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It's time for a bit of lighter side humor in trade show booth staffing. On occasion we will go to trade shows and see some of the following personalities. Some of them are easy to recognize because they act just like their animal kingdom counterpart. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of the beastly world of booth staffers. See if you recognize anyone you have observed on the show floor?

Trade shows are pivotal events for your business. They create a steady stream of customers perusing and passing your booth. A captive audience, almost. You get to encounter massive amounts of people who are interested in your exact product line. Consequently, you’ve dedicated money and talent and manpower hours to preparing and manning the booth. However, you might inadvertently be making some key errors as you go along. Are you planning well? Do you and your staff have staying power? Are you following through? You’ve got a tremendous investment, not only in money, but also in time, training, and team-building in marketing your business at trade shows. Pay attention to these classic mistakes exhibitors make to ensure you don’t get in the way of your own success!

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With the advent of electronic communication, the business world experienced a radical boom. Businesses that previously relied on phone calls and mailers for marketing and customer service switched to mass emails, flashy websites, trendy blogs, social media, and instant communication via mobile devices. Covering so much ground with so little effort enables companies to expediently serve a wide base of customers and clients with less work output.  And, of course, it increases speed and productivity. Win-win!

Rules, rules, rules.  What about the rules that no one tells you about?  Rules are necessary to keep trade shows and events running smoothly, and they help businesses and clients manage their expectations. However, as important as it is to know the show hours, the drayage costs, the convention hall requirement particulars, and more, it’s equally important to know the “hidden” rules (that no one tells you about) that inevitably accompany every show.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just pick which trade shows we wanted to exhibit at, make the decision final, and keep it that way forever and ever amen?! Yes, it would. But no, we can’t. Choosing the trade shows that are a good fit for your business is important, and equally important is the decision to return to a trade show or to ditch it. So much time and effort and energy (and resources!) are dedicated to exhibiting at trade shows that they must be worth the effort. And unfortunately, sometimes they aren’t.

So, how do you know if the shows you’re frequenting aren’t worth your marketing investment? Read on:

The number one thing an attendee remembers about their interaction with your company at a trade show is based on your staff (according to the Center for Exhibition and Industry Research).  Your company’s trade show exhibit may be the focal point for any conference or event you’re attending, but it won’t be the only thing representing your business.  You and the rest of the booth staffers will also get plenty of attention.  Impacting show attendees is paramount and by understanding the dress code for any event, you can ensure you’ll be putting your best foot forward.

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Help Us Get to 30, Suggest The Rest!

Tough, fearsome, and strong are the words that come to mind when describing why Chuck Norris is so legendary - there are hundreds of Chuck Norris jokes on the internet about him.

For example:
• Death once had a near-Chuck Norris experience.
• Guns are warned not to play with Chuck Norris.
• When Chuck Norris does push up’s he pushes down the earth.

So let’s look at if Chuck Norris went to trade shows as an exhibitor? What feats of power, speed, and awesomeness could Chuck bring to your show? The mind boggles at what could be:

Unpacking The Basic Rules and Regs

If you’re in the biz, you definitely hear the buzz about the hurry and flurry of trade shows – the fun, the excitement, the contacts and leads. And . . . the WORK. There’s no way around the massive amount of manpower from your company that goes into planning, designing, building, and hauling your exhibit for a show. Here’s the big “but”: it’s worth it. Trade shows pack a lot of punch and cover a lot of areas of business for you. Here’s a list I jotted down in about ten minutes – and no help from Google! – of reasons to lug your exhibit down to the nearest convention center.

Unpacking The Basic Rules and Regs

Everyone in the trade show industry knows that any trade show has a list of rules and regulations a mile long governing everything from the volume of your booth music to the number of prongs on your cables. For specific terms and conditions of your show, be sure to see your trade show’s prospectus or your rental contract. The biggest consideration for your trade show, however, should be the particulars of your exhibit. And because breaking the rules for exhibit size or height could have financial ramifications, you’ll want to know the following dos and don’ts regarding the most common regulations.

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...Before Starting Trade Shows

Once you’re thrown into the whirlwind world of trade shows, the learning curve is steep. It’s like being thrown into the deep end of the pool – you either sink or you swim. Either way, there’s a lot of flailing! And although there is nothing like hands-on experience to teach you how to maneuver the trade show life, there are a few things I wish I’d known before I started. Here they are:

The Worst of the Worst...How Your Company Can Avoid Them!

