Trade Show Events Bring Best Practices to Life
Putting into practice what you preach or walking a mile in your customer’s shoes is such a powerful way of deepening your understanding of the value you deliver and about your business’ raison-d’etre. People who work in and serve the trade show industry know the value to be found in the initiative. They also know the effort, enabling technologies and partnerships it takes to deliver that value.
Taking a page from our own Tradeshow Playbook, we strategically selected and actively invested in two trade show events to engage with prospects from all walks of the event industry this fall: Event Tech Live and Expo! Expo! by IAEE.
Event Tech Live – Seeing is Believing
Event Tech Live 2019 was a great opportunity for the UK and European trade show event industry to discover, explore and connect. Visiting event organisers, managers and agencies were able to see demonstrations, including the full range of benefits of our web-based platform for attendee tracking, lead management, and badge registration software services. Industry professionals are actively looking for technologies that help make their events more successful by enabling better data and better leads.
Gareth Wood, SaleStratus UK Manager, said “exhibiting at Event Tech Live for the first time was a major step to building our brand in the industry. The event exceeded our expectations and we had many engaging conversations with potential customers and partners. It was also a great opportunity to be part of this growing trade show event, and we look forward to exhibiting here again.”
Expo! Expo! Data and Leads Link the Trade Show Event Value Chain
Our booth at this International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE) Expo Expo in Las Vegas was part of the international pavilion due to the naturally global aspect of our business, with offices in the US, UK, France, and Spain. Our focus at this trade show event was on attendee tracking for our own booth and a few of our partners.
The attendee tracking technology measures the traffic or footfall within certain strategically calibrated zones giving data points such as the number of unique visitors, engaged or passing, return visitors, dwell times and heat maps. These data points have many actionable applications both for exhibitors and event organizers.
For organisers, measuring and tracking traffic patterns and footfall in certain areas helps promote the booth spaces, justify costs for the areas of higher exposure, and put some tangible numbers of impressions at the sponsorship locations. All very valuable insights in their own right, but importantly, they help trade show organisers deliver and demonstrate value to THEIR customers, the event exhibitors, which is essential for customer retention year over year.
For exhibitors, these metrics can provide objective data on how they are performing at the event. For example, unless they know how many people are actually visiting the booth, how would they know how many leads mean success? From our experiences with very engaged exhibitors, we know it is possible to shoot for a 30 percent conversion of engaged visitors into qualified leads. With the additional data from attendee tracking, exhibitors can set ROI goals to help assess the value of the initiative for future planning.
Strategic Investment in Trade Show Events and Partners that Deliver
Our strategic trade show event initiatives, together with partnerships with extremely qualified consultants, have helped us yield 10-fold the number of qualified leads in a single year. That’s a great and rewarding testament to our intentional approach to growth based on building foundational blocks, taking exceptional care of our customers, and surrounding ourselves with people who know better and can do better than we can in certain areas.
It’s wonderful to feel the euphoria of success, and to give thanks to our customers and partners, to congratulate each other on all the hard work that’s gone into this year, but it’s even more powerful in those moments to stay grounded and remember the key building blocks that got you here: a deliberate desire to do things thoroughly, a creative flair to go with your gut, and unwavering desire to be there for customers and solve problems, and the acknowledgment of a little luck.
Coming off the buzz of engagement, activity, and interest we felt at Event Tech live show in London and at Expo! Expo! in the US, we are excited to enter 2020 with a real rush of momentum. Cheers and here’s to building even more value together across the trade show event industry in 2020.
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