NECA TRADESHOW
A YEARLY TRADITION
Every year, thousands of electrical contractors, distributors, manufacturers and sales reps gather for three long days of product demos, swag and high expectations to eat and drink well. The National Electrical Contractors Association "delivers the resources that help them make better business decisions, provide excellent customer service, and take advantage of innovative technology." (source: necanet.org) Every year they have a huge trade show, and every year, Southwire answers the call.
This year is a little different. Southwire is launching a Virtual Reality project that showcases job site scenarios without the hassle of flying each and every person who puts on a head set to Georgia to see the product demo in action. There are four 360˚ Experiences and I was tasked to deliver that experience to the people of NECA.
Based on the experience from the past and the present, we weren't just going to deliver a pretty booth. We were going to work as much as we could to embody an entire experience from start to finish.
Social MEdia and Email Support
I sat down and began to draft an excel document that contained every digital channel touchpoint from the beginning of the show all the way to the post-show email.
Every post was planned, written and created in Social Studio to automate to Facebook, each Facebook LIVE instance, Instagram and Twitter. From there, we also built out templates to go into Pardot to send out post-show emails to visitors thanking them for stopping by our booth. One of the inside sales reps built a new campaign in Salesforce, and along with a defined Pardot scoring model, we are building out a stronger post-show relationships with visitors, and potentially, prospects.
We created a clean look and feel for all of the social media messaging to drive visual consistency and to help the customer easily pinpoint NECA-specific content among the other the Southwire social channel's posts.
The Tradeshow Booth
I may never admit this aloud, but when I was asked to come up with concepts for the booth, I was actually a little excited. It had been a little while since I dusted off the ole design skills and rolled up the sleeves and got to work. After staring at the blank screen for a while I started by creating a mood board. The client loved the concept of showing the pictures from some of the scenes in the picture instead of showing a contractor wearing a hardhat pointing randomly with VR glasses on. Understandable. When I presented this mood board, I knew I was on the right track.
The Results
After three intense days in the cool Seattle air (and a visit to the Pike St. Market and The Original Starbucks) there was a murmur that this year's event didn't have the best attendee numbers. However, here is what we walked away with:
- Badge Scans (via visitors to our booth): 163
- Number of visitors to the website during the 3-day event: 457
- Online form submissions to the website during the 3- day event: 33 (7% Conversion Rate)
- Leads added to the Pardot Campaign: 193
- Open Rate: 33%
- Hot Projects (jobs entered into Salesforce): 31 (totaling $250K in sales)
- Facebook Live Post Engagement: +5K Views, +300 Likes/Shares, +25K Reach
The booth and vr experience
The booth design was a hit: very eye catching and inclined passers-by to stop and look. The VR Experience was met with some weary wanderers; but once they strapped in for the ride, each viewer emerged excited (and very impressed).
We conducted a survey for the VR users immediately following the experience and reported that the effectiveness of the videos rated an average of 4.4 out of 5, and the likelihood of sharing the videos with fellow colleagues resulted in a 4.72 out of 5, favorable.
Wrap up
Just to recap: I absolutely loved the experience of meeting and speaking with contractors face to face as well as overhearing their conversations in what they think about Southwire, the products/services offered and what their needs are. Seattle is and always will be a blast-- I hope I have a chance to visit there again, and soon!