3 Ways to use your Website this Tradeshow Season
Ever wonder how to leverage your website and the power of the www into more tradeshow booth traffic?
There are three things you can do with your website that may help.
First
Promote the tradeshows you’ll be participating in using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and any other social media that pertains to your industry. Let your friends and followers know where your booth will be within the tradeshow area and give them a reason to come and visit you. You can post all of this information in a news item on your website, and drive your social media traffic to the news item.
Second
Create a subdomain that is tradeshow specific. Let’s say you’re going to the Greatest Widget Tradeshow Ever. You could create a page on your website that was specific to that tradeshow, like GWTE.mydomain.com and on that page you could tell your site visitors where you’ll be located, what the incentives are, and possibly even let them register for a special event you’ll be hosting. I’ve attended conferences where a particular sponsor would host our dinner, or happy hour, this can be a great way to get all your information to the tradeshow guests.
Third
Once you have that tradeshow specific page, you can encourage additional interaction by creating a contest. Several years ago, I attended a conference where one of the exhibitors gave away stress-ball-like Penguins with their logos on them. The contest was that for the duration of the event, we took pictures of our penguins and posted them to their social media or uploaded them to a particular website. The attendees were allowed to vote for their favs and on the last day, the picture with the most votes was worth a new iPad. You can imagine that their site got a lot of traffic over those few days, with people uploading and voting on the pictures. To make sure your website gets the traffic and not your social media channels, promote the contest on your social channels, but make the entry be on your website. As a bonus, you won’t have to fight whatever today’s social media rules about contests are.
You’ve spent the time and money to have a great website – so put it to work at tradeshows too! Need other advice for how to stand out at an upcoming tradeshow? Our other SageAdvice posts may offer some suggestions, or you can always call us about Marketing Consulting! We are here to help you prepare for your next event.