Reduce Trade Show Waste With Environmentally Friendly Eco-swag

The planet needs our help, and that means we all have to stop making excuses and start making a difference. Environmentally friendly promotional products are a great way to promote your business while keeping environmental impact to a minimum. So don’t wait – start browsing selections of eco-friendly tradeshow giveaways today!

Paper, plastic … or recycled fabric? Did you know that 100 BILLION plastic bags end up in landfills each year? Instead of using plastic bags to distribute trade show goodies, its time to switch to a more eco-friendly option. Promotional tote bags made from recycled materials are an excellent alternative to plastic bags. These reusable totes will serve a purpose outside the confines of the exhibition, which is good news for the environment and your logo. More

Business-to-Business Marketing at Trade Shows

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing can be extremely effective at trade shows. Surveys show that participating in trade shows is critical for increasing profits, making new business connections and creating successful partnerships. This article will discuss lead capture/CRM and automating your follow up.

The main reason trade show participation can be so successful is the target audience. Surveys show that 75% of the attendees are those with the authority to spend company money. Many are looking to develop new partnerships, find better and/or cheaper business solutions and make solid connections with their peers (and competitors). With that in mind, you should be able to make your next trade show a complete success! Here are a few things to consider to help you do just that. More from Marketing Review.

4 Steps to Better Trade Show Results: Monitoring VIPs

It can happen to even the most prepared sales person. The trade show booth gets too crowded and hectic, and the one client or lead they were counting on speaking with, visits the booth unnoticed.

Also leaving the booth with that VIP, is a marketing opportunity and potential revenue. More from StudioBlog

How to be a Trade Show Tightwad

1. Negotiate Booth Space Discounts

Bypass the salesperson and call the show manager directly. Show management would rather make less money on an occupied booth space than no money on an empty booth space.

2. Trade Your Stuff

Is your product or service something that show management or exhibitors can use during the show? Can your CEO give a speech? Trade for free booth space.

3. Partner-Up

Get a partner to pay for the booth space in exchange for doing all the show preparation. More from ESP Exhibits Blog

Guide to Trade Show Union Jurisdictions by U.S. Cities

Each city has its own jurisdictional peculiarities. While Exhibitor Appointed Contractors (EAC) do not control jurisdictional rules, they must abide by them to insure future operational success. In some cities, EACs may not touch anything electrical. In others, hand operated genie lifts are not allowed. More from The Tradeshow Network Marketing Group

What should you know about your Trade Show prospects?

One of the most important decisions you need to make about exhibiting at a trade show is what information you should collect from your key prospects.

Many trade shows place barcodes on attendee badges and have scanners available for rent at a reasonable fee. This streamlines the process of building lead lists and provides a fast, unobtrusive way to gather critical information for follow-up. Continue at the Tradeshow Insider's Blog

Classic Exhibits Explains Flooring (Carpet and Padding) at Trade Shows

Attractive flooring is essential to any successful trade show display. The first choice is often carpeting. The reasons are obvious. It’s available in many colors, it’s easy to transport and maintain, and paired with the right padding, it’s comfortable. To get you started in the right direction, here are some basic FAQ’s.

1. How do I calculate the amount of carpet I need?

Just follow these easy steps.

1. Calculate your square footage – this is done by multiplying the length of the area by the width of the area: 10 x 20 booth space will be 200 sq ft.
2. You will then need to calculate the carpet needed to cover the square footage.

• If your carpet is 12’ wide, and your area is 10 x 20, you will have to purchase a 12 x 20 to cover the area = 240 sq ft.
• If your carpet is 10’ wide, you will then order 200 sq ft.

3. It is always safe to order an extra foot of carpet to insure you are totally covered in your area. More from BizBash

Getting Past Perception: The Psychology Of Trade Show Displays

We all do it to some degree; some more than others. Driving past a prospective restaurant, we sum up the potential quality of the dinner based upon our perception. The look of the restaurant, the number of cars in the parking lot and the look on the faces of those leaving; all of these factor into our decision. In that instant, we make a decision about the restaurant. If the perception is negative, the adventurous will listen to the mantra, 'Don't judge a book by its cover.' The not-so-adventurous will move on resorting to the typical location where they know they get a good meal. Full article by Chris Hamen

Pre Show Promotional Strategies Often Get Overlooked

It is no secret that gearing up for a tradeshow can be a costly event. Even if you are just sending a few salespeople to only attend the event, it can still be a serious investment of time and money. Should you decide to pay for booth space or sponsor a part of the show, a clear commitment to success must be established. You have arranged accommodations, designed and purchased a display, printed your marketing materials, and feel you are ready for the show. Shockingly, a lot of successful companies manage to overlook one of the most important steps prior to the actual event which are pre-show promotional strategies. You cannot just show up to the event and expect it to pay off without a little pre-planning. More from Trade Show Emporium

3 Metrics to Measure Trade Show Performance in Real-Time

Marketers can devote serious time, money and effort to developing interactive content for a convention exhibit. Yet, how do the marketers know if their content is as effective or attractive on the convention floor, as they thought it would be?

