How to Make Security & Defence Trade Shows Suck Less!

Security, Resilience & Defence Trade Shows offer unparalleled networking opportunities, enabling industry peers, potential customers, and partners to connect in person. Seminars, workshops, and presentations provide insights into industry trends, innovations, and competitor strategies. The hands-on experiences and personal interactions at these events help build trust, fostering relationships that can lead to future business opportunities.

However, these events are often expensive, time-consuming, and logistically challenging. Their infrequency and large environmental footprint add to their drawbacks, and many participants find that the return on investment (ROI) doesn’t always meet expectations.

In contrast, digital marketing offers significant advantages: lower costs, time efficiency, broader reach, detailed analytics, reduced environmental impact, and greater accessibility and scalability.

Yet, digital marketing efforts in the Security, Resilience & Defence sector have often been fragmented, with businesses relying on disparate tactics – social media, email campaigns, SEO, PPC, interviews, and trade publications – in the hope of driving traffic and engagement. Many companies lack the resources, time, or expertise to execute these strategies effectively and achieve their desired outcomes.

To maximize impact, a hybrid approach that combines the strengths of both traditional trade shows and digital marketing is ideal. By aligning digital marketing platforms with trade shows, businesses can create a diversified customer engagement strategy that leverages the best of both worlds. With the right approach, you can turn these events into even more powerful opportunities for networking, learning, and driving real business results.

1. Pre-Event Engagement

• Awareness Building: Digital marketing platforms (social media, email campaigns, content marketing) can be used to create buzz and attract attention before a trade show. Companies can generate interest through teasers, product announcements, or virtual previews.
• Audience Targeting: Digital tools allow for precise targeting, ensuring that the right audience is aware of your participation in an upcoming trade show.

2. During the Event

• Hybrid Presence: Combining a physical presence at a trade show with a virtual one allows you to reach attendees both onsite and online. Live streaming, virtual booths, or digital product demos can extend your reach.
• Real-Time Interaction: Use digital platforms to interact with attendees in real-time, such as live Q&A sessions, social media engagement, or chatbots on your website.

3. Post-Event Follow-Up

• Lead Nurturing: Digital marketing platforms can help nurture leads gathered during the trade show. Automated email sequences, personalized content, and retargeting ads can keep your brand top-of-mind.
• Extended Engagement: Share event highlights, on-demand sessions, or follow-up webinars to keep the momentum going after the trade show ends.

Key Tip!

Marshal’s Publications Channel enables you to publish highlights as marketing collateral, post-event, in a format in which they can be sourced by targeted audiences long after the show has finished.

4. Ongoing Content and Outreach

• Content Marketing: Use the content generated at trade shows (such as presentations, panel discussions, or product demos) in your ongoing digital marketing efforts. Blogs, videos, and infographics can be repurposed to reach a wider audience.
• Webinars and Virtual Events: Hosting webinars or virtual events on topics relevant to your audience can supplement the networking and education typically found at trade shows.

5. Data and Insights

• Analytics Integration: Digital platforms provide valuable insights into customer behavior and engagement. By analyzing data from both digital marketing efforts and trade show interactions, you can refine your overall strategy.
• Lead Scoring: Combine data from digital interactions and in-person meetings to better qualify and prioritize leads.

6. Broader Reach

• Geographic Expansion: Digital platforms allow you to reach potential customers who couldn’t attend the trade show due to geographic constraints. Virtual events, webinars, and digital content can engage these audiences.

7. Cost-Effective Alternatives

• Smaller Scale or Niche Events: For smaller budgets or niche markets, virtual trade shows and digital platforms offer a cost-effective way to connect with targeted audiences without the expense of traditional trade shows.

Trade Shows don’t have to suck. With the right planning and strategy, you can turn these events into valuable opportunities that contribute to your company’s growth and success. Incorporating digital marketing platforms into your strategy allows for a more flexible, targeted, and efficient approach to reaching your audience. By diversifying your marketing efforts, you can maximize the impact of both physical and virtual engagements, ensuring a more comprehensive and adaptive approach to market outreach.

Don’t wait until you’re at the event to start connecting with potential customers. “Marshal” your audience, so they have reasons to come to the show and, when they do, they head for your booth first.

Marshal is a powerful, exclusive digital marketing platform that helps to simplify and scale access to the complex Security Risk Management and Resilience market, in order to develop opportunities, drive growth and achieve objectives across conflict zones to cyberspace.