If your company services the New York events industry, you’re probably in the business of providing a service that either helps bring an event together or provides products that contribute to an event. You probably strive to satisfy the needs of your client in order to provide them with an incomparable customer experience.
Event professionals in NYC pretty much help their clients save time and money, by organizing and supplying their functions in an efficient and cost-effective manner. But a business service or product that doesn’t add value just isn’t worth considering.
If you haven’t dedicated time to learning the core of the event industry, and just simply have a bad service or product, you will soon find out how the social media platform is a facilitator for unsatisfied customers to get their message to the world, not just globally, but instantly. Amplifying their frustration can devastate your business who hasn’t worked on the fundamentals of its services or products to ensure customer satisfaction. Moral of the story? Get it right at home base before you exhibit at an expo and dissatisfy a social media guru who will quickly give you a bad name online.
Before the expo, you want to attract trade show attendees and potential clients to stop by and chat about your amazing services and products by creating engaging content on your social media platforms. This way you’re announcing your presence at the expo while making sure that your online pitch is compelling enough to drive traffic to your booth. You probably much rather collect a valuable lead who you’ve had an exchange with online and who has expressed interest rather than just collecting spectators who are just looking for a free promo item at your booth.
Other ways to add value to your booth at the Event Planner Expo in NYC are:
1. Planning a follow-up strategy.
Use a timeline (or just a Word calendar template or an excel spreadsheet), to create your follow-up strategy. How will you be following up with the leads you generated? Construct an e-mail that goes above and beyond the typically trashed generic follow-up note. Perhaps you can include an article (or maybe a blog post would work better), and pictures from the event, to showcase your event experience and what you walked away with. Adding value to your e-mail can actually generate a conversation and a motive to communicate after the show. Specifically when it is not the norm for you, now your efforts will be recognized.
On top of your e-mail strategy, you can organize follow-up phone call scripts, and you can integrate into your dialogue the actual experience you had with the lead at the time they were in your expo show booth. Did they have a question about a specific product or service? Did you have a discussion about something other than just your company? If you did, that is an excellent trigger for conversation because it demonstrates that you actually paid attention and took notice of the person outside of their business needs.
2. Using social media to enhance your presence.
There are numerous ways you can incorporate social media into your booth’s presence at the Event Planner Expo in NY and beyond the show. You can even include QR codes for individuals so they can immediately sign up for your facebook, twitter, and google+ profiles, so they can get updates from you live during the expo, and remain up to date with the conversations that are posted after the show. If you frequently deliver valuable content in your posts, not just making your own content, but also sharing content of other influencers that is relevant to the specific interests of your prospects, that value will transcend to your brand.
You can also have your live social media feed on a big screen or iPad (check out the popular iPad Kiosks out there) so that attendees can see the action happening live at your booth. People become excited when they’re a part of the conversations that are going on, specifically if there are hashtags involved. You should tweet with a unique hashtag throughout the show, and even set your social feeds to have the hashtagged conversations appear on your big screen, instead of just one account like your twitter account’s feed. It is typical for people to want to be part of the trending action, plus they’ll recognize your relevance and value. Why else would they make a stop at your booth to visit you if they’re finding action and value elsewhere?
If you offer expo attendees and your potential clients a reason to stop at your booth during the show and happen to slow them down in their tracks to speak and engage them, then you have accomplished what various other expo exhibitors are only hoping to do!
3. Don’t give away items that are lacking value.
The promotional products you choose to give away at an expo should be considered an investment for your business to be thought of long after the show is over. And if you’d like to go one step further, take a gaze at this chart, provided by the ASI (Advertising Specialty Institute).
Consumers will be much more likely to keep a promotional product that is useful, according to the survey. About eight in 10 (77%) of product recipients indicated that an item’s usefulness is the primary reason to keep it. In addition, 29% of recipients said they kept an item because it’s attractive, and 29% say they keep a promotional product simply because it’s “enjoyable to have.” Interestingly, it’s nearly as important for outerwear to be attractive (60%) and enjoyable to have (51%) as it is to be useful (70%). In addition to being useful, the need for caps to be both attractive (42%) and enjoyable to have (41%) is also high.
If you appreciate the needs of your expo prospects, you can truly take advantage of the most efficient form of promoting at your next show. Just one item can convey a message for a much longer time period than most forms of advertising. A business can strengthen their brand or a call to action for approximately seven months, and sometimes even longer with products like calendars and outerwear.