You know them. You’ve met them. Maybe you’ve even BEEN them. Bad Booth Staffers. As long as there have been trade shows, there have been booth staffers behaving badly and ruining the company rep. See how many of these you recognize:

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Life Saver Tips for YOUR COMPANY

Have you ever had that sick sinking feeling in your stomach that is telling you that you forgot something?  If so, you are not alone.  When you take a trip, you know the anxiety that can accompany the preparation and last-minute details of leaving the comfort of your office and home. Even experienced travelers can begin to stress out if the minutia of their travel plans isn’t ironed out and solid.

Lead Qualifying Tips for Show Staffers

Generating leads is JOB ONE for most trade show exhibitors, but you want to generate hot qualified leads – the ones that result in business for your sales team. If your booth staff is just collecting business cards and company names, you’ll end up with a lot of dead ends. You will also end up with a sales team that does not want to follow up on the leads.  This is evidenced by the fact that 79% of trade show leads are never followed up on (CEIR) – in large part because the leads that are taken at the show are not qualified enough to “make it worth my time,” as a sales person. Make sure you’re providing your sales team with quality leads by following these helpful tips.

What's the Big Idea?

“When was the last time you had a life-altering bright idea? They don’t come easily, do they? Of course, some people seem to burst with great ideas, their subconscious mind releasing little gems of genius to their conscious mind with little effort. For most of us, however, birthing a great idea takes a little application.

Here it is! The lineup for the not-to-be-missed trade shows of 2019’s first quarter. This lively graphic provides a visual calendar of prominent events in the areas of Healthcare, Manufacturing, Professional Services, Technology, and more.

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See From The Attendee Point of View

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” This is probably never truer than for a company booth at a trade show, where customers get their first impression at a distance and make a split-second decision to approach your booth or pass on by, never having to even meet you.

8 Things to Do First

According to CEIR’s 2018 Marketing Spend Decision Report, trade show exhibitors intend to increase the size of their booths by as much as 20% this year. If you’ve been considering boosting the size of your display, think about the following crucial factors that can determine whether it’s the right time to grow.

Account-based Marketing: A Primer for Trade Show Managers

A disproportionate amount of today’s trade show marketing focuses on lead generation, and statistically speaking, this is the number one reason why companies attend trade shows. However, large sales to strategic accounts typically are rarely decided by a single lead – the opposite tends to be more accurate… they are often determined by an entourage from the purchasing team, and each team member has unique wants (and sometimes demands) that must be addressed. It is always a good idea to be strategic and dive deeper into these business to business accounts, and to try and find more than one advocate on the account to ensure your lead turns into a sale.

Taking this approach is what’s called “account based marketing” (or ABM), in which the target company is treated as its own unique market. Marketing to the account thus involves creating highly customized campaigns that address the business’s collective needs, with messaging targeted and personalized to each various stakeholder whose titles may vary greatly.

Trick Out Your Company with TECH

Don’t blink - 2018 and beyond is here. We’re now seeing self-driving vehicles, AI assistants, self-order smart tech, holodecks,and Domino’s Pizza experimenting with driverless delivery.  For better or worse, we are experiencing tectonic shifts occurring in digital technologies at such a frenetic pace that it can be almost impossible to keep up if you are not keeping an eye on the current trends. Our goal is to take a closer look at a few emerging trends – augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and couple more.  We will break down how this technology is being applied to marketing and brand recognition in the face to face environment of trade shows.

Exploring the past, present, and future trends of trade show exhibit design....

Ask seasoned trade show professionals… some may say that exhibit design is not new, it is simply a new application based on historical designs. In the ever-changing industry of trade shows and events, one thing is consistently desired: intriguing design. We wanted to explore the history of design and felt there was no better place to start than with 30-year veteran, Greg Mathieson, a Senior Exhibit Designer at Skyline Exhibits and Scooter Hendon, Skyline Sector 5 Exhibit Designer with multiple industry awards under his belt.

Tips to Ensure Better Traffic at Your Exhibit Space

Try to avoid the far left side of the trade show hall when choosing your exhibit space, and it will likely serve you well. Did you ever hear about the kids who attended Catholic School getting their hands cracked with a ruler for attempting to write with their left hand? We all have probably heard of this practice from family, friends or acquaintances. There is something we can learn from this, and could apply it to trade shows… go figure.

