Boosting Your Brand: 5 ways to stand out at a conference
Taking your brand to conferences, expos and other major events can be overwhelming. With so many people and businesses, how do you boost your brand to help it stand out from the crowd? We’ve come up with five top tips to help you not only get noticed, but engage with prospective customers, clients and collaborators and, most importantly, be remembered.
1. Get social
You don’t have to wait for the event to start before you begin socialising with your fellow delegates. Hop on Twitter, find out the official hashtag and start communicating. “Who else will be at #BigEvent15 next week? Looking forward to it!” or “What’s everyone looking forward to most at #BigEvent15?” are great ways to engage with other participants and get your brand noticed. You can follow this up with live-tweeting during the event and adding some follow-up tweets afterwards.
2. Have plenty of people on your stand
If you don’t have enough people working on your stand, it could result in visitors walking away as there’s no one to engage with. If you have 3 to 4 people on-hand, it’ll ensure there’s always someone free to greet new visitors and tell them about your brand or demonstrate your products. People will remember being able to have a chat with your brand representatives, which is much more engaging than simply viewing materials.
3. Use freebies wisely
We return from conferences laden down with free branded pens, USB sticks and mousemats and, if we’re truly honest, most of them end up in a desk draw never to be used again. So before you waste time and money on freebies that will never see the light of day, think about how you can make free stuff really get you noticed. For instance, have people hand out empty branded travel mugs or cake boxes, telling recipients that they can have them filled with tea, coffee or, indeed, a cake at your stand. Once they’re there, you can engage with them about your brand’s products or services while they enjoy a nice cuppa or cake.
4. Let people get hands-on
It’s all very well telling people about your product, but they won’t necessarily retain the information afterwards. Instead, give them the opportunity to get hands-on wherever possible, letting them try out your product, app or service there and then. They’re much more likely to remember something they’ve tried outandit’s a great conversation starter.
5. Be on-brand, but not all the time
Remember to take the time to be an actual person while you’re at the event – it doesn’t need to be about your brand every waking second. Chat to people about the speakers, offer people directions to the refreshments or even compliment people on their own work. If people remember you for being friendly and fun, they’ll be much more interested in who you are and what you do, neatly segueing into an introduction to you brand.
Allens Hire has over 25 years experience in providing catering equipment and furniture hire services to conferences and events. If you want to speak to us about helping to organise your own, contact us today on 0208 574 9600 for London or 023 8065 2316 for the South Coast.
