Effective trade show content marketing can help generate new attendees (and profits) year-round. Here are 3 ways ASD Market Week execs use content to supercharge their twice-yearly events.
This August 2-5, merchandise trade show ASD Market Week will attract nearly 45,000 people to Las Vegas, an audience of mostly retailers and online sellers.
Like most trade events and conferences ASD used to send “register now” materials 6-8 weeks before their events — and that’s it. But earlier this year they added content to their trade show marketing strategy a way to engage with their target registrants year-round, retain attendees and prospect for new leads.
And they’ve had enormous success.
Here’s how they did it.
1. Creating a High Quality Blog | Industry Authority
ASD established itself as an industry authority by creating a regularly updated B2B blog and online learning center for its target audience. The content is well-researched and created specifically for the retailer segments they want attending the show. This provides year-round engagement around business advice, product trends, and helps their audience become better at what they do.
Retailers can now take their knowledge gained from the blog right to the trade show floor when the event starts.
ROI: Visitors to their blog who then click on registration links at the end of each post end up registering 44% of the time.
2. A Lifestyle + Product Trend Report | (Lightly) Gated Content Landing Page
ASD created a gorgeous and very actionable product trend report that its retailer audience can use to help carry the right, on-trend inventory. They created a compelling landing page, and requested email and store information in exchange for a 21-page report. As a result, these mostly new attendee leads entered the ‘sales funnel’ and are being nurtured with valuable information all year round. These leads then become new show attendees, which are the lifeblood of any trade event – and therefore worth big money to the exhibiting companies. You can download the report here.
3. On-Site Educational Content
We often think of content marketing as just being online. But offline content is just as important in trade show marketing, especially for your potential registrants.
Many wholesale product trade shows just line up product vendors, invite buyers and media, and sit back and hope good connections will be made. ASD takes it a step further by also including 4-days of bona fide retail educational seminars and e-commerce strategy sessions.
These sessions are not tucked away in some far away room but are a centerpiece of the event and promotional materials. The message? ASD will help you get better at your craft as a retailer or online seller so you can then go out and find the right products you’ll need all in the same setting. That’s powerful.
ROI for Trade Event Content Marketing
As a trade event or conference you can measure your content marketing results by tracking these 3 things – sales leads, referral traffic, and registrations. But what you can’t measure are the huge waves of influence your content is creating throughout your industry. And that’s just as important.