, for reasons given below, those other choices tend to come up short compared to our digital trade show games.

1. Do no at-show promotional activity.

Too often, exhibitors default to not doing anything to draw more attendees into their booths.  These overworked marketers don’t have the time to put together – and execute – on a creative activity that separates them from the rest of the show.  So, they end up getting passed by during the show by equally busy attendees that only go to the exhibitors that catch their eye or did a good promotion.

Similarly, some exhibitors don’t think they have the budget for a good promotion.  What they are missing out on is that a good promotion more than pays for itself.  For example, if you invest only 10% of your budget on a promotion that then generates 40% more leads, you came out ahead, and generate a far better Return On Investment with a good promotion.

2. Do an old-style, “analog” game or prize wheel

We get it, a physical prize wheel costs a lot less than our Virtual Prize Wheel.  And the physical prize wheel can get people to line up just as well.  The difference is that as attendees play our Virtual Prize Wheel, they are not only lining up to win prizes in your booth, they are also giving you valuable information about themselves, such as contact data and their interest level in a next step in the sales process.

Plus, our Virtual Prize Wheel monitors prize inventory levels so you don’t give away prizes you have run out of.  And after the trade show is over, our clients get data about lead counts, day by day, and even show by show, so they can make better investment decisions about staffing levels and show selection.

3. Do a different digital in-booth activity, completely customized for your company

For some high-end exhibitors, they want to shoot the moon and make the biggest impact they can.  So, they develop a brand new digital interactive tool that helps them present their company in the best light possible.  While this could attract more attendees, will it ultimately pay off with a higher R.O.I.?  Exhibitors who go down this path could find themselves in a tech development dead end, where they have invested a lot more time to create a tool that has limited uses, no future choices to tie into, no analytics back end, and ultimately, more cost and risk.

How do these 3 options compare to SocialPoint’s Digital Trade Show Games?

With SocialPoint’s digital trade show games, exhibitors get:

  • More booth traffic and leads than with no promotional effort at all
  • More data about visitors than with an “analog” prize wheel
  • Better ROI with less effort or risk than with a custom-built digital application

SocialPoint’s digital trade show games attract greater booth traffic with less up-front effort, cost, and risk.  Sounds like a winning combination!

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic with our 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 more booth traffic.

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How Trade Show Game Leaderboards Drive Repeat Booth Visits

How does a digital trade show game leaderboard drive more repeat traffic to a trade show booth?

It’s all about people — proud, competitive people – who like to win, be seen as winners, and stay on top.

This is what a digital trade show game leaderboard looks like:

digital leaderboard for trade shows and events

Thousands of people have stopped in a trade show booth to play our digital games such as the Virtual Prize Wheel or the Challenge Bar Trivia Game, drawn in by the visuals and the crowds of excited players.  Those games are very popular, and do a great job of bringing in people to the booth the first time.

Digital trade show games and leaderboard above engaged booth visitors

The attendees might do so well on the game that they scored high enough to rank on the leaderboard.  They see their name or their picture up on the big screen!  Hooray! They leave the booth happy winners.

But remember, people are proud and competitive.

Leaderboards Drive Repeat Visitors

So – the high-scoring gamers come back, but not alone.  They come back with their friends, because they want their friends to see them on the leaderboard!  That’s what they care about.  They care about seeing their own name “in lights.”

In doing so, they have recruited more visitors for the exhibitor’s booth!  These new visitors will play the digital trade show games, and become new prospects for the booth staffers to talk to.

Over the course of a multi-day event, people come back to see, “Am I still there? Am I still above Joe? Am I above Sally? Oh no! I am below Sally! I need to try again!” And so, the exhibitor gets more info from them when they fill out the game surveys, and the booth staffers get another chance to talk to them.

At every event that I’ve been a part of where there is a leaderboard, there’s always somebody, somebody who wants to take a picture of their name on the leaderboard.  They want to be in the picture and they want to be on the leaderboard.

trade show booth visitor points to her name on a digital leaderboard

So, if you have a leaderboard in your booth, then leave a space beside the leaderboard so that people can stand there and take a picture.

And if the booth visitors win a big prize awarded at the end of the event?  Put that on the leaderboard and then they will come back again to get their prize – and bring even more friends!

Prize winners of trade show games on the winner leaderboards

Therefore, a leaderboard leverages the natural competitive drive of trade show attendees to help bring booth visitors back – with their entourage!

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic with our 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 more booth traffic.

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Using Digital Trade Show Games As An Icebreaker With Attendees

digital ice breaker for trade showsEver seen a trade show attendee give your booth staffers the cold shoulder?  Maybe you just need something to break the ice.

Many trade show attendees shiver at the thought of walking boldly into a booth and striking up a conversation.  They just want to avoid getting pounced upon by an overzealous booth staffer.

It’s a real problem for trade show exhibitors, that attendees (who are at the trade show to find solutions to their business problems!) avoid booth staffers. Without a start to the conversation, there is no lead taken by a booth staffer.

Fortunately, digital trade show games can warm up shy attendees – and turn them into booth visitors – by acting as a digital icebreaker.

The Digital Icebreaker In Action

Here’s what our clients tell us happens, again and again:

Attendees walking down the aisles see the big, colorful digital screens featuring our games such as the Challenge Bar Trivia Game or the Virtual Prize Wheel.  The attendees slow down and watch for a moment, watching the other players enjoy themselves.  And soon enough, the frost starts to melt!  They overcome their usual reluctance, walk into the booth, and start to play the game.

And as they attendees play the game, something wonderful happens.  They have fun, plus learn about the exhibiting company’s products.  Which makes them much more approachable by the exhibitor’s booth staffers.

Now, the ice is broken, the attendee has warmed up, and the booth staffer can start a conversation.  How did you do on the game?  What did you get right?  Let me get the prize you won!  Are you familiar with our company?

And because the attendee is already warmed up, they are much more likely to answer the booth staffer’s questions, and if there is a good match between the attendee’s needs and the exhibitor’s products, then a trade show lead has been created.

That’s no small feat.

And it started with the digital ice breaker.

If you’d like to see more about how you can drive more booth traffic with our 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 break the ice – and generate more booth traffic.

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