Lisa Apolinski is a professional speaker, blogger, and digital strategist. With her company, 3DogWrite.com, she works with event managers to get their message to attendees, particularly through digital channels, on and off the show floor.
Yes, we are at the end of the year, where we look at the trends that our industry has embraced in 2012. Some are cool, some not so much. So, let’s see what’s what.
1. Digital Sales Material – thank God this finally caught on, and let’s hope this isn’t a trend! My readers should know by now that digital marketing is the wave of the future, and NOT a trend. Get on this bandwagon before you get run over. You can send material instantly, you know your attendee has it, you can track to see if they share it, if they use any clicks to your website, etc.
2. Phone charging stations – this one I get the concept, but I think the strategy is flawed. This was designed to get attendees into your booth and give them something that they would find useful – a phone charging station. The concept is good, but I think the execution probably is not. This is akin to having seating at the edges of your booth. You will get people to sit there, and sit there, and sit there and have no desire to do anything in your booth but sit there. Same with a charging station. They can hang out charging, but they probably won’t leave their phone unattended to look at your display. I say, let them charge their phones in their hotel rooms, or at the Starbucks. Your booth should be geared to engage attendees, not have them blocking up the booth.
3. Hassle-free zones – this is one that I am also on the fence about. I understand your attendees would like to come in and look at products and demonstrations, and not get overrun by sales people, but this should really be sales training 101. You need to give the attendee space and then engage when they are ready to do so, and they will indicate they are ready to do so. Having an area that is in essence a ‘no sales fly zone’ seems counter-intuitive to what you want to accomplish in your booth, which is engagement. You should set up your booth where you have a healthy mix of both, and sections where the demo speaks for itself, and is a teaser so they want to then follow up with a sales member to learn more.
You will have to decide what trends to use, and how to use or modify.
One trend that I am embracing, and I want to see how this works, is to add followers to my Twitter feed (@LisaAblogger). So, be sure to follow me on Twitter as I share ideas and blog posts not only from EVO Exhibits, but from other sites where I blog. Let’s see how many followers I can get – be sure to follow me today!
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