Trade shows are crucial opportunities for healthcare IT businesses to showcase their products and services. These events generate sales leads through in-person interaction and nurture existing relationships.
While traditionally viewed as “meet-and-greet” events, the exhibit hall has been evolving to offer new opportunities. These events now allow savvy healthcare IT organizations to build awareness and credibility across new audiences in new ways. They also allow brands to connect with prospects and customers on a deeper, more credible and educational level.
In this blog, we explore the evolving trade show landscape. We discuss how these new opportunities can improve your success at the event, as well as how to leverage them as part of a broader product marketing strategy.
Showcasing Beyond the Booth
Most healthcare organizations mark a “successful” trade show by the number of customer meetings and badges scanned. These are common but inadequate lead generation metrics. In part because, they focus only on booth-related activities and rely on the ability to pre-schedule demos or attract walk-up traffic. Other concerns are outside the scope of this blog.
Finding ways to engage with customers and prospects outside the booth can yield significant benefits. It’s important to identify educational and informal idea-sharing opportunities. Modern trade shows offer more than booth square footage. They provide a variety of creative ways for healthcare IT organizations to establish themselves as thought leaders by engaging with prospects and customers outside the confines of their booths. The following represent a few examples.
1) Live In-Booth Presentations
Smaller companies can leverage their booths to host informal customer presentations, Q&A sessions, and roundtable discussions. These events provide a valuable opportunity to leverage existing customer successes in order to build credibility and interest with new prospects. You can record these sessions or live stream them to provide valuable content for post-show marketing. With the convenience of smartphones and a tripod, anyone can produce high-quality video content.
2) Thought Leadership Outside the Booth
In the past, purchasing a formal presentation time slot at a trade show was expensive for most small to medium sized companies. Trade shows are now offering opportunities to present educational content during show hours on the show floor. Examples include the SIIM Ask Industry panel discussion or the RSNA Innovation Theater. These events provide opportunities for organizations to engage in educational conversations that build credibility and awareness that can create sales opportunities.
3) Interoperability Showcases
Trade shows are also providing exhibitors with the ability to showcase how their solutions work in the broader healthcare context via interoperability showcases. For example, the IHE Interoperability and RSNA AI Showcases each provide designated areas where companies can demonstrate how their solutions integrate with one another to create flexible and cohesive workflows. They are often more technical and allow the technical buyer or influencer to assess an organization’s capabilities in an unbiased, educational manner.
Plan Well in Advance
Success lies not only in seizing new and creative opportunities to engage with trade show attendees. It also involves finding employees and customers who are comfortable in the spotlight and are passionate about the value your products deliver. Equally important is creating professional and compelling content that will allow your superstars to deliver presentations that are informative and captivating.
Achieving these two objectives requires proactive and meticulous planning, often 3-4 months in advance of the trade show date. Early trade show planning should draw from the overall product marketing strategy to identify the main topics and themes for the show. Companies should engage key employees and customers early in the planning process to enable the development of high-quality, high-impact content.
Following Up
Another way to optimize the value of your trade show investment is to ensure you’re incorporating the connections, content, and learnings from the show into your post-show product marketing strategy. For example:
- Re-Purpose Trade Show Content. Post recordings of your educational sessions and customer presentations on your website and YouTube channel. Edit them into short snippets and promote them as new content in the months following a show. Not only does this provide you with valuable and digestible content, but it also allows you to reach audiences that did not attend the show.
- Comment on Key Show Trends. Consider authoring thought leadership pieces that discuss the main trends from the show. Correlate them to the problems your solution addresses and the value of your specific products. This gives you an opportunity to continue to connect with audiences long after the show is over and positions you as a thought leader for these “hot” topics.
- Build New Relationships. Too often, companies collect badge scans and business cards but never act upon them. Be sure sales and anyone who interacted with prospects has a clear plan to connect with new leads from the show in a timely fashion. Take this opportunity to share relevant content based on the presentation they attended or the discussion you had to make the outreach personal and begin building a meaningful relationship.
Conclusion
The trade show landscape is evolving. It now provides healthcare IT organizations of all sizes with expanded opportunities to consider new educational and demonstration event strategies. By embracing them, companies can move beyond the typical sales-oriented, in-booth interactions. They can create meaningful thought leadership interactions and valuable educational content that resonates across a broader audience. These efforts also transform trade show participation from a one-off sales event into a thought leadership occasion with year-round lead generation potential.Are you ready to take your event marketing strategy to the next level? Our healthcare IT product marketing experts can help you optimize your trade show strategy and maximize the value of your trade show investments. Contact us to learn more.
