Ready or not, it’s time to start planning for the close contact of hundreds of people walking the aisles, shaking hand after hand morning to night, and wining and dining clients over dinner at packed restaurants. The COVID-19 pandemic put a fast and hard halt to all in-person events, including tradeshows and conferences. We wanted virtual events to succeed, and they did their best to close the gap, but the result didn’t match the in-person experience.
Our client Dori Skelding, VP of Marketing for CompoSecure, had this to say about her team’s experience with virtual events: “In virtual conferences, you miss the ‘just passing by and noticed something interesting in a booth.’ It is especially important for our products and services that the unexpected lead has the ability to have that touch and feel experience. That interaction is lost in the virtual world.”
Thanks to vaccine rollouts, mask mandates and declining infection rates, industry events are coming back. Although the overcrowded consumer-focused events may have to wait a while, B2B tradeshows are already beginning to return. Here are the reasons why you need to dust off your suitcase and get ready to hit the ground running:
Face-to-face communications – Digital communication can never replace the connection found during an in-person conversation. Any good salesperson will tell you, feeling a person’s emotions and live reactions are the best opportunities to sway a deal in the right direction or build a lasting customer relationship, which is limited through a video conference call. The same goes for media interviews. Seeing how a journalist reacts in real-time to a situation or statement can open the lines of communication. Removing the barriers of a screen creates an opportunity to build a connected relationship. Many a bond has been created over sore feet, too much caffeine, or the lanyards we keep forgetting in our hotel rooms.
Captive and dedicated audiences – Locking in a big client first starts by building a relationship, which cannot be built in a single short videoconference session or the back and forth of emails and calls. But standing in a booth can lock in an opportunity in a single day with hands-on demos and personal interactions. Not to mention, a single media briefing onsite in a booth can accelerate media coverage and expand a story’s potential. Many opportunities only happen when a product catches someone’s eye as they walked the aisle or wrangling the too-busy journalist into the booth for an impromptu meeting. Some of a business’s most profitable sales and relationship-growing opportunities can come in the three days spent at a tradeshow.
Internal team development – One of the more surprising benefits of tradeshows is how they can strengthen the sales and marketing team. Most businesses are not able to house their entire team in a single office with regional employees located across the country and remote employees working from home. Nothing brings a team together like the craziness of a tradeshow, where teammates from different places can work side by side, grab drinks in the evening and build camaraderie. Tradeshows are a great opportunity for the team to personally connect and see each other like normal humans, not just emails, calls and faces on a screen.
After experiencing the struggles of the virtual CES in January, we are looking forward to being at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas for one of our clients, which will be our first in-person conference in over a year. Many of the big shows are transitioning back to in-person, such as the Milken Institute Global Conference, Fortune Brainstorm Tech and CES 2022. The necessary evil of tradeshow participation can be stressful, expensive and time-consuming, but the results speak for themselves in driving sales, building strong client and media relationships, and strengthening the bond of a team focused on a shared mission. So, pull out the suitcase, grab the hand sanitizer and get ready to hit the road!
See you at the entrance,
Tracy
Olmstead Williams Communications
CEO and Founder
w 310.824.9000, c 310.387.7738
