It’s event season for most B2B companies, particularly in the technology world. In the next six weeks I’ll be going to a bunch of shows for BreakingPoint, mainly to demo our cyber simulation capabilities to folks. As you prep for your upcoming schedule of events how are you telling your community that you will be out and about? Couple of suggestions:
Blog about the events you are attending, why and what you will be doing at the event.
Set up Twitter searches for the show names or hashtags, connect with people talking about the event.
Post events to LinkedIn (groups and their actual event feature).
Send out an email to segments who may be attending certain shows with an offer (we have a super cool t-shirt).
If you don’t tell people you are going to be someplace, don’t be surprised if they fail to show up.
If you want to give one thing away at your booth; make it gel insoles! Forget the pens, USB drives and stress balls. Start handing out Dr. Scholls product.
Large trade shows used to be THE place to pull off a great stunt and gain visibility. Most of the time these stunts had little to nothing to do with the product they were marketing, it was actually just a ruse to get folks to the booth. Quantity over quality was the name of the game. Unfortunately this stems from inflated “lead goals” for shows given to the sales team most likely from the marketing team. To make sure that goal is realized marketers throw dollar bills around to get the ubiquitous booth babes, a popcorn machine, t-shirt guns and more.
Mike Hamilton of BreakingPoint performs a live test of the Juniper SRX at Interop
The past sixty days has seen an array of trade shows in the network equipment testing tools industry, from RSA Conference to Interop (formerly known as Networld + Interop, formerly known as N+I). Although I was performing different functions at each show my eyes were constantly peeled to see what folks where doing in their booths, perhaps differently, to communicate with the attendees. The economy and the uncertainty around how many folks would be showing up for conferences had hands tied behind backs. Walking the show floor everyone seemed to be getting down to brass tacks with product demonstrations, clear messaging and zero glitz.
This was refreshing and helpful for the attendees. Instead of yelling at the top of your lungs to ask a vendor a question I saw many booths where folks could sit down on couches and have an actual conversation. Again, I don’t think this was done on purpose, rather it is a sign of our times. And it was apparent that because they got travel budget approved that they best go back to the office with some really good insight into what was going on in the industry!
They cynic in me sees this shifting back as soon as the economy improves, the communicator in me believes we can harness this power of live conversation to do more with our presence at trade shows and shift the way in which trade show floors are run. Why do we need to continue to simply purchase that 10×10 space and wait for people to come to us, thus forcing us into gimmicks. Make the show floor mobile, allowing vendors to move around the room while attendees get to sit and have conversations. My thought was to have different areas of the floor devoted to an industry segment and at any given time there would be a different vendor holding court for an hour.
Imagine if you went to Interop looking for a new firewall; instead of walking around a vast hall looking for all the different vendors you head over to the security device area, listen to vendors and if one appeals to you head back to a private consulting area dedicated to the different vendors.
The way in which we communicate in B2B has shifted dramatically, that we all agree on, but classic marketing campaigns like trade shows could use a good rethinking. How would you change the trade shows in your industry?
Oh, and not everything at Interop was a 10×10 booth
