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Tag: booth

  • Booth Jonathan

    Booth Jonathan

    Vegas wasn’t ALL fun.

    Some of it was work, too.

    Which was fun.

    The group in the photo was a fun gang.

    I read their minds, predicted their future, helped stretch their imagination of what’s possible, and they are never going to forget the name “Thrive Agency!”

    The woman in the center had so much fun that she left and came back with her four other colleagues and made them watch.

    Now THAT is a high compliment in my book.

    You have to have a damn fine pitch if your audience grabs their friends to have you sell to them too.

    That’s why my trade show work is so much fun for me. I love getting the ratio of comedy, mind reading, and client messaging juuuuuuust right.

    Guess that’s why I get paid the big bucks!

    Might post a video of the 12 minute set in a couple days, but for now I’ll let you go.

    Best thoughts,
    ~Jonathan

    PS: If you work somewhere that exhibits at trade shows, let me know. I can really help them out. Get me in touch with the person who organizes the whole thing, and I can take it from there!

  • Where Do We Put The Booth?

    Where Do We Put The Booth?

    Trade Show Video!

    I took the opportunity to make a couple videos while I was out in Vegas for the IFA conference.

    This is the first one and it deals with one of the most common questions I get for my trade show consulting.

    There’s a simple answer that can get you 2x as much traffic by your booth.

    You’ll kick yourself for not figuring it out sooner!

    If you’re planning a trade show, then head over to ROI Trade Shows for more articles & insights like this to help you get more out of your next exhibit.

    Best thoughts,
    ~Jonathan

  • 10 Simple Tips to Have A Better Tradeshow

    10 Simple Tips to Have A Better Tradeshow

    Tradeshow Booth Design Isn’t The Only Thing To Consider

    1. Be welcoming. Make your booth inviting by removing tables that block people from getting into your booth.
    2. Simple is best. Avoid “visual clutter” and use one focal point and only three messages
    3. People love “freebies”. Be sure to have give-aways BUT to “get something” they have to “give something”. They must give you their business card.
    4. Train your people how to be effective in the booth BEFORE they arrive. Have a game plan that includes weeding out the “tire kickers” from the real buyers. (Jonathan can help with this.)
    5. Have everyone that works your booth bring TWO pairs of shoes to wear. Change your shoes every hour or two (at the most). Your body will be less tired and less sore while keeping your energy up throughout the day.
    6. NEVER sit while in your booth. Take breaks outside of your booth area. Your booth is your sales floor!
    7. Hide trash, boxes, clutter. Everything and everyone should look crisp, clean and representative of your company.
    8. Ask customers to “work a shift” in your booth to share their success story of doing business with your company. Reward them with a dinner certificate as a thank you.
    9. Have something or someone that is designed to STOP traffic in the aisles and make attendees come to your booth to see what you offer. (Like us. . .)
    10. Be more “interested” than “interesting”. You are here to meet people, build relationships that will yield results weeks later when you follow up with those you met. The more you know about them, the more they want to know about YOU.
  • Trade Show Competition

    Trade Show Competition

    As you gear up for the first day of your exhibition, there’s a lot to be excited about.

    The booth is set up, your fliers are printed, your sales team is wearing their custom matching polos.

    Now you worry about the competition.

    What are the other booths going to be like? Who’s going to be next to us? Are they going to be direct competitors?

    But the other exhibitors are not your main competition.

    What is?

    Distraction.

    Everyone is staring at their cell phones!

    You’d think they’re there to do business, but they’re checking e-mail, posting their selfie in front the show to Instagram, and everything except being attentive to their surroundings.

    So what’s the main strategy most exhibitors try?

    The direct approach.

    “Hey! You! How are you?!”

    Then it’s like Star Trek: the attendee’s shields immediately go up!

    This can be incredibly frustrating for exhibitors, and lead to a disappointing show.

    How, then, do you effectively

    1) get people’s attention in a positive way and
    2) communicate your value in a clear way?

    Let’s look at the exhibitors who are doing it right!

    If you walk any trade show floor there’s almost always a booth that is rocking the show.

    They’re “that booth.”

    There’s always a crowd, the sales team is busy, and they’re getting more leads than they can shake a stick at.

    What is it they’re doing?

    I can bet you dollars to donuts it’s this:

    Experiential Marketing

    They’re incorporating some kind of interactive experience that may or may not be directly related to their product or service. (The connection to their industry is not the important part: the fact that it’s interesting to watch and isn’t a hard sell approach.)

    The presentation snaps people out of their cellphone daze, and is interesting so they walk over to check it out. Two people leads to five. Five people attracts another five and soon there’s a crowd.

    That crowd is now highly engaged, and hears the sales messaging because it’s expertly woven into the fabric of the experience. Now, when they remember back to the fun they had, they can’t help but remember the brand, too.

    Now, those cell phones are working for the exhibitor! Everyone is taking video, taking selfies, and posting about “how much fun they had in booth #714 with #YourBrand!”

    Takeaway

    Where do you start creating an experience that is fun, appropriate, and well suited to generating positive attention & delivering your unique sales messaging in a fun, engaging, and memorable way?

    You start by getting in touch with us. Interactive experiential marketing is our forte.

    It’s the cutting edge of trade show lead generation, and it can easily lead to getting three or four times as many qualified leads at a show than your current approach is doing for you.

    For more details, just drop me a line about your upcoming show, and we’ll take it from there!

  • Biggest Trade Show Misconception

    Biggest Trade Show Misconception

    “We don’t do that kind of ‘barking.’ We’re a respectable business, and people know we make a high quality product, and we don’t need it. It’s not for us, bye.”

    And then he hung up.

    If it hadn’t just happened to me, I wouldn’t have believed it.

    That was the founder of a company that exhibits at trade shows, and we had connected to talk about his lead generation strategies for the booth.

    When I told him about how I create custom designed interactive presentations to engage attendees, make them laugh, and weave the marketing message into the fun that’s when he snapped, and hung up.

    And I get it.

    There are so many wacky unprofessional strategies that people use, that I can understand where he was coming from.

    But it was his assertion that they were a respectable company and therefor didn’t need to improve awareness that struck me as the weirdest part of the exchange.

    Counterpoint

    A friend of mine attended CES (a huge electronics trade show) earlier this year.

    He recently told me about a video he took while he was there. He explained what it was, and I immediately asked him to send it over to me.

    Let me set it up for you before you watch it.

    It’s the United States Postal Service’s booth. It’s huge. Gigantic even!

    You already know who the post office is. You know what they’re about. They’re a respectable business.

    You wouldn’t think they need any help in the brand recognition category, would you?

    And, yet, they still have an in-booth presenter whose sole job is to engage attendees!

    He’s the guy in the white shirt holding a microphone, and he’s in the lower right corner of the video to start.

    Give it a watch and I’ll meet you back under the video.

    Pretty cool, right?

    There are a lot of details to cover, and I might cover them in a future post but the main thing I wanted to draw your attention to is even the USPS recognizes the need to have a proactive exhibiting marketing strategy.

    You’re never too big, or too small to escape that detail. Never.

    The Takeaway

    So if you recognize that successful exhibitors take proactive steps to make the most out of their trade show opportunity, then let’s talk.

    We’re at the forefront of the most cutting edge experiential marketing strategies that leverage high impact interactive experiences, so let’s have a chat about how we can make your next show unbelievable.