It is also difficult at live events for marketers to gauge the audiences' exact demographics and level of engagement with key messages.

There's no need to go into a live event and gamble blindly on one set of prepared content. By working with software developers, marketers can build real time analytics into their live events and collect data to show how effective content is, what the audience demographics are and the level of audience engagement with crucial messaging. Full article from StudioBlog

Using Social Media Marketing To Drive Your Virtual Tradeshow Leads

The following is a guest post from Cece Salomon-Lee on It's All Virtual.

As a marketer, one of my goals is to generate the right leads for my sales force as efficiently and quickly as possible. This requires constant evaluation of existing tools — emails, banner ads, and events — as well as new ones such as social media and virtual events. While webinars arguably are a standard part of a marketer’s lead gen toolbox, virtual tradeshows are just being considered. Part of the challenge is how to effectively drive qualified sales leads to your booth or virtual event.

Here are recommendations on how to leverage social media to market your next virtual tradeshow (Please note that these recommendations are for organizations who are hosting their own virtual tradeshows and may need to be amended for those exhibiting within a virtual event): Continue.

Why You Need To Integrate Your Exhibit Booth

This post isn’t about integrating your exhibit booth with the rest of your marketing. That’s a given. This post is only partly about your trade show marketing. It’s really about something much bigger…Integrated Marketing and Communications.

What is Integrated Marcom?

Read more: from the Trade Show Institute

ROI Measurement — It’s Importance to the Future of Meetings & Events?

For many years, during a “healthy” economy, the meetings business survived and thrived based upon value defined largely by attendee reaction or satisfaction. Rarely did many organizations look beyond these feel-good factors to measure deeper outcomes such as learning, application and business impact.

The Great Recession, of the past couple of years, changed that. With significantly increased financial strain, businesses began to earnestly evaluate every aspect of their operations, including meetings and conferences. This put many event professionals into the “hot seat” as they were suddenly challenged by their executive leadership to demonstrate, more tangibly, the value of the company’s meetings. More from Mike McCurry

Trade show exhibitors like McCormick Place changes

Costs dropping, satisfaction increasing as International Manufacturing Technology Show prepares to open. Full article from Chicago Tribune.

Organizers ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ About Industry Rebound

While far from booming, the tradeshow industry has received a few positive shots in the arm recently. Last month, the Center for Exhibition Industry Research reported that although the overall industry slipped 1.4 percent during the second quarter, certain “indicators of recovery” have seen declines slow compared to previous quarters. Professional attendees, another of the recovery indicators, actually grew 4.5 percent during the quarter.

And there was Champion Exposition Services, which in its Exhibitor Trends Survey found that more than half of exhibitors surveyed plan to participate in more tradeshows in the future. The report also called for a rebound in tradeshow activity next year. And so does media and information industry private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson. Partner Hal Greenberg recently said the tradeshow market will show a gain of about four percent over the next five years.

With these positive points in mind, we reached out to a few of the industry’s most significant expo producers to find out how their businesses are fairing now amidst the downturn and what their forecasts are for 2011. Here’s what they had to say. Full Article from Expo.

Sexism in the Trade Show Industry

by Emily Fearnley

"Booth Babes" can be defined in a few ways - promotional models, scantily clad women encouraging attendees to stop and buy, or poor attractive girls being objectified by the males around them. However you categorize a booth babe, these enticing women tend to reveal the sexism in the trade show industry.

When asked to describe their experiences, booth babes generally have the same responses. Besides dealing with the grueling 10-hour days on your feet, often in heels, many women have to deal with being groped, being spoken to inappropriately, and stares that would make your skin crawl.

If the above reasons are not blatant examples of sexism, then I don't know what is. Although a healthy level of rudeness would be acceptable to put men who step over their boundaries in line, many of these promotional models are too polite to do so. They are also hired for the trade shows to sell or promote products, so being rude (even to put some one in their place) is not the best tactic for selling.

The fact that booth babes are proven to grab attention and get people into the booth makes is easy to see why companies hire these attractive women. But the real question is, do the companies do anything to protect or prepare these women for potentially dangerous or abusive situations? How do the companies ensure the women's safety and comfort during a trade show? Full Article from Map Dynamics.

What To Do When Nothing’s New: Five Strategies for Success

Look at that throng of people crowding the trade show floor. People come from all over the country to walk these aisles, eager eyes flitting from booth to booth, scanning the exhibits for…what, exactly?

