Convention Insider (Conventions.net)

One of the things that see a quite a bit is the fact that many exhibitors just show up and hope people will come to their booth and buy their products or services.  This is such a missed opportunity if you don’t take advantage of the fact that you are giving your customer a chance to meet face to face and experience your conversation first hand.

I try to make as many appointments wit all my contacts that I can. This helps me set a good schedule before the event and sets out my time.  I can stay on track that way and make sure I get the biggest bang for my buck.  There is also another underlying thing that happens, people talk about you and the fact that you will be at the event.  Many of the people that you make appointments with will talk about you to your friends, your competitors and others in your industry. You ge4t seen as the expert or as the person in the know about what is going on at the event.  You are seen as the person that they need to know and meet or compete with on the floor.  This increases your stock exponentially.  Make your contacts now and get your calendar set before the show and you will see great benefits.

I have been meaning to write this post for a while but I thought that it was interesting to note that Las Vegas convention attendance in the month of July showed an increase of 28%.  Trade Show News Network reports:

The month of July, though, saw a huge uptick, with 320,724 attendees coming to the city, compared with 249,692 during the same time period last year, according to the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority’s Executive Summary.

They say that the upswing was due to some new shows that are in town and that makes sense as Las Vegas has a better draw for those going and attending conventions.  The economy is driving shows to where they can have the best attendance and where the professional convention planners and the capital of conventions occurs.  This is actually good news as we see some solid numbers increase in Las Vegas the good news will only begin to spread.

Other indicators like room rates that have increased slightly may point to further indicators of economic recovery in the world of conventions and trade shows.  We will continue to take a look a the numbers as they are released.  Are we looking at a recovery?  Or perhaps a short blip in the screen?  My gut tells me not to start throwing a party.

It is one of the new catch phrases of the year, “How Do I Make My Business Hyper-Local?”  It is often asked and rarely understood.  Businesses everywhere are going global with their reach as they branch out to areas only now offered as a result of the Internet and Social Media.  They are finding new ways to reach the masses and finding ways to cats a wider net to garner more customers.  This is a great new phenomena that is taking hold and will be a new way of doing business for years to come.  Is this a good thing?  I think it is a great thing, but not at the cost of dealing with the customers in your own backyard.  Are you losing the customers in your backyard?

So many times we are seeing that conventions are growing at leaps and bounds as a result of their newly found reach using tactics that allow them to market to a whole new audience.  They love to talk about getting attendees now from other places in the world and from across the globe, but what they are failing to understand is that they are also forgetting the people right there in their own backyard.  The Internet not only allows you to have a greater reach, it also allows you to drill down within the local communities to find those attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and others right in your own backyard.  Take some time to research not only that customer on the other side of the world that you can now communicate with, but find that customer right on your own street that has been there the whole time.  You will increase your reach even farther just but seeing what is right in front of you.

I have been talking about the convention season like it is a time to get a license and hunt for prospects (enter Bugs Bunny skit or scene here using the “Wabbit Season/Duck Season”).  The fall is generally that time of year for me.  “Back To School” campaigns are also all the rage on advertisements for all the retailers.  All of this means that we will be inundated with the time that many of us will spend in an expo hall shaking hands, meeting people and getting to be exposed to a large number of people.  I believe that the the latter is what we need to learn to survive.  This is where we all start to get that cold and flu bug that seems to hit us and attack us as we get over exposed.  Here are my tips to being healthy during the convention season:

Wash Your Hands

This is one of the things that we all get to hear on a regular basis.  Our mothers stand over us and tell us we need to wash those hands and this is probably the best advice.  If you are at a location where there are a lack of facilities to wash, pick up some hand sanitizer and use it often and regular.

Drink Plenty of Water

This is not something that many of us do on a regular basis.  If you drink more water you are generally more healthy.  Staying hydrated is critical to fighting off bad health.  In fact, this can also help you with washing your hands as we all know what drinking lots of water does and the result, which of course we all wash our hands after doing.

Get  Exercise

If you are healthy you will have a better chance of fighting off any bugs.  We all tend to stay up late and get up early in the convention season.  It is the nature of the beast.  What we need to do is get up early and go for a run, or use the gym at the hotel where we are staying.  Get the heart pumping, get some air in those lungs and again drink lots of water while doing it and you will see the difference in how you can face not only the challenges of that busy convention schedule.

