By Isla Haddad 

Trade shows can take up a big chunk of your marketing budget, not to mention your time and energy. For many businesses, the content side of an event rarely gets the same attention.

You spend months preparing your stand, sorting your product display, organising merchandise and briefing the team. Then the event comes and goes and it gets treated as a one-off activation rather than a continued source of material that can provide you with weeks of content for your marketing.

With a bit of upfront planning, your trade show calendar can become the backbone of your entire content calendar for the year.

Here are some ideas on how to approach your content strategy, based on your planned events.

Start with your calendar, not your content

Before you think about what to post or publish, map out every trade show, expo, conference and industry event you are planning to have a stand at or attend over the next 12 months.

Most businesses approach their content calendar reactively. They fill it month by month and scramble for ideas at the time when they need fresh content. 

When your trade show calendar becomes the starting point, your content calendar can largely be planned around it. Each event gives you another reason to publish, post or get new content out with a timeline to do it by. The gaps between events become the natural window to publish the material you gathered at the last one.

Work backwards from each event date and block out four stages in your content calendar:

• Eight to 12 weeks out: Awareness content, let your audience know you will be there. 
• Four to six weeks out: Content in the lead-up to the event with a reason for people to seek you out on the floor. 
• Show week: Live content, behind-the-scenes and real-time posts. 
• One to four weeks after: Recaps, follow-up content and material built from what you captured during the event. 

Map this across every event on your calendar and you have a content schedule that largely runs itself. Two or three events a year can fill a content calendar for 12 months if you plan each phase properly. The raw material is already at the event and the content is there – all it needs is a plan to be captured.

Build anticipation, not just awareness

Most businesses exhibiting will put out a post or two before an event, notifying their audience that they will be there. That is a starting point. However, there needs to be a more targeted approach behind it.

Research shows that your average B2B audience needs around 62 touchpoints across six months before they decide to purchase. Most organic social posts now only reach a handful of followers, so a single announcement won’t be enough to be remembered by your audience. The weeks leading up to an event are the time to be more present, not less.

Some things to think about in the lead-up to your event:

• behind-the-scenes content from your stand to build the idea, the design process and what you are bringing to the space
• teasers in the days before the event that offer a sneak peek at a new product, a competition or something exclusive to attendees that gives them a reason to visit your stand
• an email to your database with your stand number, location and a reason to stop by 
• a dedicated blog post or landing page for the event, optimised for relevant industry keywords
• social posts across Meta and LinkedIn, and
• an exhibitor badge added to your email signature and website ahead of time. 

The goal is not to be repetitive. It is to be present enough that when someone opens the event guide, your brand already feels familiar.

Capturing content during the trade show

The week of the event can be busy. You are on your feet all day, talking to people, managing the stand and keeping the team across everything. Content is the last thing on anyone’s mind unless someone is responsible for it before you arrive.

Assign at least one team member to capture content for the duration of the show. Decide in advance what you would actually like footage of. Maybe it’s footage of the stand being set up, quick chats with customers, product demonstrations, a competition you are running or any sessions worth documenting. 

Try to pre-schedule a handful of social posts before you get to the event day as well. This means your channels keep moving regardless of how the day goes in terms of capturing new content. 

One way to look at content for events is to stop making the content about the event and instead use the event to capture the content.

Remember that conversations with current customers at your stand can be an opportunity for a potential testimonial. 

Every product demo is a short-form video. Every industry professional you speak with is a thought-leadership opportunity. 

The great thing about capturing bits of conversations at an event is that they tend to be more natural than anything planned at a desk. People are usually in a good mood and in a headspace of thinking about new ideas, inspiration and possibilities. 

The value is not in documenting that your company was there at the event. It is in capturing the perspective that only comes from being in the room.

After the event, don’t forget about your content

The window after a show is where most businesses forget to carry on the post-event contest.

You go back to the office with photos, videos, business cards and conversations. You then send a follow-up email and consider it done.

Meanwhile, you are sitting on fresh new content and customer insights that can fill your content calendar for the next month. A few ways to use them:

• a recap article on the trends or conversations that stood out
• cut-up long videos into short-form customer chats or product demos captured at the event to use for social media and your website
• individual social or blog posts, one idea per post, pulled from questions raised on the day
• follow-up emails that reference your actual conversation, not a generic ‘great to meet you’, and
• nurtured content for anyone who visited your stand, but didn’t engage. 

When you plan this out across your full calendar, a single two-day trade show can generate content that covers the following three or four weeks. That then bridges you neatly into the lead-up phase for the next event on the schedule.

Use sort videos to your advantage

Few formats work harder than a short-form video around a trade show event. According to studies, 88 percent of marketers say that video has directly increased sales and is a preferred way to learn about a product or service. Sixty-three percent of consumers say they would most like to watch a short video.

Not just a high-res recap reel. The kind of content that connects with your audience. A customer explaining why they came back to your stand for the third year running. A team member walking through what makes your display different. A 60-second tour of the show floor from your perspective.

Start capturing before the event too. The stand, demo or merch behind the scenes. The team prepping at the studio and the venue before doors open to the attendees. Phone footage posted on the day will do more than a produced video that arrives weeks after the moment has passed. 

Your email list runs in parallel

Social reach can be unpredictable, whereas your email list is not. Subscribers are your most engaged audience and your content calendar should reflect that.

Let your subscribers know what event you are going to, how they can find you and why. Then follow up with something valuable after the event (a resource, a highlight or a targeted offer).

Each phase of the trade show gives you a natural, timely reason to be in someone’s inbox.

Stand design and content strategy

Your stand design and content strategy should not operate as separate workstreams.

The way your stand looks, the story it tells, the experience it creates – all of this should connect to the content you are putting out before and after the event. 

If your lead-up content is building anticipation around a product reveal, your stand needs to deliver on that moment. If your post-event content is positioning you as a thought leader in your space, your presence on the floor should have reflected that.

When your physical presence and your content are telling the same story, both do more.

Putting it into practice

Your trade show calendar already exists. The question is whether it is doing any work for your content strategy or just sitting there as a list of dates.

Map your events, block out the phases, capture deliberately and use what you come home with. A handful of shows, planned properly, can keep your content calendar full for the year.

Isla Haddad is the national operations manager at Evexis

Image: Supplied

Read more: Reframing B2B events as business impact platforms