Category Archives: Attendance Tracking

The area of business that many casual observers associate with a trade show is sales. People think of trade shows as a sort of market, where businesses go to sell products to interested consumers. These same people logically assume that the business skills needed to thrive at trade shows are all related to the art and science of selling. It isn’t just casual onlookers who fall victim to this sales-driven mindset when it comes to trade shows. Even participating businesses get caught up in the potential sales involved in a trade show. These businesses spend all of their time and resources, prior to the trade show, honing their sales pitches. During the trade show, they focus primarily on closing sales and become discouraged if they are not moving product. When the dust has settled and the show is over, these businesses base the success of their trade show on their sales only. To be sure, sales are a potentially important aspect of trade shows. It should be noted, however, that trade shows are at least as much of a showcase of the business area of marketing as they are of sales.

Increasingly, individuals and businesses are coming to view trade shows as the valuable marketing opportunities that they are and have always been. These folks understand that, even if the sales don’t happen, a trade show can still be a success from a marketing perspective; in the long run, they further acknowledge, trade show marketing may have a greater, more sustainable impact on their bottom line. This all begs the question, what contributes to successful trade show marketing? Here is a look at a few contributing factors.

Branding

The primary reason trade shows are marketing opportunities is that trade shows are opportunities to convey and develop your brand. Thus, it can behoove a business to think less about making sales, a short-term gain, and more about how the trade show can leave the interested customers and industry professionals at a trade show with a favorable impression and an increased awareness of their brand. This brand development is what will ultimately yield long-term business growth. Because trade shows are industry-specific, decisions about how to present your brand in the context of the industry and your competitors are more important than usual. One helpful trade show marketing tip would be to think of your brand not only in the largest possible sense, but also your brand for that specific day. How are your aesthetics and presentation perceived in the moment by potential customers? This may be more productive than a sales-oriented mindset.

Equipment

Of course, there is trade show equipment that can contribute to your marketing success. Think about how your audio-visual equipment, decorations, music, promotional giveaways, etc. all can contribute to the perception of your brand both inside and outside of the convention center. Distributing items such as t-shirts or pens with your company’s name and logo can be an effective way of developing your brand, depending on your target market.

Follow Up

Your marketing efforts on the day of the trade show will have little impact if you do not successfully follow up with the leads you generate during the show. The pace at which your competitors are able to track, store, retrieve, export and follow up on the customer data they acquire at a trade show has never been faster. Your business needs to keep pace accordingly, and there is equipment that can help you do so. A tradeshow scanner will help you scan the barcoded badges and business cards of tradeshow attendees and can quickly connect to a computer with the right software to turn your tradeshow leads into sales further down the road.

Trade shows are an important part of successfully growing a business, particularly at the early stages. They can be an opportunity to interact with people who have a particular interest, either personally or professionally, in some aspect of your industry. Because you can be sure the people who attend a trade show have this prerequisite interest in your market or your niche within a larger market, the people you meet there should be automatically highly valued as potential customers. Whereas so much of traditional marketing involves finding these interested customers, a trade show does this work for you. Trade shows are also interesting marketing opportunities because of the emphasis they place on face-to-face interaction. Increasingly, more and more of a company’s marketing is done online. Many retail businesses conduct the entirety of their commerce online. As a result, many believe a traditional business skills like in-person networking, public speaking and body language have become less important. At a trade show, this is not the case. A trade show is an opportunity to interact face-to-face with prospective customers and industry professionals. While these old school skills are needed, there is new technology available to supplement these skills; recent innovations have automated some aspects of trade shows. Most of the tech involved in trade shows has to do with keeping track of all the people you meet. Because trade shows are so popular and the attendees so focused on getting business done, it can be difficult to keep track of everything. This is a good problem to have, and automation may be the solution.

Badge Scanners

The tradeshow badge scanner is an important recent development in trade show technology. Many people choose to purchase these scanners, while others rent them on an as-needed basis for single use at a particular trade show. Attendees at trade shows are often equipped with barcoded badges; the barcodes in these badges are associated with information about the trade show attendee, such as certain contact information or information about the company they work for. As you can imagine, remembering all of this information—especially for hundreds of people—is impossible for even the best memories among us. That’s where a badge scanner that can quickly scan these barcoded badges comes in handy. If attendees don’t have badges, these scanners may still be useful for trade shows and for business professionals in general. Many people are now embedding barcodes onto their business cards. If you’re interested in purchasing or renting a barcode scanner, make sure it will work with business cards as well.