5 Advanced Digital Marketing Campaign Tracking Tools

by Matt Bohar, Senior Database Marketing Specialist, Skyline Exhibits

Virtually every marketer’s website has Google Analytics tracking installed, and if yours doesn’t – may we ask why not?  Performance at trade shows can be greatly improved if exhibitors measure the website engagement they receive from their email blasts and pay-per-click advertising. Such stats aren’t automatically tracked in Google Analytics, so manually enabling campaign tracking can give you rich insights into the effectiveness of your inbound marketing.

All Staffers at Trade Shows Need a Role...

A common myth prevalent in marketing circles at most any company is that the best exhibit staffer is going to be the outgoing sales person who is fun and never has a lack of comments. While reps can be great staffers, there are other personality types and expertise characteristics that can be just as important to round out your perfect team. Below are some key roles exhibit staffer candidates can use to fill those roles at your next Trade Show.

I’m not sure how things are over at your company, but I know that I perform my best when I know I am contributing to a bigger cause.  Each of us desires a deeper purpose in what we do.  Often, many of us just need an opportunity to be stimulated into action… wouldn’t be a great if we could provide a few of these opportunities at work?  When we take action to pay it forward, we fulfill some of those deep core desires to make a difference in the world and more specifically, make a difference in the lives of those around us. 

When we foster an atmosphere of encouragement and inspiration, we have a much better opportunity to retain our best people and engage people on a level that makes our work more relevant.

Managing Your Trade Show Booth for an Optimal New Product Launch

You’ve invested a significant portion of your marketing budget into your trade show and all of the associated expenses surrounding your shows. You hope that your shows will perform well enough to deliver a positive return on your investment. The good news is that your success does not hinge on one factor, rather a series of small decisions that create a good return for your company. The ROI of your trade show is directly influenced by your actions and decisions. But that control is a double-edged sword. When it comes to the burden of being responsible for your ROI, both good or bad, and someone has to live with the results.

You’ve invested a significant portion of your marketing budget into your trade show and all of the associated expenses surrounding your shows. You hope that your shows will perform well enough to deliver a positive return on your investment. The good news is that your success does not hinge on one factor, rather a series of small decisions that create a good return for your company. The ROI of your trade show is directly influenced by your actions and decisions. But that control is a double-edged sword. When it comes to the burden of being responsible for your ROI, both good or bad, and someone has to live with the results.

Although much of your success remains in your hands, we can offer several bits of advice to help ensure that your ROI on shows is good. These are the tips that veteran exhibitors use to make certain their efforts contribute to their company’s bottom line.

Anyone who has ever been part of the creative process knows firsthand that designing trade show exhibits can prove a challenge in all the best and worst ways. Creatively, business executives love getting the chance to flex their marketing muscles and design trade show exhibits that effectively capture the very essence of their brand. However, achieving that goal can prove a daunting challenge.

Stretching an already tight budget can be a challenge and the trick is to pursue savings that are transparent to the attendees at your exhibit space.  Whether you’re planning your company’s initial launch into trade shows or taking over an exhibit schedule previously handled by another trade show manager, the associated costs can be a little intimidating. If your budget is limited, these 10 tips can help you get the most out of your exhibit dollars:

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You don’t need to go to Las Vegas to gamble, all you have to do is bring something of high value to a trade show. Everyone is faced with the common problem of theft on the show floor. That being said, I wanted to share some of the tricks of the trade that we have employed over time to take preventative action:

Experiential Marketing At Trade Shows

Some things must be felt, seen, tasted, smelled, attempted, or heard in order to be believed.  Through a campaign, we can tell someone what we think or how great our offering is, however there is no replacement for showing someone face to face and allowing them to experience it for themselves.

Experiential marketing allows your skeptical prospects or most dedicated customers to develop an emotional investment in your products or services, literally helping them shape your brand’s evolution. Another by-product of this is shortening the sales cycle because the prospects and clients are becoming more comfortable with who and what they are purchasing.

You will find out shortly that my title is a play on words. The intention isn’t to mislead you about sustainability, but instead to apply the term in another fashion. When you’ve approached the process of designing an exhibit, how much thought do you put into how the style and tone of the space will effect people’s perception of your brand?

