What is Measured is Treasured! Why Your Tradeshow Needs Online Booths
I’m excited to be part of the TSNN blog team! My posts will focus on technology and business processes that help move the needle for growing your show. Let’s get this party started!
We all know that measuring ROI from tradeshow participation is like painting a moving car. Buyers are at various stages: awareness, consideration, preference and purchase. 
Often, it takes multiple touches to move buyers closer to purchase. Face-to-face interactions tend to either accelerate or better qualify the buyer’s stage.
Back in the good old days (three – five years ago), buyers primarily evaluated products by walking the tradeshow floor and kicking tires. Today, they do advanced online research and have a more targeted approach to tackling the show floor. They want to use their time as efficiently as possible.
Likewise, exhibitors need proof to justify their investment to participate in your tradeshow. One way to deliver that proof is to arm them with analytics. And analytics from interactive online exhibit listings are extremely powerful, often delivered in real time.
CEIR’s recent report, Power of Exhibitions In the 21st Century: Identify, Discover and Embrace Change from the Point Of View of Young Professionals found that 73% of young professional respondents interviewed (those under 40) created a must-see list of exhibitors before attending the event. Many researched the exhibitors online before attending the event. If that’s not a good enough reason to have an interactive online listing and drive heavy exhibitor adoption of completing their profiles, I don’t know what is.
Here are six best practices for creating an online interactive exhibitor listing that gets eyeballs and delivers ROI:
1. Search – be sure to give your attendees the ability to search the exhibitor list by company name, category, product, key-word and key-phrases.
2. Personalized Expo Plan – Choose or develop a technology that allows attendees to bookmark their favorite, must-see exhibitors. Your exhibitors would love to see data on how many attendees “favorited” them.
3. Call to Action – Give attendees the ability to quickly request information and/or schedule a meeting. These analytics are gold!
4. Mobile Too – Today, you can probably expect 20% or more of your hits to be from folks carrying smartphones. Make sure that the rich online booth data is accessible to this growing group of users.
5. Adoption and On-Boarding – Be persistent to get all your exhibitors to populate their profiles. In the first year, you may need to even help do it for them. Consider sharing links to exceptional online listings as examples. Target to have the profiles complete at least 16 weeks prior to show opening and then promote the heck out of them to attendees. Encourage exhibitors to provide links to their online listings. Eyeballs lead to conversions!
6. Share Analytics – Capture data on what categories, products, search words and phrases are being used that lead to click-thru’s and other calls to action. Provide deep analytics on the number of times exhibitors appeared in search results and complete traffic analysis for future booth sales justification.
What best practices are you using to drive show floor traffic and engagement with online interactive exhibitor lists? How are you using this data in your exhibit sales process? How are you extending the life of your show and improving attendee and exhibitor ROI?
17 Responses to 'What is Measured is Treasured! Why Your Tradeshow Needs Online Booths'
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on May 6th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Great post Dave.
As an exhibitor, I would pay to see the bookmark analytics. SMS would be a great extension.
Victor
on May 6th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
This is some good information to spur you on to action to assist your attendees to be more informed and more intelligent buyers. We are always looking for ways to assist our attendees on how to make better informed purchases at our show and purchase as much as possible. At our show in March our average attendee saved enough on purchases at our show to pay for their expenses to attend CAMEX. It is extremely important to educate your attendees on how to purchase, find new products, network, and show ROI to their boss for attending our event. Our show is about 1500 booths with over 700 exhibitors. If our attendees aren’t organized and educated buyers before they arrive at CAMEX they can easily become overwhelmed and paralized. This state of mind will result in unhappy attendees and exhibitors. The six items above will get your attendees thinking in the appropriate manner. Buying/selling at trdeshows is the best process to achieve tremendous results when done correctly.
on May 6th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Dave,
Great Summary!! It is very important for any Tradeshow to take it slow when engaging in the Online & Virtual Event/Booths Strategy. In addition, I highly recommend that Suppliers work together when they share Clients to make sure the Client is sucessful by integrating their platforms in the best interest of the Client. This will help our Industry in the long run.
on May 7th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Dave…great post! This is very close to a tried and true business principle of “what gets measured, gets done”. Granted measurement takes on many forms and you have to measure what is important for your “business”. I have always believed that nothing bad can happen from measurement…if the results are positive you know you are doing the right things, if the results are not where you would like to see them you have an opportunity to correct and adjust to get them to where all of the vested stakeholders would like to see them. Measure, Evaluate, Adjust, Remeasure.
