6. Use Social Media to Generate Awareness
During the days when direct mail was your only option, you would wait until mere weeks before the show to begin marketing to your audience of attendees. You had to wait until most of the people registered to get the most value for your money spent. Now you can use social media to start marketing months before the show opens, and you are no longer dependent on a registration list to get your message out. Using the power of social media, you can expand your reach beyond just the people who will be attending the live event.
You can now start marketing your exhibit at the same time the producers start marketing the show. While they are generating interest for the show, you can get a head start generating interest in your exhibit. Remember, attendees are going to the show having already done their research and creating a short list of which exhibitors they want to see. By starting early in your marketing, you can ensure you have secured a place on their lists.
When you start your social media outreach, remember what people want. They want to find new products and services, they want information and education, and they want to network. They want these things a lot more than they want the stress ball or flashlight you might be giving away.
Your social media marketing is going to have to be a lot subtler than your direct mail campaigns were. Social media is social. It’s a conversation. It is possible to promote your company and your message without cramming it down people’s throats. Your goal in social media is to stay on top of people’s minds. You want them to remember who you are and to be open to your message when you deliver it.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to be a great source of information. Any information that might be valuable to your potential customers is fair game. You need to know the show program inside-out, backward, and forward. Be on top of any announcements the show producers are making. Share that information via the social media channels you identified in Part I, “Creating Your Social Strategy.” Be sure to do the following:
• Post information on the show with a link to the registration page as soon as registration is open.
• When the show announces its keynote speaker(s), share that information with your online communities.
• Post reminders of when early bird registration is coming to an end.
• Let your audience know which social media platforms the show will be using to stay informed.
• Cull through the show program and point out educational sessions you think your customers would find beneficial.
• Tell your community about any sessions the show is live streaming, the agenda, and how they can participate.
• Point out any sessions you will be presenting.
• Share reviews or tips on the official show hotels.
• Share restaurant recommendations or things to do in town while attendees are there.
• Tell them about special events that are taking place in your booth.
• Ask attendees to connect with your staff members who will be at the show.
Don’t pick just one or two of these things. Do all of them, and do them often enough to stay at the top of people’s minds. This way, when they are starting to make that list of exhibitors they must see before they leave, they will be thinking of you as the company that has already provided so much valuable information. If you are pointing out many worthwhile presentations to attend, no one will mind when you throw in a few you are presenting as well.
If you do this, you will be far ahead of the curve and of your competition. Most exhibitors are not making the effort to do this. Look at just about any show’s hashtag on Twitter or its LinkedIn group a few weeks or a month before a show. Aside from information the show’s producers are putting out there, the only thing you usually see from exhibitors is, “Come visit us in booth 184 and register to win an iPad.” They are not part of a conversation. They are simply using the social media channel to broadcast their message.
You, on the other hand, by offering information useful to the attendee, will find yourself quickly becoming part of the conversation. Attendees will start relying on you for up-to-date information. They will start reaching out to you and engaging with you. They will start telling their colleagues to follow you. You are essentially creating relationships and warm leads.
Later, we’ll talk about why it’s important to maintain this conversation during the show, but for now, let’s focus on promoting your presence at the show to both the face-to-face audience and the audience unable to attend. While everyone else is focusing only on those who will be actually attending the show, you will be opening up your booth to a much wider audience.
Integrating Your Social Media
It goes without saying that your exhibit design and marketing across all channels, including broadcast, print, and social media, should align. No matter where people encounter your messaging, they should instantly recognize it. There should not be any disconnect. Message wording can be customized to each particular audience, however; you don’t want to come across as serious and business-like on LinkedIn and trade publications, but then have a fun, quirky style on the show’s Facebook page. So, if your booth is a little on the wild side, your traditional marketing and social media can be as well. Be consistent across all channels.
But remember, your social media strategy is not just a trade show effort. You are building relationships online between your company and the community. The community does not see your presence on social media as a four- or five-week effort around the trade show. They are going to want to hear from you long after the show. They’ve come to rely on you for information, and your company should be taking advantage of that relationship all year long. You need to integrate your social media efforts throughout your trade show program, in all of your marketing efforts, and across your entire business.
Every company wants to be seen by its customers and potential customers as caring about their needs. Every company wants to claim great customer service. By using social media to educate, inform, and connect, you are reflecting those values. If you are using social media just to push your message on them, you are telling the world you only really care about you and are not interested in building relationships.
Creating a Message for Each Audience
When creating a pre-show marketing strategy, your goal is to get people to come to your booth. This does not fundamentally change when you incorporate social media and virtual events into your exhibit program. But now you are not just inviting people into your physical space; you are inviting them into your online space as well. You are also adding new ways to reach out to your customers and potential customers by using the various social media platforms you’ve identified.
The look and feel of your message should be consistent across all mediums. Your print and broadcast marketing should appear similar to your social media marketing. You don’t want to confuse your audience with inconsistent design. The colors you use, your logo, and design style should remain the same across all platforms. It should not matter if I, as an attendee, come across a printed piece, an email, a tweet, a blog post, or a YouTube video. I should immediately be able to recognize it as yours.