Lead Retrieval

The purpose of a badge scanner is to collect the information of a prospective customer or an attendee at a trade show and store their information so that it may be used later for business purposes. The act of going back and getting this information is referred to as lead retrieval and it is a process that has been made easier by automation. Older versions of barcode scanners and lead retrieval technology often took days or weeks to actually display the leads that were captured at a trade show. Now, an efficient lead retrieval system will instantly display the leads you have gathered. This makes it possible to follow up with the leads and grow your business more efficiently.

Automated Syncing

Another efficiency in trade show technology involves syncing these leads with your customer relationship management software. As mentioned above, following up with leads quickly is a priority; however, it is also a priority to follow up with leads in an organized fashion. Many people communicate with their customers in ways that are proven to be effective using customer relationship management (CRM) software. Often, these are cloud-based systems like Salesforce. For businesses utilizing these platforms, efficient use of trade show data needs to be quickly incorporated into the platform. Many trade show scanners can automatically collect, store and sync the lead data from trade shows. What used to take pen and paper, personalized follow-up calls and emails and considerable brain power can now be done automatically.

Trade shows have always been a big factor in the success of many businesses. They are so important, in fact, that people have spent a lot of time deconstructing the science of what goes into a successful trade show. For vendors and the event hosts, trade show success has been measured by simple metrics. For vendors, the amount of sales generated at a trade show was always thought to be the most important factor. For the industry or event space, number of attendees has always been the number they look to as an indicator. As trade shows have been analyzed, however, it has been determined that these might not be the best long term indicators of a trade show’s success. These quantitative factors may not be the only measures of the quality of a trade show. For example, how does a business measure how effectively it communicated the message of its brand at the trade show? One way that vendors and hosts are finding to measure the long-term effectiveness of the event is by tracking the leads that are generated. These leads can lead to long-term sales that dwarf the figures accumulated at the actual event. Companies are providing the events and the individuals themselves with tools, like a tradeshow badge scanner, that allows this long term success to be tracked by scanning the badges or bar codes of attendees and potential customers.

Of course, the more people in attendance, the more leads can be tracked. For that reason, attendance is still a crucial factor in an event’s success. Here are a few industry trade shows that are generating a lot of attendance and thus a lot of sales and leads for the show’s attendees.

CES

CES is the name given to the major technology industry trade show. It is hosted annually, in early January in Las Vegas by the Consumer Technology Association. Held over the course of several days, CES is an international trade show that combines all aspects of consumer technology. There are over 3,000 exhibitors at this trade show and it is attended by roughly a hundred thousand people. Among the tech industries and products that are on display at CES are video games, video and audio products and even drones. The CES trade show is truly the place to go for the very latest advances in an industry that is known for its rapid pace of innovation.

Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market

The Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market is held annually. As its title conveys, it is held in Atlanta and is a showcase for the latest trends and products in the gift and home furnishings sector. Last year, it had over 2,000 exhibitors and registered an attendance figure of nearly 90,000. The event is hosted by AmericasMart Atlanta. Among those who attend the event are buyers from small, medium and large retailers, designers, event planners, buying groups and media members and bloggers covering the home furnishings and gift industries.

Trade shows serve an integral function in the growth of many businesses. They are an opportunity for businesses to sell and market their product to retailers and enthusiasts with a particular interest in their market. There is increased attention being paid in the media and in the culture in general to the importance of entrepreneurship and supporting the starting of businesses, and as a result people are increasingly fascinated with what it would be like to exhibit a product at a trade show.

The trade shows themselves, however, are interesting feats of organization and planning as well. The logistical skill necessary to host any trade show, let alone one of the massive trade shows we will be looking at in this post, is an impressive display of event planning. With the increased focus on businesses, trade shows have had to increase their focus on providing a successful setting for business to take place. They have done this in several ways. Many trade shows today provide not just the physical setting for the event, but also the physical equipment for exhibitors and attendees to feel that the show was an efficient use of their time. Of course, impressing hundreds of businesspeople and savvy customers with efficiency is no easy task.

One piece of equipment these events and organizations are supplying to vendors is called a tradeshow badge scanner. These pieces of equipment are rented by the show and provided to vendors, or sometimes rented by the vendors themselves. This piece of equipment helps them more easily keep track of data acquired at the conference related to sales and sales leads by allowing interested parties to simply scan a barcoded badge. It’s just one of the innovations you would find at the following trade shows, which are among the largest in the world.

