Online events draw in audiences from around the globe. So if you have the chance to host an exhibitor booth in an online trade show, a virtual career fair, or perhaps as part of an online product launch, you should take advantage of it! Virtual exhibitor booths can provide companies with a list of qualified leads. But how do you increase virtual exhibitor booth visits and ensure that those leads are captured?
Benefits of Virtual Exhibitor Booths
Virtual trade shows, virtual career fairs, remote school fairs, online networking events, and virtual conferences, and other academic events are great opportunities to meet with people all over the world. Therefore, these events usually have sponsors or exhibitor trade show booths so that the online attendees can meet with those in their area of interest.
For example, an online academic event might have a scholastic virtual booth exhibit where scholars could attend and connect with book publishers to get discounts on newly released books or connect with sales representatives to publish an upcoming text.
This is a great way to connect one-on-one with those who represent a company rather than going through the tedious processes of connecting over the phone, via email, or on-site. Virtual exhibitor booths are best when the booth is relevant to the field or industry of the event. For example, it might seem out of place if book publishers went to an AI technology convention. Certainly, a publishing company that produces books solely on AI is likely to connect with the audience. But, for the most part, virtual exhibitor booths should provide services or products that appeal directly to the attendees and align with the event theme.
By hosting an exhibitor booth, you can connect with attendees to inform them of the products that your brand provides, educate them on new or niche products, clarify questions that they have, and make sales. For virtual booth attendees, this process can still happen, but the dynamic is shifted. Still, attendees who make their way to your virtual booth show you that they are interested in your product or service and want to know more (or they got lost!).
6 Ways to Get People to Visit Your Virtual Exhibitor Booth
Once you get an attendee to your booth, you can work your magic. Perhaps you have a sales pitch that you roll through, or perhaps you are the laissez-faire type, and you are just there in case your visitor has questions. No matter your style, the hard part is getting remote attendees there! Luckily, there are techniques to increase virtual exhibitor booth visits!
1. Purchase an Upgraded Sponsor Package to Promote Your Brand Elsewhere at The Event
Depending on the size of the online event, you may be one of hundreds or thousands of virtual exhibitor booths that attendees can choose from. In all honesty, this number of exhibitor booths can be overwhelming!
You need to stand out from the crowd. One way to stand out from the crowd is to purchase an upgraded sponsor package through the event hosts.
Typically, event hosts will offer sponsorship packages that allow certain external brands the opportunity to promote their brand name a little further than others. This would allow exhibitors the chance to host a sponsored session, boost their company logo throughout the virtual space, and promote a product demo.
If you want to stand out, consider a sponsor package that promotes your brand and exhibitor booth information in the online event’s great hall or welcome reception area, as a badge icon in online sessions, in email blasts sent before or during the event, or on the landing page and other marketing materials!
2. Send Out Emails to Attendees Before the Event to Inform them of Your Presence
Sometimes event hosts will send out emails to the attendees encouraging them to visit the showcased exhibitor booths at their event. After all, as an exhibitor, you did pay for your space, which usually means that you are funding the event in some capacity. You might get some name recognition and promotion in return!
Coordinate with your event organizer when you sign up for your exhibitor booth position to understand what you can get out of your relationship. They should provide you with the opportunity to connect with potential or interested attendees in an email campaign.
This could be a unique opportunity to promote what your booth is offering and encourage attendees to make it to the event!
3. Blast Social Media and Email Marketing Campaigns to Promote Your Booth and Encourage Interested Followers to Meet up for a Chance to Connect
You may have followers on social media and email marketing campaigns that keep an eye on your business online. However, they have not yet interacted with your company and purchased from your brand. Inviting your social media and email followers to the virtual event that your brand is attending can encourage them:
To meet some faces from your company
Better understand your products and what your brand gets up to!
You would be surprised how many people would come up to your booth and say something like, “I’ve been following you for years but never made the jump!” Well, now’s their chance to make that jump! Start promoting your brand’s future attendance as an exhibitor and provide them incentives, like discounts, cool prizes, and swag for stopping by!
4. Provide Gifts, Prizes, Raffles, and Awards to Attendees Who Stop By
Did we mention swag? We did!
Gifts, prizes, raffles, awards, badges, special pins, discounts, and coupons are always a great way to boost virtual exhibitor booth visits. If you spend some time and really dive into what your attendees want and what connects them with your brand, you could probably come up with a giveaway that really sells to your audience.
The perfect gift gets people talking! Once you get a few attendees to head over to your booth and they see the awesome prizes that you are giving away, they are more likely to chat with other online attendees and encourage them to go your way! You can make it a game and have lots of fun!
Who knows, you may even get the online audience talking so much that your booth is mentioned at a virtual session or the keynote speaker’s session! Talk about free marketing!
5. Encourage Attendance Through Event Gamification
If you sign up to have an exhibitor booth with an event and that event uses gamification to entice their attendees, then you are on the right track! Event gamification is a great way to encourage audience participation and engagement and get the crowd talking!
Your exhibitor booth can become a part of event gamification in a few ways. Exhibitors can always host your own gamified element (as mentioned above) to entice people your way. You can also ask to be included in any event-wide games, like a virtual scavenger hunt or virtual badge and points giveaway! This means that attendees will need to come by your booth to get the prize for the scavenger hunt, get the special badge or pin, or win points!
Make elements of your brand, product, or offering part of the game so that your visitors remember you!
6.Have a Unique and Enticing Offering That Gets The Other Attendees Talking About Your Brand!
As mentioned before, you can try to develop one or two offerings that really get attendees excited about your brand!
Perhaps you can afford to offer a giveaway, a trip for two, or an exquisite dining experience! For the winner of these prizes, they will be super excited, and you’ll find more and more visitors will be itching for that prize!
Of course, you’ll want to link obtaining that offering with something about your brand. Have your virtual attendees provide their email addresses and answer questions about your brand, participate in a game, or provide something else that is fun and interesting. You could have attendees draw what your brand means to them, and then attendees win through an online social media vote!
Your options are endless!
Getting Marketing and Sales Qualified Leads Through Accelevents Event Technology
One of the biggest perks of hosting online events through a virtual event platform is obtaining event metrics. Accelevents has a virtual exhibit hall, online exhibitor registration, booth design capabilities, the ability to host sponsored sessions, and more. Through its unique dashboard and analytics, the event hosts can actually obtain the demographic and contact information of those who attended the event. The event hosts have the option of providing this information to all of the event sponsors or exhibitor booths as a way of encouraging more sponsors and presenters to attend the event. Booth exhibitors can collect stronger sales qualified leads by connecting with those visitors and sharing with them examples of your product or service, and getting them comfortable with your brand representatives. If you have a goal of brand awareness, you want to try to get people to visit your booth, if anything, to chat with them and help them understand and engage with your brand persona.
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