Three easy steps to take to give you that added little extra during convention season.  If you have your own tips feel free to share them.  We all need to be healthy for convention season.  I need to get out and run and pick up some bottled water so I can head into my convention season.  See you at your booth!

What is co-location of conferences?  We know that co-location is defined as:  “to locate together; especially : to place (two or more units) close together so as to share common facilities.”  This is provided by Merriam-Webster, but what does it actually mean to us in the conference world?  To me it has a few messages.

Spreading out costs: I think one of the main points in today’s economy is that it allows a conference to partner with another conference to share in the costs of the facility or other costs.  If you have two companies that might have somewhat differing agendas but might share the same attendees, they can both share in the cost of the rental of the facility or the other costs that might be associated with putting on the event.  This also means of course that you would have to also share in the revenue of the attendees tickets and perhaps some of the sponsors but that is to be expected when dealing with partners.

Markets Join Forces: Many companies join together for a common purpose.  This is not much different from conferences joining together for a common purpose.  It may be that a single conference does not have the amount of content to support a full conference but if they joined with another conference that might also be too small to support a full conference, together they could make a full conference agenda of speakers and exhibitors for a better conference experience.

Management is Distributed: In some cases the companies that are putting on the events are too small but if they joined forces they could spread out the amount of work necessary.  perhaps Company A wil be in charge of the front facing marketing promotion and sales, while company B is responsible to the back end management of registrations, exhibit booth set up, housing and speakers.  With two companies each taking on all of the responsibilities necessary it spreads out the work load making it easier to accomplish all that needs done.

These are just a few of the simple ideas behind why conferences are co-located.  I know that we are beginning to see more and more of this as economic factors make it necessary to join forces and allow for more people to participate in attending conferences as well as managing them.  Are you a co-located conference manager?  Why are you co-locating?  What are some of the downfalls of co-locating conferences?  Would love to hear your thoughts.

Let’s face it giving out shot glasses with your logo on it is a cool giveaway item perhaps unless you are an exhibit booth at the alcoholics are us convention.  You have to make sure the promotional item is an item that is memorable to the audience you are giving it to and it need to make some common sense to the people that take it home.  I am about to gear up for a large convention for people in the social media world.  I like to get something in their hands that can make an impact and something that they may also have a good use for and not something that ends up chewed up by the family dog and never identified with again. Yes, that is a true story actually, the person told me later something to the idea that, “my dog ate it.”  That was not my idea of a good promotional item.

My promotional items are business cards to the next time they think of me. If it is something they will use later, they will remember where they picked it up and hopefully it will have my name or company name associated with it.  I still remember an ice cream scoop my parents used for years that had a company logo on it.  I can never scoop ice cream without thinking about that corner store.  This year I am thinking of giving out lip balm with my logo on the side.  The convention is in Las Vegas and whenever I go to a show there, I always need lip balm due to the desert location of the event.  I need to match the product with the user and they in turn will hopefully look back and remember me!  Does anyone know where I might find a good promotion item company to use?  Next up a trade show display booth I must shop for!

I have been thinking for a while about convention and trade show leaders.  The people that lead us up the hill in this time of economic troubles.  The ones that make us feel good about where we are in the industry.  Those that are our though leaders and those that have companies that they are keeping on the path to success.

I have been thinking about what makes a good leader and what do the conferences, conventions or trade shows that are successful have in common?  I think the answer is simple and obvious, they have good leadership.  Last night on Twitter this conversation came about about companies that work well and what they have in common.  It also talked about the traits of the leaders of those companies that were successful.  Some of the traits of the leaders were:

• Passion
• Vision
• Fearlessness
• Determination

Those may sound like things we all have but in some leaders that exude these traits.  The funny thing is that if you ask each of us about what we think of when we think of a good leader and what traits we find important, each of us would have a different answer.  It does seem that we all wont to follow those that inspire us to be followers.  Some leaders have a confidence that we want to follow. It makes me think of what are the traits I want to see in a leader.  I have talked about events that fail and have been talking about events that are struggling but those that are winning the struggle and the battles are those with good leadership.  What are the things you look for in your event leadership?