Buenos Aires International Book Fair

The Buenos Aires International Book Fair in Argentina is attended annually by publishing and literary industry professionals as well as bookworms of the general public. In the spring of 2008, this trade show attracted over 1.2 million visitors over a period of multiple weeks from late April to early May. Many famous authors have visited the event, and it is usually a time and place chosen by many writers, publishers, editors, educators, librarians and others involved professionally with books to hold their annual seminars, meetings or conferences.  The Buenos Aires International Book fair has been operating for over 40 years, beginning in 1975.

AGRO

AGRO is an annual Ukranian exhibition of agricultural equipment. It is organized by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine and held in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. First held in 1988, the expo has hosted more than a hundred thousand people in just one year. Its popularity owes to the prominence of the agricultural sector of Ukraine, which demonstrates the connection between trade shows and the economy as a whole. It is attended by those working or interested in the agriculture, agricultural machinery, livestock farming and food industries of Ukraine.

Tokyo Motor Show

The Tokyo Motor Show is held on a biannual basis in the late fall in Tokyo, Japan. The auto press considers this show to be among the most notable and important trade shows in the auto industry, with other prominent shows held in Paris, Detroit, Geneva and Frankfurt. The show is distinguished from even the other large auto trade shows for its focus on conceptual automobiles as opposed to production automobiles The Tokyo Motor Show began in 1954 and has hosted, in one year of the show, over 1.5 million people.

If your business requires keeping inventory, and you’ve been in business for any length of time or had any degree of success, you understand the importance of working with inventory data. The efficient recording, processing, storage and transfer of data related to inventory is a crucial part of the daily process for many businesses. Businesses who handle this type of inventory data are well-versed in the latest tools and techniques for how to streamline their inventory operations. For businesses who don’t work with a fluid inventory on a daily basis, however, it can be easy to overlook this process. Businesses that are more seasonal in nature as opposed to similar on a day-to-day basis, or organizations who hold annual events at which things are bought, sold or transferred, like trade shows or book fairs, can be understandably less aware of best practices for keeping track of their inventory. Many of these businesses and organizations continue to keep track of inventory in the same way they have always done it, remaining willfully in the dark regarding new inventory technologies. Others may be intimidated by the potential cost of upgrading their inventory system. For many businesses, this fear is unfounded because for many, a short term solution may be available in the form of rental equipment. Barcode inventory rentals like scanners, printers and software are available and are a perfect solution to the inventory needs for many who work in the following areas.

Book Fairs

There are many types of book fairs, from larger, industry-related events to smaller-scale book fairs at schools. Many proprietors of these book fairs keep track of purchases the old fashioned way using cash and hard record keeping. Many book fair vendors understand this and make it possible for the individual schools to do so easily through an adjusted price structure. As time goes by, however, keeping records by hand will become the difficult-to-understand process that utilizing technology has been considered for the past few decades. As this happens, book fairs may want to make a small investment in rental equipment to keep track of their transactions. Barcode scanners and software are available to do so.

Trade Shows

Trade shows are a great opportunity not only for businesses to generate sales, but also to market their product. For many, this marketing that happens at trade shows may seem to be an abstract concept, but in fact in can be measured in the form of sales leads. The more effective tool a vendor at a trade show has to monitor its leads, the better. These leads can be tracked through simple barcode scanning devices that may be rented from many companies specializing in barcode equipment and software solutions.

Temporary Employment

For employers whose employees are full-time and the work environment is somewhat casual, it can be a priority to devise a comfortable yet effective way of tracking attendance. For employers who employee workers on a temporary or seasonal basis, simply recording the exact attendance data, such as clock in and clock out time, and having that data easily accessible is of the highest priority. These employers may want to consider barcode rental equipment for this purpose. This allows employees to scan a barcoded badge and have their doing so recorded. Renting this equipment, which occasionally involves accompanying software, can be a more practical and affordable solution than a permanent, extensive software system and more effective than simple handwriting.

Nowadays, some inventive manufacturers and vendors have introduced barcode rentals as part of their sales offerings.  Under this arrangement, you can rent barcoding business solutions at a fraction of their sale price.  With the introduction of this economical option, many people have discarded their ancient data collection tactics for the more efficient and effective barcoding options.  As the barcoding industry continues to grow, adventurous innovators and savvy business owners have started to extend the application boundaries of this technology.  Today, you will find barcoding technology being used in some of the following amazing activities.

Advertising

Although not very popular in the U.S. yet, the use of 2D barcodes for advertisement has really picked in some foreign countries like Japan.  Instead of posting a conventional advert in a print or online feature and then stopping at that, companies are including 2D barcodes that can be scanned with smartphones to access more information.  Incidentally, 2D barcodes are capable of storing more data and languages.  For instance, these barcodes usually contain uniform resource locators (URLs).  Therefore, you can scan the barcode for redirection onto the product or service website.  You can also access business location, direction and contact information from these 2D barcodes.

