By: Emily John, Account Director
Tradeshows are a great opportunity for businesses to engage with potential customers and partners in one place at the same time. But to get the most out of your investment, it’s important to have a strong PR strategy in place. Not only does this involve creating compelling stories about your new offerings and sharing these stories with your target audience, but it's also about building a presence on social media and strengthening your relationships with the target media.
Whilst ISE 2024 is just around the corner, many companies are considering how best to leverage PR to build a buzz and generate leads at shows for the remainder of the year.
Start planning early
Whilst we all love a challenge, it’s important to start planning your PR strategy for the show as early as possible. Give yourself and your PR partners plenty of time to create insightful and newsworthy content, reach out to media in sufficient time and plan social media posts. Make sure your PR messaging is aligned with your overall marketing strategy and clearly explains your offering and unique selling points.
Set clear goals
One of the most important things you can ask yourself is, what do you want to achieve with your PR efforts at the event? This could be generating media coverage, building awareness of your business, strengthening your relationships with the media or generating leads. Once you have an understanding of your goals, you can develop a strategy to better achieve them.
Define your audience
You also need to consider who you are trying to target and reach with your PR efforts. This way you will be able to tailor your content to those audiences and their demands, making sure that they are getting the information they need to learn more about your products or services.
Measure your results
As well as planning and coordinating your PR strategy, you need to measure the results of your efforts to see what is working and if there are any areas for improvement. By setting well-defined KPIs, you will be able to measure your ROI and make any improvements to your PR strategy for future tradeshows.
It’s important to remember that tradeshow ROI is not just about generating leads. It’s also about building brand awareness, establishing relationships with prospects and the media, and gathering market insights. Improving your tradeshow ROI requires planning, execution and analysis, with consistent, dedicated PR efforts before, during and after the show.
To find out more about how The Jargon Group can support your business at tradeshows this year, please get in touch.