Trade shows are an amazing place to promote your businesses, products, and services. Tons of brands and businesses visit the tradeshows to network and attract potential customers. The pandemic, in the past year, did bring everything to a standstill and all kinds of in-person events stopped.

The events industry picked up the virtual format and kept going. It is going to be a while before planners and organizers decided to bring in physical events once again.

How to maximize your trade show strategy – before, during, and after the event?

It is important for you to have the right technology and event tech partners for you to have the right kind of analytics and information to gauge the success rate of your trade show. If you are an organizer, looking at hosting a Virtual Trade Show, then here are 5 steps to maximize the most of it. Starting from booth engagement, pre-event appointments, matchmaking, all can be used to analyse the success of your virtual event.

BEFORE THE SHOW

  • Get the right booth visitors for your trade show: If you are spending a lot to build an attractive booth for the brands and businesses, make sure you get the right and proper kind of visitors for the tradeshow who are genuinely interested. Take two steps ahead and schedule event appointments in advance for specific time slots. This will allow the brands to understand the kind of manpower they would need to handle the booths during the day of the event.
  • Scheduling Appointments: Allow your attendees to schedule meetings with the respective booths themselves. This will be the most user-friendly and as an organizer, you’ll be able to see the number of attendees who’ve booked appointments and market/promote your tradeshow accordingly.

DURING THE SHOW

  • Capture all the analytics: As your event begins, your virtual event platform technology will help you gauge the attendance of your attendees, the number of appointments, leads converted, and much more.
  • The Virtual Event platform will also help you create a trade show that has an exclusive design and looks closer to reality. The 3D-built designs, developed by ibentos will help you host larger-than-life events and hook your audience like never before.

POST-EVENT

  • Trade show Insights: Trade shows with proper insights about the event are really beneficial when calculating the ROI. It will also help you to provide a clearer picture of the trade show analytics in front of your partners and sponsors.

The global pandemic has allowed organizers to rethink events in the virtual world with a much bigger scope to be creative and flexible with design as well as networking opportunities. Here are a few things you can incorporate into your virtual event space and make it a success:

  • Have an integration of exciting and engaging networking options: The main aim of a Virtual trade show is to help buyers and sellers engage; therefore, a suitable networking lounge along with the attendee details must be a part of your Trade Show. Considering bumping into friends is no longer possible like it was at an in-person event, a networking lounge is an organizer’s only way to initiate effective networking.
  • Have an exclusive emailing list that you must reach out to before the commencement of your Trade Show. It is extremely important for organizers to send out mailers, text messages, or WhatsApp reminders for your attendees to turn up for the trade show at the right time.
  • Branding for your sponsors and partners is another important feature that needs to be included in the organizers’ to-do list. Giving them the right visibility by positioning them in the branding areas that will catch the maximum audiences’ attention.

Over the past two years, the reach of the events industry has widened. Like in-person trade shows, we are sure that if strategized properly, virtual trade shows can have a similar impact on the attendees and yourself.

Therefore, if you are looking at executing a large trade show- be it virtual or hybrid; feel free to reach out to us for our top-notch event technology solutions.