Friday, April 29, 2011

Top 14 Things Marketers Need to Know About QR Codes

A QR Code is a 2D Barcode

QR codes are an encoded barcode image resembling a square-like maze. Unlike a 1-dimensional UPC code, a 2-dimensional barcode stores data in both directions and can be scanned vertically or horizontally to be decoded.

1D versus 2D Barcode Comparison

Continue reading this great article.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Three Trending Tradeshow Sales Strategies

Three Tradeshow Selling Strategies

Organizations are competing with other conferences, shows and more measurable marketing mediums. A major shift in your sales approach and your organizational structure must occur if you want to seize this opportunity.

If you want to outperform competitors, consider these three significant sales strategies. Continue reading from Midcourse Corrections.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

12 Ways to Engage at Events Using Social Media

Great article including:

3 Ways to use Facebook, 3 Ways to use Twitter, 3 Ways to use YouTube, 3 Ways to use LinkedIn to engage your market at events

Full Article from The Tradeshow Guy Blog

Monday, April 25, 2011

Check your signage to see if it can be read by those that are color blind


Can color blind attendees read your signage and see your graphics? Here is a site that will allow you to check your materials for different levels of color blindness.

One in 12 people are color blind.

50 Facts about Color Blindness

Saturday, April 23, 2011

4 emotional strategies for getting your company to embrace social media

  • Don’t underestimate the time you will have to spend evangelizing: Talk patiently with everyone, especially with lawyers. Company lawyers will only envisions potential losses when evaluating new technologies. You have to make sure you understand the risks better than them, or the answer is going to be a no.
  • Make sure the price is right. Most bosses hate spending money, but many popular social media tools are free. Use that as a selling point with your cost-conscious managers. Once you have your foot in the door and have some results you can point to, you can go back and make the case for expanding your efforts and shelling out for more expensive and effective tools — but do so slowly and cautiously.
  • Attach yourself to that ever-popular project. Every company has a vanity project that everyone fawns over. It’s the project that despite budget cuts and other setbacks always manages to take priority. If you can figure out a way to involve social media with that project, then you are set.
  • “Find the company that your company has envy for.” Capitalize on that jealousy. No one want to be left in the dust by the enemy. Full article from#SXSW

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

CEIR Index Report Shows Trade Show Industry Down 2.4 Percent in 2010

The Center for Exhibiton Industry Research released its "CEIR Index Report, An Analysis of the 2010 Exhibition Industry and Future Outlook" that indicated the overall trade show industry fell for the third straight year last year, dipping 2.4 percent. Continue Reading.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Embrace Ambiguity

Ambiguity bothers a lot of people, especially business leaders, who feel success can only be achieve via strict strategies and well-thought out plans that lead to set conclusions. People who follow this philosophy are often thought of as leaders, people to look up to. Read more from Plus Point.

Monday, April 18, 2011

When It Pays to Spend on Trade Shows

Although webinars and virtual online trade shows have become popular in recent years, and serve a marketing purpose, they are not replacements for face-to-face events, says Bill Sell, vice-president and general manager of CrossTech Media, a Boston company that owns and manages 20 business and professional conferences. "People have been doing in-person selling since the medieval village marketplace and it's never going to be wiped out."

There are about 2,200 trade shows and industry expos held in the U.S. annually, down about 25 percent in the past three to four years, Sell says, but new events have cropped up this year, discontinued shows are coming back, and attendance is expected to improve. "People are recognizing that there is no serendipity factor in webinars. You market to the audience you know and have invited; you can't expect to run into someone you don't know or find new opportunities at a virtual event," he says. Continue reading from Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Smartphones and Tradeshows – A Bad Combination

America is suffering through a terrible addiction epidemic, the smartphone. Everywhere you look, people have their heads down, staring at the small screen or working the keyboard furiously. Couples ignore each other at dinner, people walk straight into fountains and you have an excuse not to make eye contact on elevators. They have become the adult pacifier. Information or interactions that formerly could wait for hours, can’t wait for seconds. Am I part of the epidemic, of course.