Cheers
on May 7th, 2010 at 9:28 am
Good points Dave. Online interactive listing has been around since even before the good old days. However, show organizers have consistently had challenges in getting exhibitors to use it effectively. Some shows even do it for them! If the benefits and return on effort are not arguable (or are they?) I wonder why exhibitors across the board have always been behind the curve? Perhaps it is user experience after all?
on May 7th, 2010 at 11:07 am
Thanks for the great comments and additions. Hugh, you bring up a big #7 that should be added to the list…Show Specials. With a show like yours, proper promotion and conversion of show specials can help drive and justify attendance. Love it!
Joe and Pat, perhaps one way to improve adoption is to ask exhibitors to point you to another profile they have completed. Show management can use that as a starting point to using a new platform. Ideally, you want a solution that starts with the profiles completed at the previous years show so you can build on the data each year.
Jim, show organizers are competing against other marketing channels that provide exceptional analytics. We need to compete well with those channels by doing the same.
on May 8th, 2010 at 12:29 am
I agree. I like the addition of show specials. When I gather a crowd at a booth there has to be a pay off for being there. Promoting show specials on-line is just further incentive to get people not just to your booth but out to the entire show in the first place.
on May 13th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
This is some good information to spur you on to action to assist your attendees to be more informed and more intelligent buyers. We are always looking for ways to assist our attendees on how to make better informed purchases at our show and purchase as much as possible. At our show in March our average attendee saved enough on purchases at our show to pay for their expenses to attend CAMEX. It is extremely important to educate your attendees on how to purchase, find new products, network, and show ROI to their boss for attending our event. Our show is about 1500 booths with over 700 exhibitors. If our attendees aren’t organized and educated buyers before they arrive at CAMEX they can easily become overwhelmed and paralized. This state of mind will result in unhappy attendees and exhibitors. The six items above will get your attendees thinking in the appropriate manner. Buying/selling at trdeshows is the best process to achieve tremendous results when done correctly.
+1
on May 14th, 2010 at 6:45 am
Smart post and I agree having this information is critical to both attendees AND exhibitors. Oftentimes we get so caught up in ROI for exhibitors, but it’s just as important to provide information to attendees as well; especially prior to arriving onsite.
on May 17th, 2010 at 12:38 am
Dave,
Great first post. I think you are dead on with this technology. It is getting better, lower costs, easier to adopt and more accepted by audiences. I predict virtual events with become a very standard component of all trade show marketing efforts in the future.
- stephen
on May 18th, 2010 at 6:27 am
@Denise I think you nailed the secret formula. It’s so important to deliver value and useful information to the ATTENDEES to better consume a show. If you’re successful at doing that, you’ll also provide value to the EXHIBITORS and optimize their investment.
@stephen The way people buy is evolving. More and more the do their research online. They narrow the playing field on the web and then kick the tires of the ones that got their attention in person.
on May 18th, 2010 at 11:41 am
Great post, Dave – thank you! The hardest part for us has been getting our exhibitors, especially International, to complete their profiles. Perhaps with some of the stats you share in your post, we’ll be better able to encourage our exhibitors to use these features.
I know my attendees are using the online tools to plan their show. I’ve helped many attendees both over the phone and onsite to navigate through the online systems and troubleshoot issues.
on May 18th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Trade shows are a major investment. Gone are the days when exhibitors could merely buy booth space, show up, and get great results. Now exhibitors have to “work it” and make it happen, and pre-show marketing is necessary to do this.
So what you mentioned, Dave, is a great opportunity for associations/show management to help their exhibitors help themselves. I hope we get to a point where interactive online profiles become the standard, and not the “cool new thing!”
Congrats on your 1st post…looking forward to reading them all!!
on May 19th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Dave, you are absolutely right! In today’s times we all lead two different business lives, one OFFLINE and one ONLINE. Physical Trade Shows are the best lead generators there are, but what do we do for the other 360 days a year? Virtual Trade Shows and Business Communities are here and are going to play a huge role in our future marketing endeavors.
This is only the beginning.
on May 19th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Good post Dave! Is there any historical reason for why Attendees are not asked to set up their own virtual booths? Every participant ought to have the right to add their own virtual booth and measure ROIs. What are your thoughts?
on May 21st, 2010 at 11:51 am
@Ramesh, we’re starting to see more online communities with rich attendee profiles around tradeshows. They come in two primary forms 1) Matchmaking site for connecting and making recommendations to both buyers and sellers and 2) event based communities to allow for connecting and discussions for attendee to attendee, attendee to exhibitor and attendee to session. Both are evolving quickly with the biggest obstacle being adoption. Attendees need to see the benefit and not feel like they are getting bombarded by aggressive sales tactics.
on June 30th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
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