Hosting a booth at The Event Planner Expo is a big deal! You will have a chance to showcase your company to thousands of industry professionals who are responsible for millions of dollars for event planning budgets each year. That means that you need to create an image that is sharp, serious, and professional, with an enticing edge that draws people in, exciting them to learn more about your product or service.
Plan Ahead
It’s important to develop a strategy for the expo well before you attend. You need to determine what your goals are, and how best to achieve them. The event itself is quick, and can be quite confusing. Having a clear plan laid out ahead of time will give you a guide that you can follow during setup, and throughout the length of the show. That can help to cut down on problems, while also focusing your efforts on the most important matters to your business.
Create a Great Booth
Your booth at the expo is the face of your company for this very important day. As such you want it to be interesting and attractive. Investing a little money in eye catching visual elements can help you to stand out from the crowd. At the same time you don’t want to go overboard and get so artsy that you alienate people. The idea is to create an image that is professional enough to do business with, while being memorable enough to stand out in people’s minds.
Host Contests and Giveaways
A great way to entice people to your booth is to host a giveaway. Display materials such as shirts, banners, pens, calendars, and bumper stickers featuring clever slogans related to your company can be a great way to get more exposure and spread brand awareness. You can also host contests or raffles to make things more exciting with an element of chance or competition. Just make sure that you capitalize on the traffic that these efforts bring in.
Bring Your A-Team
An important and often overlooked detail that is vital to the success of your booth is the team you have behind it. You need employees who are gregarious and outgoing, and who will be able to sell the concept of your business to professionals who stop by for just a minute, while also networking and building connections. Generally you will want to have a minimum of 2-4 people on hand to ensure that nobody looking for information is ever left unattended. The PR or marketing manager of an organization will often also be on hand to oversee the operation.
Building Your List Is Key
One of the main reasons to exhibit at the Event Planner Expo is to build a list of potential clients and customers that might be interested in what your company has to offer. To that end you should have a clear, easy to use lead generation system. This can be in the form of a digital sign up book displayed on a tablet, that lets people enter their contact information directly. You can also have a simple fish bowl set out to collect business cards from those who might be a little less comfortable with technology. The important thing is to collect data from as many people as possible in order to increase the range and effectiveness of your list.
Stock up on Marketing Materials
You also want to make your business details and contact information as accessible as possible. Make sure that you have an overabundance of business cards so that you don’t run out halfway through the expo. If you’re distributing marketing materials you should make certain that you have plenty of those on hand as well. Any leftover advertisements can still be employed in later campaigns.
Elevate Your Image
There are a number of ways that you can use your status as an exhibitor at the Expo to elevate the image of your company within the industry. A few days before the event, you should send out an email to your V.I.P.’s letting them know that you’ll have a booth there. That associates you with the top players in the events industry, while also setting your company apart as an expert in your field.
Another way to leverage the power of the Expo to elevate your own status in the industry is to make full use of your social media channels. Announce that you will be exhibiting there as early as possible, and then post updates about your preparations as the event gets closer. That will help to build a buzz around your involvement, which can invigorate your business and make it seem more exciting, and dynamic.
Take Advantage of Celebrity Photo Ops
The Event Planner Expo 2014 was hosted by celebrity event and wedding planner Colin Cowie and this year the expo is going to bigger and better with even more celebrity appearances. Elevate the status of yourself and your business by taking advantage of photo ops wherever they are available. Getting a picture with someone who is well known makes you look more important. This can then be leveraged across social media channels to garner further attention.
Record The Experience
You should also take as many pictures and videos of the event as you can. Visual elements are great for posting to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and others. Those platforms get a lot of attention from followers, so uploading images of the Expo is like free advertising that helps to create a natural excitement about your company, while also framing it as one of the leaders in the industry.
Network, Network, Network!
Throughout the course of the Expo be sure to form relationships with other exhibitors, especially those with booths in your general vicinity. Being surrounded by friends will make it easier to ask for assistance if something goes wrong and you need help fixing it. These people will also be involved in fields that are similar, and in some cases complementary to your own, which may end up being another great networking opportunity.
Make Sure You Follow Up!
Once the Expo is over and your booth area has been cleared and cleaned, the work is not yet done. In the weeks following the event you need to take advantage of the leads that you acquired, using a strategy that creates deeper connections between you and the people that you interacted with. It’s especially important to send a follow up relatively soon after the Expo, to remind people about who you are and what your company does. Take notes on the people you meet and what you talked about to help you remember them when following up after the show is over. Another helpful tip is to sort contacts into organized lists to allow you to effectively continue communicating with them over the long term.
