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New CEIR Research Says: Attract Attendees & Stand Out From Other Trade Show Exhibitors With Games

CEIR 2017 Attendee Engagement Study Part 1

If you are an exhibitor, you can stand out by hosting games in your booth. That’s because trade show attendees want to play games to learn about products, but not many exhibitors provide games.

That’s a key insight from the 2017 Attendee Floor Engagement Study, newly published by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR).  (The entire name of the report is The 2017 Attendee Floor Engagement Study Part One: Exhibitor In-booth Tactics – People, Product, Emotion and Other Tactics.)

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18 Stats Supporting the Value of Events

Meetings and events support main business goals like sales, leads, and awareness.Meetings and events create significant value for the companies and organizations that host them.  Value such as leads, sales, and greater awareness – core business goals of the topmost importance.  That’s why meetings are here to stay.

But don’t just take my word for it, because there’s a ton of research that says so.  Here is a slew of strong statistics, culled from the even longer lists assembled by the folks at Event Farm and Certain:

Meetings help companies achieve their core sales and marketing goals:

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Announcing the SocialPoint Lead Manager App – A Free Add-On to SocialPoint Interactive Games

Lead capture app for SocialPoint games

SocialPoint is proud to announce our newest product, the Lead Manager companion app for trade show lead capture.

This gives booth staffers the ability to record even more info about their booth visitors.  And it’s a free addition for SocialPoint clients, when they use our popular digital games like Challenge Bar Trivia and Virtual Prize Wheel.

We used the app ourselves in our booth at ExhibitorLive 2017, and it helped us gather detailed info about the many visitors we talked to.

9 Features That Help Booth Staffers Easily Gather More Valuable Lead Data

The Lead Manager App has many features that will improve your lead gathering at trade shows:

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How A SocialPoint Customer Used Twitter To Promote Their Interactive Trade Show Game

Trade show prizes for an interactive trade show game

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:

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Congrats! You’ve Got More Trade Show Booth Traffic! Now What Do You Do?

Get more trade show booth traffic with interactive games

It’s a universal experience that exhibitors who use any of our interactive trade show games get more booth traffic.  But which game, game set up, and exhibit strategy will be best for you?  Turns out, it depends most of all on what is your goal behind the goal.

1. More Awareness

Want everyone at the show to know about your company? Then offer up a big, valuable prize that everyone at the show will want, and promote it on a big flat screen monitor or big signage or both.  Host our interactive Game Show Trivia Game to create a buzz that attracts peoples’ attention and focuses it on whatever you want to build awareness of – be it your company, your entry into a new market, your new product, or your new brand.

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Demystifying Internet Options at Events

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:

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8 Reasons A Virtual Prize Wheel Is Better Than A Regular Prize Wheel

Cryptzone using Virtual Prize Wheel Interactive Game in their trade show booth at RSA 2017

Hey, it’s no secret: an old-fashioned prize wheel costs less than our Virtual Prize Wheel interactive game.  So why bother going digital?  Turns out there are many reasons our Virtual Prize Wheel is the real deal:

1. Prize Inventory Management

As people spin and win prizes, your inventory of prizes changes all day long.  Eventually some of the choices you offer on a regular prize wheel can run out but, but attendees would still think they won them.  Awkward moments ensue!  Fortunately, with our Virtual Prize Wheel interactive game, your attendees will never know that you ran out of a prize, because our game keeps track of declining inventory as more people win, and then takes a prize off the wheel once it runs out.

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5 Ways Configurable Interactive Trade Show Games Offer Better Value Than Custom Development

Value of Configurable Interactive Trade Show Games and Contests

Over several years of creating interactive digital games for event producers and trade show marketers, we’ve evolved our business model towards configurable digital 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.

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20 Reasons People Attend Conferences

why do people go to conferences

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:

  1. Learn best practices
  2. Learn new skills – How to’s
  3. Learn about new trends
  4. See a vision of the future
  5. Listen to a “Star” speaker
  6. Earn continuing education credits
  7. Get new ideas
  8. Try new concepts
  9. Listen to industry experts
  10. Gain inspiration – from networking with peers in the industry
  11. Meet new people
  12. Re-connect with old friends
  13. Share war stories (stories of difficult challenges overcome)
  14. Share your experiences
  15. Meet with like-minded people
  16. Become re-energized as you become part of the larger whole
  17. Discuss common problems
  18. Realize that you are not alone with your thoughts and opinions
  19. Meet with several suppliers or customers in one place
  20. Had to go – the meeting was mandatory

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.

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