Top 4 Tips to Host Virtual Trade Shows for Exhibitors & Attendees

Virtual trade shows are gaining popularity among marketers. They are a cost-effective option to bring more brand exposure and generate more qualified leads for business. And measuring ROI of such events is increasingly becoming easier too. If you are an event organizer or a marketer looking to make use of this event format, there are 4 things you must keep in mind to ensure your virtual trade shows are a success. 

1. Host your virtual event on a platform that’s easy to use for all stakeholders. 

While choosing a virtual event platform, make sure you keep its ease of use as your first priority. Your chosen platform must be easy to navigate not only for you, the organizing team, but also for attendees and exhibitors. Check whether you will be able to do custom branding to represent your own brand well. You must also ensure that there are many kinds of virtual booth designs and customizations available for your exhibitors. This will help you create a distinction among various tiers of exhibitors you may have. Your technology platform should be easy to navigate for your attendees so that they can access all the information about your virtual event without getting overwhelmed with the technical details. Exhibitors should be able to upload their brand assets, product pitches, presentations, whitepapers, demo videos, and all kinds of collaterals intuitively. They should be able to do so in advance and be well prepared before the day of the trade show. Check whether your virtual event platform provides test run capabilities to ensure a smooth experience for yourself and your exhibitors. 

2. Create a plan for attendee engagement and execute it well. 

It is not enough to give attendees an easy to use platform and expect high engagement from them. As an organizer, it is your responsibility to keep your audience engaged throughout the event. Make sure you put up a well planned agenda for your attendees to access as soon as they enter the event. All scheduled talks, discussions, webinars, and/or educational presentations must find a spot on the agenda. Use your tech platform’s gamification features to increase attendee engagement by creating and using a leaderboard, event feed, contests, polls and other innovative activities. Some of these engagement formats can even be sponsored by participating exhibitors for greater visibility and brand recognition. Use platform notifications effectively to keep attendees informed of upcoming sessions, exhibitor offers and to guide them to areas of exhibitions that they might not have explored. 

Exhibitors measure the success of their participation in online trade shows with business metrics - footfalls, lead generation, possible revenue increase, brand awareness, engagement with potential customers, so on and so forth. As an organizer, you must be as data and ROI savvy as your exhibitors are. Ensure your event platform not only has multiple features to increase engagement at virtual booths but also empowers you with the right data and analytics for all your exhibitors. Data captured at various touchpoints of an attendee journey while they interact with an exhibitor’s brand is of critical importance for them. Insights generated from this data can help exhibitors convert leads into sales and can help them craft better marketing campaigns in the future. Give your exhibitors as many avenues to put up their brand name and collaterals as possible. Give exhibitors options to put up various brand collaterals for reading, viewing or downloading by attendees. You can also offer them capabilities to live chat and video call attendees and to capture attendees’ business details for getting in touch with them later. 

4. Facilitate high quality interactions between exhibitors and attendees. 

Success of any virtual trade show hinges on the quantity and quality of attendee-exhibitor interactions. The better you can facilitate these interactions, more the chances of your event being a hit. Make it seamless by giving multiple formats of interactions on several levels - one-to-one, one-to-small group, one-to-many and many-to-many. Use platform features such as live chat, group chats, 1 to 1 or group video calls, QnA, polls, etc. You can encourage participation in multiple casual networking avenues using such as breakout rooms or networking lounges. The more the number of interactions, the better the conversations and stakeholder satisfaction. You should also provide an option for asynchronous interaction between attendees and exhibitors by allowing both parties to share their business details for contacting each other later.

Having a feature-rich and reliable virtual event platform is a must for online trade show organizers. While looking for such platforms, make sure you host your virtual event on one that has a feature suite built for attendee engagement, exhibitor management and rich data analytics. With the right planning and the right tech platform by your side, you will be ready to host a super successful virtual event.

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