Does Your Exhibition Stand Need A Digital Media Strategy?

If you allocate a significant chunk of your marketing budget to exhibitions or trade fairs, you don’t want to leave any stone unturned to make it a hit. And your digital marketing strategy is one of the most important stepping stones when it comes to achieving trade fair marketing success.

Do you think your digital marketing strategy is strong enough to promote your exhibition booth effectively? Every year many marketers fail to achieve the desired success through exhibitions, as they are unable to use digital media channels holistically.

Here’s a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that will help shape your digital marketing campaigns and boost traffic on your exhibition stand. I have also teamed this article with a downloadable four weeks calendar, which you can share with your team to execute your digital marketing activities seamlessly.

LinkedIn

Make a formal announcement on LinkedIn to let all your connections know about your participation. Keep an eye out for who among your professional LinkedIn connections are attending the exhibition. You can send them a personal invite through ‘inMails’, asking them to drop by or request a meeting at your booth if they have the time.

Get the attendee’s list from the show organisers and connect with the key people in the industry. Also be a part of LinkedIn groups associated with the event and add practical insights to the group discussions. Post LinkedIn native videos, showing your customers indulging in your booth technology such as interactive walls, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, games, Geo-fencing and so on.

Facebook

Facebook Events is your low-hanging fruit, and if you have not created an event page for your exhibition, it is high time already. Post your teaser video, showing exhibit staff at work, booth render images, latest booth technology, a hint about your special guest or speaker, or a glimpse of the product you are going to launch.

Follow the exhibition’s official Facebook page to get your Facebook target group. Engaging with these groups may put in the spotlight and get you the desired attention.

Start contests, giveaway campaigns and Facebook ads at least two weeks before the show. Make the most of ‘Facebook Live’ by showing booth technology and conversations with your key customers and special guests.

Important note – You can make all your videos on your iPhone or any phone with high-quality camera. It’s always your promptness and timeliness that matters the most.

Instagram

The official exhibition hashtag is going to be popular when the exhibition is around the corner. So, make the most of that hashtag while posting pictures on Instagram, but before that announce your show participation on your Instagram page.

Since it’s the most visual of all social media platforms, share the visual elements of your booth, product demos and candid shots of your team at work or your last year’s attendees. And make sure you obtain permission for the same.

If you are planning a contest, the official hashtag will get you, maximum participants. Before the show, share behind the scenes look at your booth set-up and during the show, share live experience of your booth and your customer’s experience with your booth technology as Instagram stories. Allow your followers to ask questions about those stories.

Twitter

Follow the trade fair’s official hashtag right from the start to the end to keep yourself abreast of the show’s latest updates. Let your followers know that you are organising a Tweet-Up where you can meet your potential attendees and other exhibitors in person and have a chat about your upcoming show.

To get maximum reach and Retweets, keep tweeting about how your event preps are coming along with the event’s official hashtag. Pose questions to engage with followers and get them to talk about your business.

“Go live” on Twitter to give real-time video updates such live presentations and product demos. Live tweets about the show organisers, exhibition’s latest updates and other experts in the field will help you interact with attendees.

Release a Press Kit

Want to create a buzz about your exhibition booth? A well-crafted press kit can work wonders. Apart from relevant press releases, your press kit should include product announcements, white papers, case studies, booth images, teaser videos or previous year’s exhibition highlights.

For excellent SEO value submit your press release on the relevant sites at least three weeks before the show. In case of product launch, send your press kit to the targeted journalists well ahead of time. But a follow-up mail a couple of days before the show is a must.

Email Marketing Campaigns

You must have email marketing at the top of your mind but how soon you start sending emails to your potential attendees defines the success of your email marketing campaigns. Send a personalised invitation to your booth targeting your customers, enquirers, and prospects with a compelling subject line and creative mail body.

Don’t forget to send a reminder mail to your targeted group on the lines of why it is important to attend the exhibition for their business. In your monthly newsletter, you can talk about your product launch, booth highlights, and the latest technology you are planning to incorporate in your booth. And a “thank you” mail to your visitors is a must after the show is over.

Website Landing Page

Having a landing page on your website specific to the exhibition you are participating is extremely important. Here, you can put all the vital information about your exhibition stand and can tightly connect it with your overall campaign, meaning crosslink the page with all your exhibition booth related external communication. Remember that your landing page is incomplete without your social media live feeds.

YouTube Videos

How about putting a trade fair teaser video on your YouTube channel and embed the same on your website? In the teaser videos, you can show your representatives at work. This will make your audience familiar with their faces. Putting up exhibition prepping videos, talking about your new launch on your YouTube channel and sharing the same on social media pages will generate curiosity among the potential attendees.

Also, put up a launch event video, the interview of your CEO and key customers. The video testimonial of your last year’s attendees is also a gold idea and a short video of ‘show highlights’ in the post-show week on your channel is completely worth it.

Blogging

Create a series of blog posts about the USPs of your exhibition booth and crosslink them with all your marketing materials. And of course, share them on your social media channels to get the maximum traction.

Proximity Marketing

Proximity marketing has everything to do with how you can engage with your potential attendees in the fairground. You can send customised messages, promotional messages, and loyalty rewards to people in close your proximity of your exhibition booth through Bluetooth, NFC (Near Field Communication), Geo-Locational Targeting and Wi-Fi on mobile devices.

“Remember these golden rules”

Post some newsworthy content and live presentations every day on social media channels during the show week
Follow the official hashtag of the show to stay up to date
In the post-show week, send thank you messages to your visitors
Update posts or videos on ‘show highlights’ on all the digital media channels in the post-show week

Hopefully, this post helps you plan an overall digital strategy for your next exhibition. Let me know in the comments below if you are using all these digital media channels effectively to promote your exhibition stand.

Also, don’t forget to download the calendar to execute your exhibition booth digital marketing activities. I will give a detailed strategy for each of these media channels in my future posts. Stay tuned.