I just went to an American Marketing Association Boston event yesterday on the importance of inbound marketing for companies.  It was said that the idea behind inbound marketing is to put out rich content that your qualified leads would be interested in.  This content is then put out through different channels of distribution such as your website, blog, facebook page, linkedin page, and short snips of this content on twitter.  The more rich and relevant the content is, the more valuable you appear to be to search engines as well as your potential clients.  In doing so, this helps your search engine optimization, which allows these qualified leads to find you over your competition and for you to stay in contact with these leads.

Hearing some of the comments from the inbound marketing experts got me thinking about how this can be applied to trade shows.

Your exhibit booth should follow many of these same guidelines:

1.  Clearly convey your message to attract people interested in what you do.

All too often I have walked trade show floors, looking at booths with absolutely no idea what they did.  Now I’m not saying you should have a paragraph of information on your booth walls, but you do need to come up with a clear and simple way to convey exactly what you do to the qualified attendees in under three seconds.

2.  Inbound marketing relies on the value of your content specific to your qualified leads.  In this process it filters through all of the people on the web and connects you to those interested in what you do.  At a trade show, exhibitors give away things of value to the attendees, but all too often what the exhibitors give away are not filtering through all of the attendees to find those interested in your services.  Who is interested in getting an ipod?  Everyone!  An ipod giveaway does not qualify any of these leads; however, if you give away something of specific value to your qualified leads, such as an extended trial of your services or helpful tips, it will help attract your qualified leads.