Trade Show Marketing Ideas and Advice for Event Marketers

trade show booth staffers - essential skills

trade show marketing

8 Essential Trade Show Booth Staffing Skills

You can exhibit at trade show filled with your best prospects, design a compelling display, host fun trade show games, but without capable trade show booth staffing, all is for naught.

To the throng of potential buyers who walk by and into your booth, your staffers are the face of your company. Your booth staffers must perform a wide variety of trade show activities well. If they can’t handle it, your whole company suffers in lost future business.

So, what must your booth staffers do well? For starters, avoid these 10 awful trade show activities. Here are 8 essential trade show booth staffing skills they must master for your trade show success:

Samuel J. Smith September 14, 2019

trade show marketing

The Biggest Overlooked Thing You Need To Succeed At Trade Shows

Because B2B marketers spend around 40% of their budgets on trade shows, exhibitors really want to know how to do shows well. And so, countless blog posts offer their advice on the key things you need to succeed at trade shows.

We’ve published our own version of that idea here, and we probably will again in the future. There have even been entire books telling you the same ideas, but in far greater detail.

Recurring tips on how to succeed at trade shows include:

Set trade show marketing goals and objectives in tune with your overall company goals
Find the right shows where your buyers attend
Manage your budget for greater return on investment
Design your trade show booth to capture attention and tell your story
Promote your presence before, during, and after the show with promotions
Select and train your booth staff to engage attendees and write up qualified leads
Manage your leads for quick fulfillment and distribution to your sales team
Repeated follow-up on your trade show leads
Measurement and reporting of your results to justify your budget and improve performance

These are all excellent tips, and you need to meet all these steps to succeed at trade shows.

Samuel J. Smith August 4, 2019

Choosing Best Interactive Game When You Exhibit At Different Vertical Market Trade Shows

trade show marketing

Choosing The Best Interactive Game When You Exhibit At Different Vertical Market Trade Shows

Savvy exhibitors know that exhibiting at vertical market shows can be the best strategy for improving trade show results.

These smart exhibitors understand which industries their most valuable customers come from – and then exhibit at shows were those valuable customers attend.

For example, if you sell a software product for professional services firms, you may exhibit at a big software trade show. But once you know that ad agencies and engineering firms buy three times more than your average client, you can instead exhibit at shows where ad agency employees or engineers attend.

Samuel J. Smith May 17, 2019

Aurora Diagnostics - Trivia game and entire trade show booth at AAD 2019

trade show marketing

Aurora Diagnostics Boosts Trade Show Lead Counts Two Years In A Row With Interactive Trivia Game

Stacey Rosenberg, Marketing Specialist at Aurora Diagnostics, wanted an interactive trivia game as part of their large booth at the American Academy of Dermatologists (AAD) show for three main reasons:

Have a fun, interactive booth with an activity that was quick and easy to play, to get more people into their booth
Have an additional way to gather leads beyond the show’s badge scanners (which often lacked attendees’ email addresses)
Showcase company services and benefits by including easier company-specific questions mixed in with dermatology-based quiz questions

Aurora Diagnostics first used SocialPoint’s Challenge Bar Trivia Game at AAD 2018, with excellent results: “Wow! Quite the turnout!” affirmed Rosenberg. “About 30% of our booth visitors played the game.”

“I was happy to get 332 additional leads at the show. The game was actually an easier way to collect leads than asking everyone to scan badges, which some people are put off by.”

Samuel J. Smith April 19, 2019

6 Reasons To Keep Exhibiting At B2B Trade Shows

trade show marketing

6 Reasons To Keep Exhibiting At B2B Trade Shows

In this increasingly tech-driven world, you may hear from colleagues who look at seemingly old-school trade shows and think, “Why should we continue to exhibit?”

Well, because trade shows continue to provide so much value to B2B marketers. Value that may be surprising at first glance.

So, in case you or someone from your team is feeling reluctant to pack their bags for a bustling three-day trade show in sunny Las Vegas, here are 6 reasons why trade shows bring unique value to your company:

1. Digital Marketing is no picnic

Yes, as a B2B marketer, you have a wide palette of digital marketing tools to employ. But access to tools doesn’t mean success is guaranteed. For example, many marketers have found social media to be hard to do for more than build awareness, lacking success at generating plentiful sales leads. And social media is no longer free media – it’s now pay-to-play, and increasingly more and more pay.

Samuel J. Smith April 12, 2019

trade show marketing

4 Ways To Better Care For Your B2B Customers At Trade Shows

One of top three trade show goals for B2B marketers is to strengthen key relationships. And no relationship is more valuable than their relationship with existing customers.

Yet, most exhibitors put greater effort into generating as many badge scans as possible, rather than creating a pro-active plan to take full advantage of their rare face-to-face time with multiple clients.

That’s a lost opportunity to boost sales and profits. You may be acquainted with some of the eye-popping economic stats that support focusing on retaining your customers:

Samuel J. Smith March 29, 2019

Using trade show trivia games to achieve different strategic business goals

trade show marketing

Educate Prospects, Qualify Buyers, Recruit Top Talent: Achieving 3 Different Goals With Trade Show Trivia Games

There is surprising versatility in achieving different business goals with our Challenge Bar Trivia game. It all comes down into what your goals are, and writing your trivia questions to meet your specific goal.

For all our clients, our trivia game brings in more booth traffic and engages visitors. That’s reason enough for most clients to value it.

However, some of our clients have also realized 3 other major strategic business goals. They purposely sought those results by how they choose to write and set up their trivia questions:

Samuel J. Smith March 22, 2019

trade show marketing

Keep Attendees In Your Booth Longer With Interactive Trade Show Games

Interactive trade show games do a great job of driving more traffic to your booth. But they can also keep that larger crowd of attendees in your booth longer, too.

Here’s how two of our interactive trade show games increase attendee dwell time:

Challenge Bar Trivia: Play It Again, Sam

When your booth visitors play the “three strikes and you’re out” version of our Challenge Bar Trivia game, it can take up to 10 or more minutes as they answer up to 25 questions. That fun experience keeps them in your booth for an extended period. And as they answer questions, they learn about your products and services, plus get to know your booth staffers who helpfully give them hints on quiz questions. They also can stay a longer time when they play the Game Show version of our trivia game.

Samuel J. Smith March 15, 2019

Cross selling trade show attendees with interactive trade show games

trade show marketing

How To Cross-Sell Customers At Trade Shows With Our Interactive Trivia Game

Maybe you exhibit at trade shows to boost awareness. Or maybe your goal is to generate new leads.

But if your B2B company has been around for years, or you have considerable market share, your trade show goal may be all about maintaining and expanding your sales with your existing customers.

And while our Challenge Bar Trivia game can help you boost awareness and generate leads, it’s particularly adept at helping you cross-sell to customers you already have.

Three sad realities about repeat sales

Here are three sad realities about generating repeat sales at trade shows:

Samuel J. Smith February 16, 2019

trade show marketing

Best Trade Show Marketing Advice From Exhibit House Experts

Over the past few years, our company has increasingly partnered with leading Exhibit Houses to create interactive trade show game activations for their exhibiting clients. We have been impressed by the commitment, care, and expertise they bring to their clients’ trade show marketing.

We also wanted to uncover their vast experience creating effective trade show marketing campaigns, especially with technology. So we asked them to share with a survey. Survey respondents were all either Exhibit House Account Executives or senior management, all with client-facing responsibilities.

Samuel J. Smith December 21, 2018

Blog

1. Digital Marketing is no picnic

Challenge Bar Trivia: Play It Again, Sam

Three sad realities about repeat sales