What should be customized is the content of that message depending on the audience you are trying to reach. You can have one message when reaching out to the media, one message for potential customers, and yet another message for current customers.
Similarly, you will have a different message for in-person attendees and the audience unable to attend that you are reaching online. You might not know who fits into which bucket just yet, and that’s okay. Your audience will sort that out themselves and filter out messages that do not match their needs. In some cases, you will be able to identify those who are attending and those who are not, but the nature of social media makes your messages viewable to everyone. Again, the social media audience is very adept at filtering out messages that are not relevant to them.
How Do You Create Different Messages?
Let’s say you plan on tweeting about relevant sessions to your community on Twitter. You also plan on summarizing the sessions on your company blog. You know that several LinkedIn groups your company participates in would also find the content relevant. Some members of your community will be attending the trade show, and some will not. Others have never even heard of this event but might become interested in attending. Here are some examples of how you can tailor messages to each different audience in your community.
Tweet for those who are attending:
Attending Widget 2011 #widget11 and struggling w/procurement? Be sure to check out Session 142 on Monday http://bit.ly/a2lT1K*–Booth1473
*Here you are linking to a session description on the show website
Tweet for those not attending:
Not attending Widget 2011 #widget11 but want to catch “How to Fix Procurement”? Check out our blog summary at http://bit.ly/mZmT1K**–Booth1473
**Here you are linking to your company blog
LinkedIn Group post:
Do you struggle with procurement? We noticed a few sessions taking place this year at Widget 2011 (link to event) that might interest you.
Monday – Session 142 – “How to Fix Procurement” by Dan Lewis (link to description)
Tuesday – Session 287 – “Procurement—Working with Small Businesses” by Susan Hoffman (link to description)
If you are unable to attend Widget 2011 or cannot make those sessions, we’ll be posting summaries on our company blog that can be found at www.widgetthingamajig.com.
Widget 2011
November 4-6, 2011
Las Vegas Convention Center
Booth Number1473
The first tweet targets attendees of the show by giving them a link to the session summary on the show website. You are being social and helpful to your potential customers by pointing out sessions they might find useful. You are also including your booth number. Whenever possible, I suggest including your booth number in your tweets. The last thing you want is for someone to decide that @yourcompany is incredibly helpful and has his best interests at heart, yet he has no idea where to find you at the show.
The second tweet targets those who are not attending the show in person. Even though they are not attending, they could still benefit by reading your summary of that session. You are also driving them to your website. You should be sure you prep your audience for how the session summaries will be posted. Create a special trade show landing page or blog post ahead of time that clearly tells people when they can expect the summaries to be posted. Provide an option for your audience to opt-in to receiving notice of them via email or RSS feed when they go live. You should still include your booth number in these tweets because those who are attending the event will see them as well.
Having that landing page is very important. If I click on your link a month before the show and I don’t see anything at all about procurement, I might be confused. And if that’s the case, I’ll just back out and move on to something else. If, on the other hand, your link takes me to a landing page that clearly explains what information you will be providing there and when, I’ll know exactly what to expect. The email or RSS feed sign-up is important because your reader is unlikely to remember any of this 30 minutes later and will never remember to come back on her own.
The posts on the LinkedIn group let you provide more information than the 140-character limit on Twitter. You can craft your message in a way that is appropriate for those who are attending the show and for those who are not. Here you can also give people information about the show with a link to the show website, so those who were unaware of the show’s existence can find more information. People who are already planning on attending will make the connection that you will be exhibiting at the show. Be sure to include the web address for the appropriate landing page and sign-up form on your website.
Is this information appropriate to post as a discussion? Different LinkedIn groups will have different rules that you need to abide by. Personally, I do not see this as self-promotion. You are providing the audience with information that is both appropriate and valuable to them. The content of the post referenced here includes sessions at an event your audience would find useful, so it’s not just driving traffic to your website. If you sent them to your website home page, then I would argue that you are only baiting the group to visit your website and not providing relevant information.
Posts similar to ones made to the LinkedIn group can be used on Facebook as well. But again, you should drive traffic to your website because it is owned by you and accessible by everyone. Putting all of your content on Facebook exclusively means that people who don’t use Facebook will not have access to it. You should be posting links to your content on each social media platform you are using. The actual content should be on your corporate website or blog. Duplicating that content across several social media sites just creates too much work for you and is a drain on resources. I also caution against putting content on sites you don’t ultimately own or control because all that content can be deleted or repurposed at someone else’s whim.
Whichever social media platforms you choose to use depends on where your audience is, what the trade show organizers are using, and what you are comfortable using. The following are what’s important:
• Your message is consistent.
• You are informing and educating your audience.
• Your messages are customized to each audience.
Stick with that plan, and you can’t go wrong.
