Not a lot of innovation happening in the business, so I asked my friend, industry renown journalist and thought leader Michael Hart on how innovation on traditional events is possible:
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The same old dull thing
Maybe you run a state trade association’s annual conference and tradeshow. Or a modest event in a niche industry that has a relatively small, albeit loyal, following.
And your regular attendees love it! On the last day of the show, most exhibitors tell you they’ll be back next year and they want the same spot on the showfloor.
But the numbers don’t lie. Year over year, you see the attrition. Yes, you have a core group of participants who tell you in post-event surveys not to change a thing. But you’re drawing fewer and fewer first-time attendees and the revenue contribution you’re making to your association or company does not budge.
You go to Expo! Expo! every year and you participate in your local IAEE chapter’s education sessions. You hear the calls to “innovate” and that your attendees crave “engagement.”
You see the dire need to change things up, but you don’t know how to do it without antagonizing attendees and exhibitors who like things just the way they are.
What do you do?
Innovation is hard but necessary
As hard as it might be to consider, you’ve got to change your own view of your event – in both big and little ways.
Let’s start with the little ways first. Look closely at the long-time exhibitors who are leaving the show and try to find out why they’re going. My guess is that they have their own ways of analyzing show results and you’ve gradually, year over year, stopped delivering to them the qualified buyers they want.
Think about what you can do to get some of the excitement back in the event for the potential attendees and see if there isn’t another way to monetize that excitement. Sure, you’ve got some long-time attendees who still say their No. 1 reason to come to the show is to see what’s on the showfloor. The reality is that most come to see each other and find out what’s new that can help them in their work.
Conference ‘beautification’
Start slowly if you need to, but start to shake up your education program. Apply some basic crowdsourcing techniques and ask your attendees to help you design the conference program. Just asking them for their suggestions will give them the kind of ownership they haven’t had in the past.
As quickly as you can, dump the old-school conference session format that calls for a couple of speakers to run through a few PowerPoint slides and then answer questions in the last few minutes. This year, create at least a few conference sessions that involve some kind of basic hands-on learning with enlightened speakers who know how to guide attendees through some exercises on the tablets or laptops they have with them anyway.
Teach – or have somebody teach – your speakers about the Second Screen phenomenon and ask them to incorporate attendee smartphones into their presentations instead of viewing them as unwelcome distractions. Create a learning lounge where attendees can get information in a new, different and, yes, more engaging way. Build some blended spaces into your floorplan where people can interact with each other in different ways.
Get your Sponsors to help
Then explain to your anchor exhibitors what you’ve done and turn them into platinum-level sponsors. Help them understand how they can participate in the excitement you are now creating.
Those are the little things you can do. What about the big things I mentioned earlier? Turn what now are unemotional, static attendee and exhibitor data bases into a real live community that has your event at the heart of it.
The myth of the 365 day event
You may remember a few years ago when everybody was talking about the 365-day-a-year event. The concept never really took off because, in essence, it was a bald-faced attempt to monetize what had been a mere three- or four-day event all year long.
Yes, use the tools you have to deliver meaningful content and ways for people to interact with each other all year long – newsletters, online forums, mini-conferences, social media… whatever. Do it in a way that makes it clear you are the one entity in your state or your industry that has all the information and contacts they need to participate in a dynamic community. Then turn your exhibitors into sponsors who want a little bit of your brand to rub off on theirs.
Michael Hart is a business consultant and writer who focuses on the events industry. He can be reached at michaelhrt3@gmail.com.