Digital Centricity – To Tradeshow or Not to Tradeshow? - Part 1

Digital Centricity – To Tradeshow or Not to Tradeshow? - Part 1

What a whirlwind of a month! A few weeks ago, when I launched into this venture of deep diving into how digital centricity is changing the way we operate in our careers, I didn’t know that work was going to explode. It has been a fun month. Not a bad thing, but it certainly tested my capabilities as a marketer. Did you know that it IS possible to plan a national trade show for multi-team member attendance in less than 10 days? I am coming off the tail end of visiting San Francisco for the first time at #ACEP22. It was a great time. With that, let’s talk about digital centricity in healthcare marketing – To Tradeshow or Not to Tradeshow?

Virtual or In Person?

This is a question that has provided rich conversation inside of the #HITMC, #HITSM, and #HCLDR (and beyond) communities since the start of the pandemic in 2020. For some time, all shows came to a complete stop for the safety of our communities and members affiliated with all varieties of associations. For some, shows were a sole source of lead generation, and this threw many organizations into a tailspin of creative spontaneity to grasp quickly evolving changes to digitally-centric marketing. As shows started a slow ramp back up in person in 2021, it left a lot of people wondering, do we embrace virtual or return to in-person events?

In-person

On-site shows over the last 18 months have seemed to be more of a family reunion than a branding tool or a lead generator. There, I said it, let’s just rip that band-aid off at the very beginning here. But, hear me out, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing… For a lot of organizations, after having such a lack of interpersonal connection, those reunions were needed. I see in-person shows transitioning into more of a continued education opportunity, partnered with large splashes of client engagement, and the one ice cube floating in the concoction is a new relationship or warm opportunity that comes from being at the show. More on this to come in topics to follow.

Virtual

Digital shows were a unique and intentional option in 2020 bringing value to organizations that previously had registrations and prepaid funds committed to shows, as well as goals that were aligned with a presence at those shows. While I think that e-booths have a long way to go, and in some ways were maddening to configure, my personal experience with virtual shows was dynamic, and in ways, more efficacious for prospect tracking and nurturing. Partner the right drop page with the right tracking and analytics tools and you have a marketing model that can certainly make you dangerous.

Setting Expectations

Regardless of the in-person or virtual approach, setting proper expectations and not oversetting your goal metrics is one of the most important steps to gauging the success of a show. We as marketers tend to dream big with the best intentions, but if we vocalize those dreams too intently, somebody is bound to hold us accountable to them. Speaking from experience.

That’s enough for part one. Part 2 is coming soon where we will chat about branding, value, and exposure occurring from shows. Looking forward to digging deeper soon.