Research shows that the vast majority – 76% — come to trade shows to discover what’s new and exciting. Maybe it’s a new product, or an innovative bit of technology, or a snazzy new application, or even an entire company that they were never aware of before. In an ideal world, every company would be constantly innovating, creating cutting edge products at phenomenal savings guaranteed to meet the customer’s needs.

But as you and I know, business doesn’t work that way. There are years when companies struggle to survive. Other years, it takes every ounce of effort just to maintain market position. And still other times, things might be fine, but the newest innovation is six, twelve, even eighteen months on the horizon.

Is it even worth exhibiting during these times? Do the results of participating in a trade show while your company’s in a lull phase justify the costs?

Absolutely! In fact, it is precisely at these times when not participating could hurt your bottom line. Businesses rise and fall based on the strength of personal relationships. There is no better place to form new relationships and maintain and reinforce existing relationships than at a trade show. Full article from World Gazette News.

Labor issues heat up again at Convention Center

From Philadelphia Inquirer:

The rules that govern workers at the Convention Center have long confounded planners wishing to bring their business to Philadelphia. Even those who have learned the byzantine code marvel at what it takes - and what it costs - just to set up and dismantle an exhibit.

Consider the ubiquitous laptop. If it is for personal use, an exhibitor can set it up. For audiovisual purposes, a member of the stagehands union must do the job, at $37 an hour. And if it is used to register conventioneers, the task falls to a union electrician, at $46 an hour.

Or consider the cost of a booth, the mainstay of conventions. When you add up everything, the work of a carpenter comes in at $107 an hour in Philadelphia - more than $24 higher than the national average and more costly than in Washington, Boston, Chicago, and Baltimore, according to a 2009 survey by an industry trade magazine.

Now, with the $786 million publicly funded expansion nearing completion, the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority is seeking sweeping changes to simplify the rules that govern the building's union workforce and, in the process, reduce costs for hosting events. Among the most contentious proposals: Cutting the number of unions from six to as few as three and making the center's workers employees of the state. Full Article.

How Exhibitors Can Sell the Benefits of RFID to Trade Show Organizers

For years, one of the hot “water cooler” discussions for event organizers has been about audits—showing exhibitors once and for all who, how many, and what type of visitors attend a show. Although attendance audits are extremely helpful, they don’t tell the entire story. Other rich analytics tools such as RFID (radio frequency identification) provide more specific data about who attends which sessions, amount of time spent on the exhibit floor, which booths they visit, and their behavior inside the booth.

Audits are great for the big picture. RFID yields more specific information about attendee behavior patterns—the kind of data that exhibitors need to quantify the value of their participation. Using RFID on the trade show floor requires an investment from the show organizer to provide badges with an embedded RFID tag. Antennas installed in booths at the exhibitors’ expense read the RFID tags and record the behavior of attendees when they enter. It is a partnership that more and more exhibitors are asking for from show managers. Full Article.

Who's responsible for innovation at a tradeshow?

From the ASAE Blog, Acronym:

At Annual in LA, I had the chance to attend the "industry power session"--a rapidfire discussion about the future of tradeshows facilitated by John Parke and building in part on the results of several focus groups of meeting planners and CEOs held before the conference.

The session was structured around a series of questions. The reactions and comments to each were fascinating to me (I've got a good dozen pages of notes to think about), but one question that particularly stood out was "Who is responsible for bringing innovation to a tradeshow?"

In the discussion that followed, a number of interesting points came up (all of the following are paraphrased):

- Innovative tradeshows need to recruit exhibitors who are on the cutting edge of their industries. Prospective exhibitors look at the list of companies that will be at a show and decide whether to attend based on whether they see other "like" companies.

- How can I expect exhibitors to bring innovation to a tradeshow when my exhibitors won't even read the materials I send them? (from a meeting planner) More.

A Paperless Trade Show Exhibit

By: Barry Siskind, Tradeshow Network Marketing Group

Within five years trade shows will be completely paperless is a prediction I heard at a recent conference. When I passed this idea along to some of my clients, they balked, saying,

“How will we get our information to our customers if we don’t have literature at the trade show booth? ”

“Visitors want to take away literature.”

” What impression am I making by not having literature to hand-out?”

If this is starting to sound familiar then perhaps its time to re-think the purpose of your exhibition and look at a different strategy for execution. More.

Go Green with Graphics Says Hargrove

-Sustainable materials are no longer cost prohibitive – if you plan early and set your environmental goals at the start of your project.
-Beware of buzzwords — just because a material is recyclable or biodegradable doesn’t mean it will be.
-Companies can pursue environmental stewardship and success simultaneously.

At the end of the day, when you’re using any type of printed graphic in your program, you can very often make a sustainable decision–at no additional cost. Full article from BizBash.