Trade fair cancellation is a real risk to consider. Before Covid-19, cancellation was a distant possibility, now it is an everyday reality. So how do you safeguard your company for this scenario? Well we offer you five alternatives to consider, in the event that your trade show gets cancelled and you are one of the many exhibitors who’s commissioned their tradeshow displays for Orlando.
Run a Virtual Booth
Virtual booths are a safer alternate for exhibitors. They function similarly to live trade shows. You set up a website to host your virtual booth. This virtual booth is 3d in design and can be explored by the visitor using their mouse or track pad. Each area of this booth has touch points which activates on a click.
These touch points serve up a wide range of multimedia, ranging from videos, presentations, images, and marketing brochures. The only drawback for virtual booths is that the technology didn’t have the time to develop and the industry still has a lot of improvement to make in terms of user experience and overcoming technical expertise. But these are your best bet, if you want to still run a promotion through your booth.
Use White Paper
If your company is a B2B business than white papers are a viable option. People are locked-in due to the virus, but they still need information. That’s why people attend trade shows in the first place i.e. Industry knowledge.
Your target audience is always searching for solutions online for their business problems. The benefit of a white paper over blog posts is that users are required to fill a registration form to get access to these white papers. This offers the ideal opportunity for companies to get relevant leads.
Run Webinars
Webinars are not just for knowledge sharing, they can also be used to generate leads. In a live webinar a lot of information can be transmitted to your audience. People are more willing to pay attention to someone talk about a subject than read a book about it. Furthermore, you have a wider toolkit to keep the attention of your audience.
Music, animated slides, chat boxes will keep your users engaged. You also get the opportunity to interact with your users in real-time and answer their questions and know interest level. The only drawback is the level of technical expertise needed, along with additional personnel to handle chat boxes, video streaming and audio.
Take to social media
Using social media platforms is a great way to reach out to your prospects. Even if the event gets cancelled, you get access to visitor list and can email them with their permission of course. You can still use the organizers hashtags to promote your brand and host your webinar or virtual booth.
Take the initiative, most visitors probably had kept aside time to visit the show, before it got cancelled. You can make it worth their time, by reaching out to them and offering them something of value.
Never stop planning
The uncertainty and care needed in view of the virus affects our daily interaction. This doesn’t mean that you have wait it out. You can can still communicate! Because your sales and advertising team can’t hit the road, you have to shift your back office team to top gear.
Use email marketing, create landing pages for your product, make cold calls, create webinars, set up zoom appointments. Communication doesn’t need to stop, you can focus on nurturing existing leads and reach out to potential ones, through the organisers.
Beyond that, here are some facts to be aware of, if the trade fair does get cancelled, you will get a partial reimbursement for renting the booth space and on the booth design The same can’t be said for accommodation and travel tickets. Some booth designers offer with tradeshow displays Orlando a virtual booth, so the risks of cancellation get partially mitigated.
Read here – How much does it cost to participate in a trade show.
