I just returned to my office in Atlanta after spending some time this week in sunny Orlando for the Annual HIMSS Conference. Ok, I was on the show floor inside the Orange County Convention Center for eight hours, but the weather outside was absolutely perfect!
While sitting in meetings with clients, ad reps and editors from Healthcare IT News, Health Data Management and Healthcare Purchasing News, I learned that this year’s HIMSS conference was the biggest to date with the number of attendees roughly at 31,000. It was my first HIMSS. Not my first tradeshow by any means, as I’ve worked many tech/telecom focused shows over the years, but this was HUGE.
As I walked for what seemed like miles across the trade show floor, I wondered, if I was a company exhibiting here, how could I attract people to visit my booth? Especially if my booth isn’t a 2-story mansion with video walls from floor to ceiling flashing my company’s name, taking up 3 rows of real estate on the floor. And how do I keep people’s attention long enough to learn what it is my company is trying to promote? After all, tradeshows are all about enhancing brand awareness, increasing sales leads and expanding your customer base, right?
When pulling together your tradeshow marketing plan, plan it out in three integrated communications stages: pre-show, during-show and post-show.
Pre-show
Get the word out to your customers and prospects that you’ll be exhibiting. Use a direct mail and email campaign promoting what your company is going to be announcing during the show. Promote some kind of giveaway you’ll have at the booth (such as a chance to win an Apple® iPad®) to entice customers to fill out a registration form and have to physically bring it to the booth.
During the show
Develop a strategy that makes your organization’s booth stand out from the others. This is probably the most important stage as you have the opportunity to directly reach thousands of people per day. Remember, many people did not receive your pre-show information.
If you can get just a few people to gather round, the small crowd will naturally attract more people until you’ve got a decent audience. Once the people are in your booth, it’s up to you to deliver the message and capture their information for lead generation!
Live entertainment, interactive activities, audio/visual presentations and friendly, knowledgeable staff are all very effective ways to help attract foot traffic to your booth.
Here are a couple of booths I noticed at HIMSS that seemed to successfully generate traffic.
NextGen – Splash Artists
This was very cool. “Splash” artists created sports themed paintings throughout the day. Two artists worked on the same painting together, dancing to music and ‘splashing’ the canvas with paint. The neat thing is that they would paint the picture upside down and at the end spin it upright to reveal the finished painting. While the artists did their thing, a gentleman talked to the audience comparing the two artists working together to how the company’s solutions work together.
A member of the audience could win one of the final paintings – but only if they stayed for a NextGen product demonstration. Making people stay for a demo before they can enter to win a prize is an excellent way to capture leads. It can help weed out the serious leads from the people who just want something for free.
This particular booth attraction created quite a buzz. I heard several groups of people talk about this throughout the conference center.
OnBase – Sports Bar & Grill
This was one of my favorites. Perhaps it’s because I’m a huge baseball/sports fan. Or maybe because I also enjoy the frequent pub from time to time. Anyway, the two coupled together caught my eye. They literally had a full bar (and a good sized bar at that) in the middle of their booth with plenty of bar stools. Every time I walked by, people were going in and pulling up a chair. I can’t blame them – you’re feet get really sore walking this trade show floor.
While seated, company representatives would come up and chat with you about their solutions. People didn’t seem to mind the quick elevator pitch as long as they were bellied up to the bar and off their feet.
Overall, it was simple, not very flashy, but extremely effective as there was a continuous steady flow of traffic. A steady flow of traffic equals a steady flow of leads. I later found out that OnBase has used this booth set up for quite some time now. I guess ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’
Other booth attractions I saw that were successful at drawing crowds:
- the gymnasts from Cirque Du Soleil – if you’ve seen a Cirque show, you know how amazing these performers are
- a wall of arcade games – definitely eye catching; who doesn’t want to take a timeout to play free video games
- an electric vehicle from Tesla motors – the newest and coolest, electric sports car – you do not expect to see a car on the show floor at HIMSS
- a flash mob dancing to hip-hop – I don’t think we’ll see them on Dancing with the Stars anytime soon but it sure did create quite a buzz – and many puzzled looks
- and of course magicians – about as sure of a thing you can hire; people are fascinated by magicians – very interactive with the audience
After-show
Follow up with your leads within two weeks of the tradeshow ending. An email including highlights from your company’s success during the show (along with some product/service brochures if requested) is a great way to continue the conversation you had with a prospect. For solid leads, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call them, thanking them for stopping by.
What has your organization done to attract people to the booth during a tradeshow? What was your favorite booth this year at HIMSS? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
