How to Thrive as an Exhibitor in the Face of Low Oil Prices

So, you’re an oil and gas product or service provider that’s decided exhibiting is a cost-effective way to increase sales in a sluggish market. Now it’s time to make the most of it for less.

Seventy percent of trade show attendees make a plan of which companies they’re going to see at a trade show before they walk in the door. It’s in every exhibitor’s best interest to engage in pre-show outreach. The key to effectively doing that in face of falling oil prices is finding quick, easy and free ways to promote yourself:

Make the Direct and Digital Mail You’re Already Sending Work Harder and Smarter

• Making the most of transactional mail is one way to make any investment you’re making into postage or materials do double duty. Include tickets, small flyers or folded invites into invoices, receipts, purchase orders, catalogs or anything else you’re distributing through the mail.
• Give flyers or tickets to field sales reps so they can leave clients with something of value on outside sales calls
• Make tickets or admission passes available to visitors by leaving them in your office lobby
• Gone paperless? Include a pre-registration link or a digital ticket in the signature line of all outgoing emails.

Use Interactive Social Media Tools to Expose Your Business to Thousands of New Contacts

Put the “social” back into your social media strategy; use interactive tools to connect with new buyers outside of your digital communities. On Facebook and LinkedIn, it’s as easy as connecting with the trade show through their profile, including their name in your posts and selecting their profile from the drop-down menu that appears. With one click, you’ve just exposed your company to everyone they’re connected to through those networks. The ‘@’ symbol accomplishes the same thing through Twitter.

Using the trade show hashtag through Twitter is another tool that can give you instant exposure to thousands of attendees and exhibitors. Hashtags essentially create a streaming feed that show participants check for up-to-date show news. Each time you use the show hashtag, your post appears in the feed for free.

WARNING: Using these tools to blast promotional messages or ad-speak will result in wasted time and effort (this new Facebook algorithm will make sure of it). And blindly posting content that’s deemed irrelevant or unrelated to discussion could trigger LinkedIn’s Site Wide Automatic Moderation. The most important piece to the social media promotional puzzle is writing messages that engage the people behind the profiles. Think of your profile as a table-for-two, instead of a podium and write your posts like you’re having a conversation with one person, instead of addressing an audience.

Do you have money-saving tips for companies who are looking for affordable, pre-show promotional options? Share them in the comments! And for more info on how to make all of your pre-show marketing work harder and smarter; connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.