NEWS & UPDATES

May 31, 2007 In Archives By Advent

360° Trade Show Marketing

Let’s talk about sur­round sound. The con­cept is sim­ple: immerse the audi­ence in sound to pro­vide them with a richer, fuller expe­ri­ence. Your trade show mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence can be enriched by the same prin­ci­ple.

As Steven Covey said, “One def­i­n­i­tion of insan­ity is to keep doing the same things and expect dif­fer­ent results.” We often see our clients attend­ing trade shows using the same sim­ple strat­egy: show up and hope for the best. We wouldn’t host a party or an open house and not invite peo­ple to attend. It is imper­a­tive for mar­keters to cre­ate a multi-prong approach that encour­ages the high­est pos­si­ble return on trade show invest­ments. At Advent, we call this a 360° trade show mar­ket­ing approach. It breaks down trade show mar­ket­ing into three cat­e­gories: pre-show, at-show, and post-show mar­ket­ing. We believe the com­pa­nies that achieve the high­est out­comes from trade shows are those who delib­er­ately focus on all three categories.

Pre-show mar­ket­ing includes all the ele­ments that take place before the show invi­ta­tions to visit the booth, mail­ers that express a key mes­sage, emails, or pub­lic­ity that rein­forces the launch of a new prod­uct or ser­vice. At-show mar­ket­ing isn’t just what hap­pens when the lights go on and the booth goes up. It also takes the per­spec­tive of the audi­ence. What hap­pens at the show? What is their expe­ri­ence like? At-show mar­ket­ing can include con­sid­er­a­tion hotel room drops, the show’s daily news­pa­pers, in-booth events, or out-of-booth com­pli­men­tary events for exhibit­ing com­pa­nies. Post-show strat­egy con­sid­ers the fol­low up. How will we con­tact folks who came by the booth? How will we cap­i­tal­ize on at-show energy and excite­ment? Follow-up includes post show mail­ers, email and phone con­tacts, and strate­gies for divid­ing leads among the sales force.

Take a 360° per­spec­tive on trade show mar­ket­ing and see the dif­fer­ence. Advent helps clients develop a plan that imple­ments pre-show, at-show, and post-show strate­gies that achieve mea­sur­able out­comes and opti­mize ROI. It would be our honor to do the same with you.

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact us at info@adventresults.com or call (615) 742‑3355.

Authored By Advent

Advent partners with organizations to help them visually express differentiation.