Equally important are the indicators needed to check you are making progress with your marketing activities to achieve the effect you have defined. Indicators must be carefully thought through so that you don’t let your marketing team “kid you” that you are getting good return on investment (ROI). “I am frightened at the number of companies who still count stand footfall as their key ROI indicator.”

So, having made the decision to take a stand at a trade show I am sure you want to get maximum return for your investment. It is critical therefore, that you don’t see the trade show as an event that occurs between two dates at a specific place and rely on the audience drawn through the doors by the event organisers; hoping they will visit your stand and stop.

You must plan pre-event activities to draw people to your stand by stimulating their interest and then ensure a post-show series of activities to reinforce the message you gave to your visitors whilst informing those who didn’t make it, as to what they missed. Maxine Davenport, Head of Client Services at FortuneWest, gave me good advice and said how important it was to: “Be prepared, do as much as you can before the event including having at least your first round of communications ready to go as a follow up from meetings, even if it’s just a holding email.”

Your pre-event activities should be aimed at creating a need in the targeted audiences to want to come and visit you at the event. Remember, event organisers want as much footfall as possible so there are many ways they can help you with this. The key to engaging with clients, current and future, is value adding content. The more you can give that informs, adds value or stimulates thought, the more likely they are to engage. According to a recent B2B Content Marketing Report produced by Holger Schulze, Group Founder B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn, the top content products for generating engagement are, “Case Studies followed by best practices, then “how to” guides and market trends. Less than 25% of people are interested in product related outputs and even fewer (17%) on competitive comparisons.”

Schulze went on to say, “In addition to being the most effective content subject, case studies are also the most effective content marketing tactic. Blogging moves down to a close second and surprisingly, the number of marketers who mentioned social media as an effective marketing tactic drops significantly from 64 percent in our last survey to 36 percent this year.”

Writing the content is one thing but seeking audience engagement is as critical and how it is posted out must be considered alongside what is to be posted. “LinkedIn again tops the list of the most effective social media platforms to deliver content and engage audiences. This year, YouTube moves to second and Twitter moves down a rank to third.” Confirmed Schultze.

You Tube is the second largest search engine, next to Google and is owned by Google. However, it coming as the second most effective social media platform emphasises the importance of video as a platform in your content marketing mix. Cisco quote that by 2017, 69% of all consumer internet traffic will be video. Its naturally engaging, if a picture paints 1000 words then one minute of video is worth 1.8 million according to Forrester’s research. Axonn Research found 7 in 10 people view brands in a more positive light after watching interesting video content from them.

With video, short targeted videos that can be easily distributed via LinkedIn or Twitter give an ideal way of reminding your show visitors of what they saw or informing those who didn’t make if of what they missed. However, you should remember to keep the content flowing after the event so customers come to you because they have built up a trust in your message. The worst thing you can do is pay a lot for a one-off video that you hope will generate traffic, it won’t. Always look at the statistics on a video providers you tube channel and if it is only in the hundreds of views after an event with thousands of visitors, then you need to find a better outlet.

Preparing the ground before an event will reap benefits at the event, and these must be exploited post event, otherwise you will have failed to plan your marketing so you should plan to fail your investment.