Post-Event Marketing – A Valuable Tool for Next Year’s Show

January 25, 2015

You’ve just wrapped up your show and it was a huge success: your attendance numbers were up, your attendees gave you positive feedback, several of your exhibitors have already re-signed for next year and your staff is enthused. Now what?

The critical time to start garnering interest for next year’s event is during and immediately following your current event while the enthusiasm is fresh. The key is to create ways to connect with attendees throughout the year to extend the life of the interest generated by the show.

Here are 5 marketing tactics to include in the creation of your successful post-event marketing plan:

1.  Provide Attendees with a Post-Event Exhibit Tracker

  • Send a post-event email to all attendees who visited exhibitor’s booths on the show floor and had their badge scanned.
  • Include in the email: a complete listing of each exhibitor name and booth where the attendee’s badge was scanned, the exhibitor’s contact information, and a link to the exhibitor’s website.

Today’s empowered consumers also want an opportunity to influence future product enhancements and offerings. They want to meet with staff, designers or management who can listen to needs and influence the process that translates feedback into future offerings.

(Source:  CEIR Report: Exhibition Floor Interaction: What Attendees Want)

2.  Design a Post-Registration Site for Exhibitors

  • Provide your exhibitors with their own post-registration site to look up which registrants they invited that were verified and attended the show.
  • This resource provides exhibitors with the ability to follow up, and also gives them the opportunity to market to attendees who used the exhibitor’s online invitation link but did not visit their booth. 

3.  Utilize QR Codes

  • Post QR Codes on your current event’s signage and follow-up materials with a link for attendees to sign up to receive an email when registration for the next year’s event opens.

4.  Update Social Media

  • Keep the conversation going about your show by engaging your attendees in a discussion about the educational sessions, speakers and show floor.
  • Share event content. Highlight speakers and sessions. The more content you have, the more interaction you generate.

Attendees want information they can digest later. There is always so much to see and do at an exhibition that a constant challenge for attendees is simply keeping up with what they learned. Collecting information for later reading is still an important aspect of exhibitions.

(Source:  CEIR Report: Exhibition Floor Interaction: What Attendees Want)

5.  Create Videos

  • Don’t underestimate the power of videos. Create and post videos of the show on your website to continue and extend the excitement surrounding your event.
  • Use customer testimonials in your videos to promote the value of your show.

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