Personal Connections
One of the benefits of email and social media is that they allow us to reach a broad audience with one push of a button at a very low cost. One of the downsides of email and social media, however, is that they allow us to reach a broad audience with one push of a button at a very low cost. We can get very lazy and begin talking at our audience and trying to make our message be all things to all people. Even by creating messages with a specific audience in mind, we are missing out on the value of the personal touch.
Many social media platforms provide the option to message individual users. The whole world might see the message, but if you are addressing one person specifically, he is likely to take more notice of the message.
Every Wednesday at 3 p.m. I moderate a Twitter chat called #expochat. This Twitter chat is an hour-long conversation that takes place 140 characters at a time. By adding a hashtag (#) to the tweets, participants are able to follow along with the conversation. I get a lot out of these chats and want to make sure people remember them. It’s not enough to hope people remember that the chat takes place every Wednesday at the same time and that they show up to participate.
So, I send tweets throughout the day that will be seen by all my followers announcing the chat time and topic. However, that does not have a personal touch. It’s an announcement, not an invitation. Each Wednesday morning I start sending private direct messages to past participants with a personal invitation and a reminder to attend. I also reach out to people I think would benefit by attending with a link to instructions on how to participate. As a result, I get a good turnout for my chats and have built a stronger connection with dozens of people whether they were able to participate or not.
Your trade show participation is no different. Don’t rely on broadcast messages to drive traffic to your booth or increase your online participation. Your staff should use social media to reach out to individuals they are connected to with a personal invitation. This is why it is called social media and not just-another-broadcast media.
Think of your booth as an event. Post an agenda on your website that includes what you are doing each day at your booth throughout the show and include the link in tweets. Create a LinkedIn event and invite the people in your network. Or create an event on Facebook and invite your friends. Don’t just rely on the broadcast features or hope that people stumble across it in your status updates. Take the time to make a personal touch.
A colleague of mine recently did this to invite her network to an event I was producing. The people she thought would be interested and that she normally communicated with on email got a personal invitation or recommendation to attend the event via email. Those she normally communicated with on Twitter got a short note via direct message that read, “Thought this event would be interesting to you...how have you been?” with a link to the event website.
Almost everyone responded due to the personal nature of the message. One client whom she had not spoken to in a long time responded with something to the effect of “Thanks for the information; it looks very interesting. By the way, you reminded me that I need to talk to you about an upcoming job we need you for. When can you talk?” I am not sure the person is coming to the event, but my colleague is thrilled because she was able to get back into her client’s appointment book.
The benefits of this approach are contained in layer upon layer of touch points. Information can spread beyond just my colleague and her contacts. Each of her contacts might spread the information about the event to their colleagues as well, multiplying its reach each time it is passed along. It’s also information that is shareable because it gives those passing it along an opportunity to get in touch with customers and prospects in a way that is helpful and not “salesy.”
Direct mail and email blasts are certainly less time-consuming ways to communicate with our databases, but they cannot ever replace the value of a personal invitation. Over and above your marketing efforts, your sales force should be reaching out to their customers and potential customers with a personal invitation. Why not include customer service reps in this mission as well? Be sure to give the people who cannot attend in person ways to follow-along from their office.
VIP Program Invitation
VIP programs are like personal invitations on steroids. I love it when people reach out to me before a show and personally invite me to stop by their booth. I find it hard to decline the invitation and thus would feel guilty if I didn’t actually stop by. What I really love is when people invite me to a special event or party they are hosting for VIPs. Everyone wants to be a VIP.
You’re probably already used to hosting VIP events at your trade show and sending personal invites. Nothing here really changes; you’re just adding another way—via social media—to reach out to your selected attendees. But I want to issue a couple of warnings here. If you are having an invitation-only event during the show, be careful not to broadcast the event on social media. Otherwise, you might have more attendees than you planned—a lot more—as social media can spread the news like wildfire.
The other warning is that, again, social media is social. Word spreads quickly within a social media community. At a recent event, a Twitter friend asked me if I was attending an exhibitor’s “secret party.” She had received an invitation, and I had not. I was actually looking at that vendor’s product to use for an event I had coming up, so I could not help but wonder why I wasn’t important enough to invite.
I’m not saying that you have to invite everyone to everything you are doing. I am saying be prepared to slight someone—and have a response ready. I got my invitation two days later, and I have no idea if I was on the original list or if my friend gave them a heads up. I decided it was better for my ego not to know and RSVP’d immediately.
Summary
Social media is a great communication tool you have in your pre-show toolkit. Because of its capability to spread your message far beyond the show’s attendee list, you are reaching a much larger audience. You are generating awareness of your presence at the show to your entire community and potentially to the networks of each community member. I would not suggest you abandon all your traditional marketing and only use social media. Keep doing what has given you the best results in the past and add social media to that marketing mix.
Make sure your social media efforts are integrated with your traditional trade show marketing and booth and fits with your company image. Customize that message to those who are attending the show and those who are not but still want to be a part of it. But don’t just customize to a wide audience—personalize your invitations and reach out to individual customers and attendees. And be sure you give VIP invites special consideration.