Your Mom’s Choice Awards® Team wasn’t going to let snow and frigid temps keep us away from Toy Fair 2015! Roxanne and I so thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent with Honorees last year, so it was fun to share the event with Dawn and Josh.
Keep reading to see how we took Toy Fair by storm! and get tips on how to plan marketing at your next Trade Show.
To prepare for our trip, we started engaging with @ToyFairNY followers on Twitter and watching the event hashtags. A number of Honorees took advantage of our marketing offer to tell us they’d be at Toy Fair and to let us know their booth, show special, etc. That allowed us to help them build buzz for being at the event and encourage attendees to visit their booth.
We also invited Toy Fair attendees to schedule appointments. Team members met exhibitors in their booth. Not only did it make it easier for them to learn about us or enter the program, it also ensured that we had their full attention when we arrived!
Next, we had swag. As is our custom, we delivered our Mom’s Choice Awards® goodies to exhibiting Honorees on Day 1 of the show.
This year we added a new item to our Show kits – a 24″ Coroplast version of the seal. Doesn’t it look awesome?
Displaying the prestigious Mom’s Choice Awards seal in their booth and adding the badge ribbon to their ID tag helped Honorees stand apart from peer exhibitors. Buyers’ eyes were instantly drawn to those booths.
Supporting our Honorees didn’t stop there. We kept it going during the show. Josh shared lots of images via Twitter, we thanked exhibitors for their time, and we shared what our Honorees were saying, too!
One of my personal highlights was seeing that two of our Honorees had joined forces to create something new based on their award-winning products. Since they both were at Toy Fair, they could support each other in driving traffic to one another’s booth.
Blue Orange Games has earned a number of Mom’s Choice Awards, including several versions of its “Spot It” game. The United Healthcare Children’s Fund has MCA award-winning picture books and stuffed animals.
Every opportunity we had, we made sure that we were sharing news from our Honorees. If we saw an in-the-moment opportunity, we jumped on it.
Check out the taxi advertisement on the left. Roxanne saw the Blue Orange Games ad in her cab when she was coming into the city from the airport.
Guess who stopped by our booth @ToyFairNY with a giant circle? @MomsChoiceAward!!! #NYTF Thx for the visit to #1977 pic.twitter.com/OSQGvoQxk5
— OgoSport (@OgoSport) February 15, 2015
All in all (read: despite the cold!) it was a fabulous event. It was great to catch up with our Honorees and discover so many wonderful companies and products. Over the course of the show, we would tweet our thanks to exhibitors who gave us a tour of their booth … especially those who made appointments with us.
Our Toy Fair Takeaways
These five tips will help you make the most of any show, not just Toy Fair!
1. Engage with event goers before the show. Take advantage of social media to get the “pulse” of the event. Introduce yourself to people going to and exhibiting at the show.
2. Schedule appointments ahead of time. Leaving your booth may not be an option if you are a one-person operation. That doesn’t mean people won’t come to you. We visited plenty of booths at Toy Fair where we had an appointment.
3. Create an award-winning booth. Make it easy for event attendees – particularly buyers – to learn about your award-winning product or service. Use your Mom’s Choice Awards Honoring Excellence seal to draw people into your booth and get the conversation started with visitors.
4. Share what’s happening. At various points throughout the show, share what’s happening at the show. Mix it up, too! You’ll definitely want pics from your booth, but walk the floor to find some great shots, too. At Toy Fair, your options ranged from pictures with Grumpy Cat to life-sized humans made with Legos.
5. Don’t forget to say “thank you!” As time allows, or shortly after you get home, take the time to time to give a shout out to people you met during the show – exhibitors and attendees.
When we got home, we also made sure to send an email or hand-written note. That simple gesture has already paid dividends, and kept the door open for building lasting relationships.