Events are quickly becoming an invaluable part of marketing strategies. With much of business being online, in-person platforms offer a rare opportunity to connect with visitors face-to-face and have meaningful conversations about your business, products, and services.
While events facilitate the conversations, social media, alongside a wider marketing strategy, is the best way to drive footfall and traction at the event. After all, how can decision-makers find you if they don’t know you’re attending?
In this guide, we teach you how to use social media marketing for trade shows to extend your marketing campaign and drive return on investment.
While exhibiting is a fantastic marketing activation, it requires significant investment for just two-three days of exposure. Social media can take those two-three days, and turn them into a fuller marketing campaign offering up to 10-weeks of traction. Social media marketing can be used to:
- Create excitement and build buzz
- Build momentum
- Book meetings
- Reach customers outside of the event
- Extend reach
Some exhibitors choose to extend their trade show investment event further, by investing in an event website, that can add further to the wider marketing campaign, showcase stand information, and be used to arrange meetings.
Before the Show
Build Hype & Spread the Word
In the lead-up to the show, you can leverage social media to spread the word about your event presence and begin to build hype. Share countdown posts, sneak peeks of your exhibition stand designs, even simple “we will be at the show” announcements, each signalling your presence, and giving your audience a chance to plan a visit. The earlier you start, the more chances you have of reaching decision-makers.
Use the Event Hashtag
Use the event hashtag to drive traction. Every event has one, and using it pulls your content into the event feed and spreads it to audiences actively looking for show content, not just your existing followers. Always tag both the organiser and the show itself. It takes minimal time and increases your chances of a reshare from a bigger account.
Announce Your Stand Location
A great stand is only useful if people can find it. We always recommend sharing your stand number and a map of the hall. Most trade shows are large, and you want to reduce any friction for visitors as they find your stand. You can pair this with a teaser of your stand offerings and mission!
During the Show
Post Live from the Event
It can be easy to forget about social media during the event. The show floor demands constant attention, and for many, social media is the first thing to slip. However, live content tends to perform very well, as it feels more authentic and real. It doesn’t have to be anything time-consuming – simple stand tours, a show-entrance-to-stand timelapse, pictures of your team – snippets that give your audience a genuine look at your stand, offerings and activities. Planning what videos you want to take ahead of the show can speed up the filming process.
Encourage Visitors to Post
Extending reach usually involves getting more accounts to post about you. You can encourage guests to post content by creating a branded photo wall, a competition, or even by featuring a tagline asking to “tag us in your stories”. This turns visitors into an extension of your marketing for the day.
Engage with Fellow Exhibitors & Visitors
Trade shows create a large pool of businesses, all posting about the same event. By commenting on, resharing, and tagging other exhibitors and visitors, you extend your reach from your own feed, to the show’s wider online conversation. It often takes seeing a few posts for visitors to remember you. The more places you appear, the better. LinkedIn is a valuable platform for this sort of interaction, as your comments are easily shared to second connections, third and so on.
Post-Show
Follow-up with Your Connections & Leads
Very often, the team following up on the leads and the ones handling the social media are different. So while leads might receive a personal follow-up via email, the connection made might not translate to platforms like LinkedIn. It’s important to tag people you met in a thank you post, connect with your leads, and send a follow-up message referencing your conversation. This shows that you value the connection and the customer’s potential business.
Share a Highlights Reel
People love a highlight reel. Whether that’s a photo-carousel, a video, or a summary. It’s another way to make maximum use of your show day content, and reinforces your presence with your newfound audience.
Repurpose Show Day Content
Your show day content can also be repurposed into a future campaign, extending your investment past the show. Stand footage, visitors’ interactions and competitions can all be saved and reused in the future.
Share Your Show Results
Success stories often garner great traffic. Share your show stats online, including your leads generated, contracts won, stand engagement etc. This builds credibility and excitement for the next show, and you never know, it might even be shared by the organisers.
Additional Considerations & Factors to Consider
It’s clear that social media marketing plays a valuable role in trade shows, extending the investment, expanding reach and increasing footfall. But this impact can be enhanced further with some additional planning.
Create a Schedule
The best projects have some intention and planning backing them. Plan what content you need to capture at the show, so staff can gather footage more efficiently. This prevents the project from detracting from other show roles. Better still, create a content plan detailing what you want to post and when.
Incorporate a Unique Activation
It’s much easier to create excitement when there is actually something to be excited by. Create a point of difference on your stand with unique features, a giveaway, game or competition. This gives you something tangible to leverage in your posts.
Invest in a Great Stand Design
The better your stand looks, the better it will translate online. Invest in an exhibition stand design that your team will be proud to work on. People are more likely to interact with a good-looking display, and staff are more likely to want to post about the show if they feel proud of their exhibition stand.
If you’re planning a stand for your next show and want to talk through how to make it more engaging, we’d love to help. Contact us at +44 (0)1202 723 500 or email design@quadrant2design.com to get the ball rolling. Our design proposals are free and without obligation.
