You invest thousands of dollars to participate in an industry event or trade show. As an exhibitor, you must work hard at each show if you want to be successful. You have just 10 seconds to grab attendees’ attention as they walk the show floor. How can you use content to get an extra edge? Over the last 30 years, Media Relations has helped countless companies maximize their show participation. Here are five of our favorite content marketing strategies, and how they are valuable to event participation.
Content marketing promotes your products before/during/after the event
Media Relations’ writers routinely help top trade show exhibitors to create robust content marketing strategies that begin before the show and continue after the show ends. You can successfully use a blend of traditional and social media to strengthen your show results:
- Get more people excited about stopping by your booth. Write a press release or article and use it to entice the trade media to interview you prior to the show. This is especially effective if you plan to introduce something new during the event. Afterwards, post the link to the article to extend its reach. Then use a carefully planned series of blogs, emails and social media posts to continue building anticipation. By the time attendees receive the exhibitors map, they’ll want to circle your booth location as a “must see” on their agendas.
- Draw fewer tire kickers and attract more motivated prospects. Pre-show content marketing is great for pre-scheduling in-booth visits during the show. And make no mistake: When attendees see you sitting down with their competition, chances are good that they will be intrigued and want to learn more.
- Deliver your key messages to attendees even if you can’t personally talk with them. After all the pre-show marketing, you may be so busy that you won’t be able to talk with everyone who stops by your booth. So, during the event, use the show’s designated hashtags to communicate and reinforce important take-away messaging via social media. A digital marketing assistant can help you plan and schedule these posts ahead of time!
- Share the good things others are saying about you. Capitalize on recent print media coverage you’ve earned by making stacks of reprints available. To ensure readers see the best quotes, hire a good media-grade content writer to create a key-takeaways paragraph, and an experienced graphic designer to make the handout visually compelling.
- Deliver your key messages into the hands of prospects who are unable to attend the event. Schedules and budgets may cause some prospects to miss the event. Your content marketing strategy should include communicating what they missed by not being there in person. Emails are ideal for this purpose.
Send clever recaps after the show to remind attendees of what they learned at your booth, and reinforce what you want them to remember most. Accomplishing all of this doesn’t have to be time consuming. Media Relations can guide you through the process, and our writers can do most of the heavy lifting. All you need to do is supply the details. Connect with us using this form or by calling 952-697-5269.