Can you recall walking into a cathedral and find that you’ve automatically started to whisper? How about the last time you met with a senior executive for another company; were you able to draw any ideas on how to act from their office? You would automatically adjust your behavior in a five star restaurant differently than you would at the local arcade and pizza place with your kids, right? There is a natural effect that environment has on the way most of us behave (the “most of us” part is because I have some of “those” relatives too).

How 10 Experts Define Marketing

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Trade shows are a serious marketing medium in which we invest billions of dollars. In our quest to achieve business results, we often talk about getting the highest ROI (Return on Investment) or ROO (Return on Objectives).  But what about the greatest ROF (Return on Fun)… more specifically, how do we make the shows fun for ourselves?

Finding the right partner for the installation and dismantling of your trade show booth is no easy task. However, it offers a plethora of benefits such as time saved, less stress, and of course the most important thing, money. After you partner with a team of professionals, you’ll realize that this is only one step for trade show installation in Nashville and beyond.

Do a web search on hiring models for your trade show and you’ll find not just a few articles that decry the practice.  There are a lot of reasons to be cautious in the use of models.  For one thing, having a gaggle of hot models in your exhibit can actually intimidate some people.  That high energy and frankly “intense” atmosphere that is often associated with the proverbial “booth babe” environment is tough for the more reserved people, and can even cause anxiety just by being in the area.

We are excited to announce that our clients, Dominion Dealer Solutions, was selected Best of Show for the National Auto Dealer Association Conference (#NADA2018) held this past weekend in Las Vegas.  Congratulations to team #Dominion!

An alarming statistic is that 79% of Trade Show Leads are never followed up on… how crazy is that?  There are tools that abound to make all of our lives easier when it comes to lead management.  Most exhibitors have replaced the old “business card fishbowls” with badge scanners and software. But far too many exhibitors are still merely collecting as many cold prospects as possible and handing them over to sales. That approach can make the follow-up sales efforts overwhelming. Using the following six lead management steps will ensure your lead generation efforts identify the quality leads.

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We all know that branding has intrinsic value, but how much value can actually ascribe to a “Brand”… more specifically our brand.  This is no small question and one that is challenging to answer.

Consider this simple example pulled from each of our everyday lives. When we visit the drug store or grocery store and we have to choose between the “store brand” version of a product or the branded version positioned right next to it on the shelf.  The dilemma that faces us in that moment is do we compromise on perceived quality and go for the less expensive “store branded” version?  It seems like there would be a lot of us that would pick the less expensive option… Not true. 

In the South, we are raised to be "nice." Nice is always expected, but nice means nothing without sincerity.  Too often nice can be a passive-aggressive behavior where you are smiling and nodding while inside you're really rolling your eyes or looking for an escape route.  What does this have to do with staffing at your trade show booth?  When you're hosting at your booth, you should strive to treat each visitor as you would a guest in your office or home.  Here are some suggestions to ensure your guests are sensing sincerity in your interactions at the booth. 

Almost without fail, the last thing anyone … even experienced exhibit designers … think about is what your exhibit smells like. Even now, after reading that last line you’re wondering where can I possibly be going with this?

For a moment, stop. Close your eyes and put yourself in a place you can recall by smell. I can easily recall the smell of baking bread with my grandmother, my grandfather’s pipe tobacco, apple orchards and burning pine needles in the fall at our family cottage. It’s amazing how well you can mentally recreate the smell without really having it available. Equally amazing is how a smell you encounter can trigger a memory. My mom used to decorate cakes for fun, and when we were kids she would make all kinds of fun cakes for birthdays and holidays. I can’t smell buttercream frosting anymore without seeing my favorite sailboat cake … chocolate buttercream frosting, coconut on the sail and peppermint ring candies for portholes (seriously, it’s pretty stellar) … and I haven’t had one in nearly 35 years (mental note: put in order with mom). Why does it work that way, and how does it relate to exhibiting?

A shorthand formula to help with exhibit design goes like this: "Exhibit design should compel a particular audience into a specific conversation to achieve a measurable outcome." It doesn't cover every situation, but it does help set a pace for most design scenarios. Let's go phrase by phrase:

Obviously, we advocate exhibit design. Intentional, evocative and relevant design is important to any good face-to-face marketing endeavor. Commodity exhibits are available, and you can buy nearly anything off the internet.