More Tips for Successful Conference Booths

Recently I described coaching software creator (and executive coach) Sylva Leduc as booth ‘den mother’ at ICF conferences of yore. She kindly responded with a few more ideas on how to boost your booth’s chances of being a hit.

Syl recommends you:

- Get roses as Safeway if possible. Usually less than $10 for a dozen and they last for the whole conference. (I’ve found most major grocery stores offer the same.)
- NEVER have a drawing for your service or product. People will decide to wait until after the drawing takes place and then they often forget to return to complete their purchase
- If possible, have some balloons imprinted with your logo and fly 'em high! Your exhibit area will be much easier to find.

What's an Unconference?

We all know the conference drill by now:

1. Go to a city that's easy to fly in or out of but otherwise not too noteworthy

2. Stand around for three days with peers, wearing a little pouch of business cards and a name tag around your neck

3. Get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of presentations slamming you from the front of the room every day

4. Eat lots of 'wrap' sandwiches; drink lots of iced tea

5. Pass lightly through the vendor area in which vendors have been highly charged to be there and now look at you eagerly, not unlike poorly fed hyenas

6. Go home limp and exhausted … and grateful for the half dozen people you managed to connect with and get some real inspiration from

7. Notice the high fee you paid for travel, admission, and that room at the Holiday Inn plus a few tipsy dinners on next month's master card bill

Sound familiar?

How about a whole new way to do conferences?

Enter the 'Unconference'. Here's an exercise in total democracy in which no one makes a lot of money ( no one gets paid a penny in fact), speakers assign themselves slots on the dias, and the audience can spontaneously choose the content.

As some big industry conferences approach, I've been listening to my peers who didn't get selected to speak grumble about how impossible it is to get on the dias. But the unconference makes it easy. I saw this model in action at the recent PodCamp, an unconference for Podcasters and video bloggers in Boston.

Simply bring together a bunch of enthusiasts on a particular subject. A few organizers step forth and speak to sponsors who hand over money. A location is secured, sandwhiches are ordered, a wiki (not a website) is loaded, and registration begins.

Here's what was cool about podcamp:

1. To register you simply added your name to a big list on a wiki. (For the uninformed, this is a simple website in which visitors add to the content.) Little or no html coding was required. I could even do it.

2. Then I scrolled over to the speaker schedule, where I was invited to pick my slot and get up and present. I did! And yep, that was a wiki, too.

3. As soon as I registered, I started getting 'glad you're going to be there' emails from my fellow registrants

4. Upon arrival at the conference, I got a name tag to write my name on. And that was it. No bloated goodie bag full of stuff you won't read. No heavy paperwork. Just stick and go. And you got an event t-shirt.

5. Sponsors were represented by simple 8 X 10 piece of paper made on a color printer and stuck on a particular wall

6. All talks were available for purchase on a DVD at the end for a $100 donation to PodCamp … that was the only item for sale - and even that was hard to find

7. The schedule for the event changed almost continuously, so it was broadcast overhead on a big screen in the auditorium

8. At one point a programmer stood up and said - 'Any programmers here who want to chat?" Six hands went up. They all got up, left, and found a corner to talk.

9. Every presentation was done as an open discussion in which the audience was invited to share ideas and resources. They did.

10. I learned more in this two day podcast/vlog fest than I have in the last three conferences combined.

11. Total cost - for everything, including travel and hotel: $253

Now that's my kind of conference. Anybody else been to something like this?

Conference Do’s & Don’ts

This post is coming courtesy of that Booth den-mother to all us, Sylva LeDuc, who taught me most of what I know about proper booth-maintenance. We call Sylva’s gift ‘Booth Fung Shui.’ And a nod to my booth-sister, Linda Puig of Claire Communications, who’s been there many times.

1. No matter how small the booth, invite people in. Don’t bar the entrance to your booth with a table. Run it along the side so folks come into your space to see your stuff.
2. Get a second chair so they can sit down and chat. Let them relax, enjoy your space. And listen really well to what they’re up to so you know how to help.
3. Don’t let them leave without giving you a card. And make a nice giveaway the reward – like entry in a raffle for a month of coaching or an electronic goodie. I teamed up with David Wood and gave his CD’s away – and we scooped up almost 300 cards!
4. Consider plants and flowers. Sylva had an indestructible fake plant that had traveled in a box cross country many times. Somehow it makes a booth warmer and more friendly. Linda Puig always has fresh flowers in her color scheme.
5. Use alternative lighting. More than once the marketplace area had it’s lights turned WAY down to accommodate the speakers in the other room … I didn’t love it, but that’s life. Linda and others had clip on lights that worked to warm up the booth and counteract the gloom.
6. Pin up alternative drapery. Don’t look like everyone else. Buy cotton yardage at a cheap fabric source in a plain color, and pin it over the standard table drapery with upholstery pins.
7. Use rugs. Linda’s big on this! Warms up the space.
8. Don’t eat in the booth. It’s just wrong somehow … even if you have to desert the booth to feed yourself. Do it when the traffic is low.

Got tips of your own? I’d like to know!

What I Observed from my Booth at the ICF

So this year marked my fourth stab as a conference vendor. Mind you, I did this despite personally warning David Wood and anyone else who would listen NEVER to get a booth unless you’re speaking. (That’s the only time I ever made any real money as a vendor.)

At least, that’s what my experience had proven in the past. But this time, I decided to ‘do it up right’ even though I wasn’t speaking.

I got great little embroidered Get Known Now baseball caps, and ordered a big chocolate cake for my birthday in the booth. I even hired a slew of kids to pack up 200 marketing kits for my booth, and found two awesome assistants to join me. I set off feeling empowered and mighty.

Then I met my public – and spent plenty of time sitting and chatting about platform and branding with anyone who would talk, sit or listen. I was delighted to meet my public, but God, was I fried when it was over.

David Wood, on the other hand, was fresh as a daisy. Instead of manning a booth and connecting with several dozen leads to buy his products, he spent his time meeting the people who could place his work in the hands of far more people. At the end of the conference, I felt I’d met my market and that was refreshing and inspiring. But he’d met the decision makers he could do some serious JV’s with.

So who was more efficient on a dollar per dollar basis?

I did not break even – though I did attract a wonderful new coaching client and some folks to my latest Get Known Now Blast Off Group. And now, several thousand dollars later, I’m wondering why I didn’t listen to my own best advice. David listened … should I have?