Photo via Hamed Saber

I was talking to a friend yesterday about the idea behind a trade show manager that would wait up until the show date to cancel it and take the money and escape out the back way.  That sounds a little dramatic and perhaps it is just the movie of the week that is playing in my head when I imagine that actually happening but it could happen.  In fact in 1995 I remember a man organizing trade shows in Houston, Texas while sitting in his prison cell.  He would set up the event sell exhibit booth space and then cancel at the last minute and not give anyone their money back.  He would tell vendors and others that there was not adequate parking.  As I said, it should be the movie of the week.

Today, 15 years after the fact, the economy is struggling and people are having difficulty getting new businesses to work and flourish.  This is part of the other problem with trade shows, events and conferences that are failing and not getting off the ground.  There are not enough sponsors willing to fork over money for the events that are starting and the organizers have no financing to get a year under their belt and lastly, attendees cannot afford to attend.  It seems to be a vicious cycle and in among this craziness is people wanting to take advantage of others.

How do you protect yourself in a situation with new show organizers that have the opportunity to be a good event but must either cancel the event or have it be a failure when you show up and present your trade show best to very few attendees?  There must be ways for you to protect yourself from this.  I want to explore this more and would ask that anyone that has experience with this leave us a comment.  I would love to talk to some wily veterans that might have this knowledge and might know how to combat the problem.  If you have had this happen either as an organizer or an attendee or an exhibitor I would love to hear from you.  Let us in on what happened and how.  I am going to do some further research on this and run a series of information on Trade Show and Convention Fraud.  I might even throw in some of my own experience.  I think this is something that is very unfortunate and something we should all be aware of in this tight economy.

I was having a discussion with a colleague the other day about using email marketing as a way to get the word out and help get information to a customer.  I am still a child of email myself and I check that usually before I get my coffee in the morning.  A recent study reported by Mashable indicates that the next generation may be checking Facebook before they have their coffee, but I for one stick with the basics and go through email.

I continue to receive email updates from conferences and trade shows I have attended but for the most part, they smaller shows only send out a few updates a year and those are usually centered around events such as a call for speakers, or a sale of early bird tickets or other bigger announcements.  I think that is a poor use of email and newsletters.  Email is a great way to get up to speed year round and keep things fresh in the minds of your attendees, exhibitors and sponsors.  It is a great tool for helping you garner more sponsors in fact if they think you will be promoting them all year.

There are many email services out there and none of them are head and shoulders about their competitors.  I like to see a company that provides good analytics and one that allows you to customize your emails easily.  I know that some of the companies out there even have the ability to integrate with your blog and other social networks which is a nice touch.  Are you using email as a way to market your event?  How many emails is too many versus how many are too little.  I like to think that once a month I should be seeing your event show up on my radar and as we get close to your event you should get out as many as one per week.  What has worked for you in the past?

Canceling an event that never seems to get off the ground can be a difficult decision.  There are many things that go into making that decision, be it sponsorships that are on the fence, and attendees coming on board or speakers that will make or break both of the foregoing.  I was watching around the Internet this weekend and noticed that a recent tech event in Italy was canceled by organizers here in the United States.  It was not a great story to read as I too have been part of a failed conference and it was a difficult time for all.  There are sponsors to answer to and their are attendees to work out issues with and finally making things right for speakers that are making commitments can be a hassle.  All-in-all, I don’t wish a failed event on anyone.

When is it time to call it quits or when is the time for that pass fail grade for your event?  For many it seems to revolve around money.  If an event does not get the number of attendees for their needs to pay hotels and facilities, the answer is simple.  You cancel the event by necessity since the money is no t in the bank to support the event.  Some sponsors want certain criteria to be met before they will provide the check for the vent and if that does not happen, that too is a trigger to call it quits.  In this particular instance it seems that a combination of money and logistics caused the event to fail.  They had to cancel the location of the event as the hotel required a deposit that was not paid and they themselves pulled the rug out for organizers. This is very unfortunate as there are tales now of attendees showing up for an event and not having the event take place.

I am also disturbed by organizers that are putting together events and have no intention of having the event take place.  I have heard of some fraud going on in our industry and that is very disturbing.  Making exhibitors pay for booths and sponsors to pay for sponsorship of events and when the time comes for the convention or conference to take place the organizers are no place to be found.  This is a practice that seems to give us all a black eye.  When is the best time to cancel an event?  My hope is never.