“Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not necessarily in that order.” ― Tim Burton.
This is the same for events, in order to maximise engagement and success of the event you must plan every detail to ensure you don’t miss out on any opportunities. We’ve put together a list of tips and tricks to improve engagement with visitors at your next live event!
Before the event:
This can be anything from a year, two months, a week, three days or an hour before the event, there is a lot of planning involved!
- Identify your overall objective for the event so everyone goes in focused on achieving the same goal.
- All staff members will need training before the event to ensure they are clued up on product knowledge, how to talk to and sell to customers, training on all technology involved and event mannerisms. No matter how familiar staff are with events or the products, there is always something new with each event that will be different from the last that they will need training on.
- Collection of all required materials. This is everything from designing and creating handouts, to getting exhibition stands built to and even choosing your promotional chocolates. Always ensure that they have a clear brand message with call to action on them!
- You must ensure you stand out from all your other competitors, what is your USP? Is this prominent throughout all of your event material?
- Lists, lists & more lists… to make sure you don’t forget anything on the day! From a chronological agenda of the day, to what you need to remember to pack in the car!
- Get to event early to set up and prepare before visitors arrive.
During the execution of your event:
Grab a coffee, you’re going to need it!
- Engage with EVERYONE. Get your name out there, let people know why you’re hear and what you’re selling.
- Proactively approach people with flyers and leaflets, if your exhibition stand is getting quiet walk around the show, see what others are offering and what you are up against. Approach other visitors wondering around, direct them to your stand.
- Draw in people to your stand by talking to them, offering a tasty incentive, exciting competitions or interactive games. Be bubbly, chatty and approachable, ensuring you are informative. Make sure you gain their contact details to follow up after the event has finished.
- Do you have a specific approach or are you using a variety? Walk around with handouts from leaflets and flyers to branded sweets or industry related product e.g. branded tyre levers at Ride London Expo), are you going to stay at the stand and have interactive games, entice with food, competitions when people walk past and are you going to have a speaker on stage discussing your business and directing to stand to find out more?
- Think about technology – make use of apps, lead capture and lead calculator, this will be far more time efficient for you and also help to reduce human errors.
- Events can also be for networking – gain ideas from competitors, gather information from suppliers, agencies etc. who could be good to use in the future – they in turn might return the business if you are offering something they cannot.
Review after the event:
The work is not done yet…
- Analyse the performance of the event, collect all the data you gained from the event, how many leads you gained, and how many sales, to calculate ROI.
- What went well, congratulate team on the positives, think of ways in which these can be used and enhanced again.
- What didn’t go so well, evaluate what you could have done differently for this not to have happened?
- Plan for the next – enhance the positives and plan for the negatives. Ensure more of the successful aspects are done more and prevent any mishaps from happening at the next event. Or even, things you spent money on that people weren’t engaged with, don’t use again to reduce overall costs.
Is you need any assistance in planning your next event? We’ll make sure you have an amazing show!
That’s what we’re passionate about at Clip. We take the stress away and deliver you a successful event that will exceed your brand’s objectives. To find out more, get in touch with one of our expert live event consultants today.
