by James Wood
Surely there is a better way to sure your market materials at events and exhibitions?
Despite the huge growth of online channels available to marketers today, it’s still the traditional face-to-face engagements prove the most popular. With 1 in 3 business buyers attending live events, exhibitions and tradeshows are now the single most influential source of information on the path to purchase for a b2b buyer. It’s no surprise then, that one fifth of the average b2b marketing budget is spent on events – more than any other tactic businesses are currently using to attract new buyers.
But are these events really working?
Well, when only 8% of event marketers think their company has cracked developing relationships, closing deals and acquiring customer insight at face to face events, then probably not. The problem is, event attendees aren’t there for the hard sell. They are there to learn, gather information on potential partners and suppliers and most importantly make new contacts. The last thing they want is the sales push from slick rick in the suit – and that’s why ‘content marketing’ is so important, especially in the physical events space.
But are racks of printed brochures and floppy product one pagers the best we can do?
Especially when 82% of delegates don’t fully engage with content they have collected at events and they end up in the bin or collecting dust. Surely there must be a way to make events better, more productive and engaging for everyone – a way that brings events in line with current trends and the way attendees use content, mobile and social?
Some useful tools to help you bridge the content chasm
Content is still central to events – and ultimately will help drive leads after any tradeshow or exhibition. Here are some useful tools to make the most out of your content.
Event Wallet – Event Wallet gives event attendees a way to discover, collect and share content at events using their mobile device (with a little help from iBeacons) – so they can collect any content, from PDFs to audio to video, there and then and save to view and share on their desktop later.
Apptitude Media helps turn your traditional printed content, into rich digital stories. Use it to make your content more accessible and interesting for your audience.
evvnt enables event organisers to distribute event content across event listing site on the web. Every minute, with little more than a click, more events and conferences appear in listings, in search engines and on mobile – discoverable by both category and location.
Much used by event attendees, twitter is the perfect way to promote and share your digital content at events – make sure to find the right conversations at the event and share the content the audience are looking for.
“Image source- Flickr, usage under Creative Commons license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)”