What I noticed last week in Orlando was the effect of the smartphone on a tradeshow. It could eventually lead to the demise of the tradeshow. Three reasons:

1) Your potential clients that are walking through the show, with you hoping to catch their eye? Too bad, they just walked right by, with their head down, looking at voicemails or a video of three Norwegian electricians doing cannonballs into a vat of chocolate pudding. I saw this many times, somehow resisting the urge to trip them (attendees, not electricians) Continue Reading

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

When is a Virtual Event right for my business?

When is a virtual event program right for my business?

Glad you asked! Through our own experiences and our clients’ feedback, we’ve discovered that Virtual Events support four basic types of activities that almost every business needs.

Number One: Generate Leads.

Virtual Events supply businesses with a large amount of data for lead qualification.

Think of it this way. When you register for a virtual event, you’re providing “demographic data”. Name, company, title, location…that kind of stuff.

As you move throughout the environment, your actions are recorded, providing Activity Data: Where you went, how long you stayed, what you looked at and who you talked to.

And when you answer direct questions through polls and surveys, you’re providing “Sentiment Data”: What did you think of the presentation? How good was the speaker? Are you informed enough to make a decision? How soon before you’re going to be able to make a decision? etc.

Virtual events provide you with these three types of data and consolidate them into filtered results that give you a list of leads to hand off to your sales team. Pass them on and watch a line form at your door for leads that convert like wildfire. Continue reading from A Wider Net.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Forecast: Three-Year Recovery Ahead for Exhibition Industry

The exhibition industry hit rock-bottom in 2010, but should see a modest recovery in most sectors during the next three years, according to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR), which yesterday released the final results of the 2010 CEIR Index, its exhibition industry barometer.

In a report titled "CEIR Index Report: An Analysis of the 2010 Exhibition Industry and Future Outlook," CEIR indicated that the exhibition industry fell for a third straight year in 2010, declining by 2.4 percent overall. Industry revenue, meanwhile, fell by 8.4 percent. Read More.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

The Last One Percent that Kills You

Each of us can think of countless example — where tremendous sweat, resources, and good faith have gone into some important endeavor, only to have it all foiled by neglecting that last little detail. The first 99% of effort gets destroyed by the lack of the last 1% of it. For example, I've seen more charity events than I can count at which expensive banners get produced but no one has thought about the last step — how they're going to be rigged. People think they'll figure it out when they get there. But 40 mile-an-hour winds require a little more thought than that. The work of a branding company, a graphic design firm, and a banner production company are all thwarted because the banner can't be hung.

We could chock it all up to the fact that accidents happen, but I think that does a disservice to accidents. The last 1% gets overlooked because of a lack of rigor in communication. We play fast and loose with language. Here are a few things we can do to prevent our efforts from being upended: Continue reading from the Harvard Business Review

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

IAEE to Obama: Adopt New Visa Policies

The International Association of Exhibitions and Events is urging President Obama to adopt recommendations made by the President's Export Council intended to fix visa and entry policies that are preventing thousands of international buyers from attending U.S.–based events. Read full article from Association Meetings

Monday, April 4, 2011

It's Time to Think Beyond the Tradeshow Booth

Summary: Tradeshow success is no longer defined by having the biggest booth or the best tchotchkes. If you look beyond traditional exhibit-hall formats, you can create an experience that will keep potential clients coming back for more. Full article from ASAE

Friday, April 1, 2011

Judge rejects McCormick Place work rule revisions

Efforts by Illinois to preserve McCormick's position as one of the country's premier trade show venues were upended Thursday when a federal judge ruled that the state overstepped its bounds by revising work rules for unionized tradespeople on the show floor.

The ruling threw out passages of the law enacted last year that allow exhibitors to do more of their own booth setup and limit labor overtime and crew sizes. More from the Chicago Tribune.