Nutrition And Health

Since the prevalence of the smartphone, there has been an outpouring of barcode applications or programs in almost any imaginable niche.  In the health and nutrition industry, mobile barcode apps are being used to track healthy food intake.  By simply scanning the barcode on the food you are taking, you can track your nutrition intake and even create a detailed food diary using these apps.  In other words, barcodes are helping people to stay healthy.

Games

Although these ones have been around for a much longer time — since the 1990s — barcode games are still pretty amazing.  Barcode games used special dedicated barcode consoles as part of the premise.  In some cases, players had to scan monsters in order to capture them, while in others the consoles were used to battle other players.  Nowadays there are smartphone barcode games that provide all sorts of fun.  Some cookies even feature passive barcode monsters that come to life after being scanned.

Event Admission

This is one of the most common uses of barcodes today.  Barcodes are being used to manage attendance in all sorts of events.  From offices to business seminars to movies, barcodes are literally controlling, tracking and managing all sorts of events today.  First of all, they are used to check and verify that the customer’s admission ticket is valid.  Secondly, they are used to collect and analyze attendance data; thereby providing a fast, accurate and convenient way to track event revenue.  Some clever event organizers are even avoiding ticket printing expenses.  Customers are expected to purchase and print their own barcode tickets and then present them before admission.  Likewise, barcodes are popular in a variety of online travel booking systems including flights, trains, trams and buses.  Travelers book and print their own boarding passes and then check in with either the pass or the scanned smartphone barcode — talk about the beauty of technology.

Basically, barcoding technology helps to speed up and make data collection more effective.  In the process, barcoding helps save the client both time and money.  All professional barcode equipment and software manufacturers strive to supply their customers with the most suitable barcoding resources to satisfactorily resolve their data collection needs.  As competition and technological evolution soars, customers are enjoying more goodies from reputable barcoding companies.  For instance, barcode readers and scanners are now available for outright purchase or renting.  In addition to creating user-friendly barcode kits for their customers, manufacturers are now offering better acquisition terms to enhance barcode adoption.  Therefore, you can now call or walk into a barcode store and get a barcode scanner rental instead of buying one.  With such good business terms, more and more businesses are hopping onto the barcoding bandwagon to ease and optimize their data collection processes.  Generally, barcoding technology offers the following three data collection solutions to the contemporary business world.

Fixed Asset Tracking

Barcoding technology enables business owners and even private customers to track their fixed assets periodically.  Fixed assets (or capital equipment) are labeled and their details taken and uploaded on various data collection and analysis solutions ranging from simple programs like Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to sophisticated packages like cloud-based mobile asset tracking systems.  You can use various barcoding equipment including barcode readers and scanners to record and later track a huge number of relevant asset details including asset number, location, description, status/depreciation, warranty information, and the respective audit date and time.  Some fixed asset tracking gadgets combine both barcoding and RFID technologies to optimize their functionality — they are suitably referred to as RFID-Barcode asset tracking kits.

Inventory Control Solutions

Like the aforementioned fixed asset tracking solutions, inventory control kits feature both data collection devices like barcode readers and scanners and data storage and analysis packages like Excel or specialized inventory and accounting programs for specific business settings.  Basically, inventory control solutions are used for stock-related business needs including inventory management, product ordering, and stock tracking.  In recent years, barcoding companies have created highly effective inventory management programs, which are capable of collecting and analyzing data speedily, economically and automatically.  You can track your stock on a daily basis using dynamic programs that are capable of storing all inventory details including product/item number, cost, and manufacturer and stock bounds.  High end inventory control solutions are easy to configure and customize; hence offer a very efficient data collection solution.  For instance, cloud based barcode inventory management solutions are very versatile and highly functional both for data collection and safe data storage.

Attendance Tracking

Nowadays, business owners use efficient tracking devices, such as smart ID cards, to track event or workplace attendance.  These smart cards use barcoding and biometric technology to reduce the time needed for data collection and to eliminate human-related errors in the entire process.  By combining the functional power of an automated data collection system with an efficient time tracking program, companies are able to manage attendees effectively; whether it’s in their production sites, business conventions/seminars, or in trade-related fairs/exhibitions.  Data collected using barcode readers and scanners can be effortlessly transferred or uploaded to other equally efficient payroll, marketing or financial systems to enhance its application.  In all these instances, barcoding technology promotes accuracy and optimizes productivity.