The next trade fair is coming sooner than expected
Those who are believed to be dead live longer: Trade fairs as a marketing tool are often said to be dead. But trade fairs continue to enjoy unbroken importance, particularly in the B2B sector. The annual study "B2B Marketing Budgets" by the Federal Association of Industrial Communication e.V. (bvik) shows that trade fairs continue to rank first in terms of the percentage distribution of marketing budgets. The focus of communication has shifted somewhat with digitalization: While trade fairs used to provide an overview of products and providers, trade fair visitors now do this in advance via social networks, websites and advance reporting. At the trade fair itself, personal but also digital communication has become more of a focus. The trade fair experience counts and must provide visual and digital highlights that can be shared via social networks.
This shift towards digital presents new challenges for the cross-channel content strategy before, during and after the trade fair. However, it remains the case that comprehensive preparation in trade fair communication, whether digital or analogue, is almost the whole story.
This article provides an overview of the content marketing measures for the trade fair.
1. Before the Mass
Internal measures
✓ Employees as multipliers
Die wichtigsten Zielgruppen des internen Trade fair content marketing is your own employees, partners and service providers. You need to get them on board early and keep them informed about the progress of trade fair preparations via the intranet or notice board. The measures begin with your own employees as soon as the date and trade fair have been set and continue when the roadmap has been drawn up: trade fair motto, services and products to be presented. You also need to inform them about lectures, presentations at the trade fair stand, important visitors and other relevant milestones in the preparations. This is because your own employees are also multipliers of trade fair communication and will also inform partners, service providers, interested parties and their own contacts in social networks and offline. The same applies to partners and service providers, who are only informed after the employees.
✓ The good connection to sales
Mutually beneficial cooperation between the marketing and sales teams is particularly relevant in internal communication for trade fair preparation. Trade fair material should be created in close coordination with the corporate design for stand visitors, interested parties and media representatives.
External measures
✓ Creation of accompanying trade fair material
This means we are already in the middle of external communication. As soon as the roadmap for the trade fair is in place, we need to decide together with the sales team which trade fair material should be provided: data sheets, white papers, brochures, case studies, special prints from magazines, fact sheets on companies and products, etc. It is important to have a realistic, far-sighted time plan. Because time pressure is guaranteed.
✓ Upgrade your company website to make it suitable for trade fairs
Your own website should prominently indicate your participation in the trade fair by integrating a disruptor with the trade fair logo and a link to the trade fair page. Most trade fairs make such logos available free of charge on their website. You should also create your own trade fair subpage: This gives an overview of the most important facts, highlights and dates at your own trade fair stand. The most important products can be presented here with links to the respective product page. Companies can also use this page to organise trade fair dates, provide a request form for free trade fair tickets and link to published press releases. These subpages can later also be used to offer trade fair material for stand visitors, interested parties and journalists for download. All of these measures also contribute to the search engine optimization of the company website through backlinks and relevant, current content. Also important in this context is the company entry on the trade fair provider's website.
✓ Start press work early
However, press work must begin much earlier: Many B2B companies are not aware that the first trade fair reports appear in print magazines three months before the trade fair. The right time for the press release about the trade fair is therefore crucial: if sent too early, there is a risk that it will be forgotten. If sent too late, there will be no space left in the magazine or the editorial deadline will have already passed. The topic plans with schedules of the specialist magazines provide information. In addition to information about the trade fair highlights, don't forget to include a link to the trade fair page on your own website for further information and press material.
✓ Multi-stage emails: relevance instead of quantity
Multi-stage email campaigns are recommended for inviting customers, partners and interested parties. Multi-stage because this increases attention: Hardly anyone reads all the newsletters, so the likelihood of trade fair participation being noticed increases with each new email. However, it is also important here that only relevant content is sent and fewer emails are better than more. Otherwise, newsletters that have been carefully created will end up in spam in the future and remain unread forever. In terms of content, such a campaign can be structured in three stages, for example: 1. Save the date, 2. Information on the roadmap, 3. Offer free tickets and personal trade fair appointments.
✓ Social media: Relevant content, preferably audiovisual
The social media campaign for the trade fair should always reach its peak using the most important hashtags shortly before, during and shortly after the trade fair. Then the probability is highest that the topic will achieve its greatest reach. There is no blanket statement about the frequency of social media posts: Here too, the relevance of the content for the target group is the maxim. If in doubt, fewer posts with better content are better. In any case, these posts must provide image and increasingly also video material. In terms of content, companies can use the roadmap and content from the trade fair accompanying material and prepare this for specific channels.
✓ Experience exhibition stand
A special area of trade fair communication that requires intensive preparation is the design and program at the trade fair stand. Here, the aim is to entertain the stand visitors. Ideally, the trade fair stand is spacious and brightly designed in a strategically sensible location in the hall, with elements that invite people to linger: Digital live demonstrations, lectures and presentations, comfortable seating, food and attractive giveaways are some of the possibilities here. When planning today, you should sharpen your eye for aesthetic images, program items and lettering that offer attractive motifs for social media.
2. During the fair
The trade fair begins: Ideally, the sales team has a full trade fair calendar. The back office is ready to write to new contacts the next day at the latest with a prepared thank you email with a reference to the trade fair material on the website and other relevant information. The social media team supplies the company channels with impressions from the trade fair stand. The posts should be well planned and prepared in advance as far as possible. Short videos or, depending on your taste, more elaborately designed videos are also becoming more and more important at the trade fair. Relevant hashtags are continuously checked, suitable posts are liked and shared, and the corresponding accounts are followed. In addition, if possible, content for the corporate blog with impressions from the trade fair should be created and published.
3. After the Mass
After the trade fair, colleagues usually return to their desks exhausted. This makes the back office all the more important: New contacts must be contacted promptly and provided with the necessary material. For journalists, a statement in the form of a press release or a quote should be made available promptly, ideally with images from the trade fair and the person who provided the quote. This can then be used straight away to create another blog post that draws a conclusion about the trade fair. The blog post is then linked to social media. Individual highlights from it can be used with image and video material from the trade fair as separate social media posts in order to use the trade fair hashtags later and remain present in the topic area.
And finally, a comprehensive evaluation should be made of what went well and what should be optimized next time: