These past few days there’s been a lot of great conversations about being effective at Bridal Fairs.  The ideas from some pretty great marketing minds in photography  would work for any trade show and that includes vendors looking for themes to create a little excitement. 
 
I’ve always been surprised and find it a little sad when a vendor blames show management for a lack of traffic in their booth.   Yes, the company putting on the show has the responsibility to get people into the convention, but from that point on, if you’ve got a booth, then it’s your job to get people into it!   Boring static displays with a candy bowl just doesn’t cut it  anymore than a telemarketing call gets you excited when the phone rings!
 
I’ve been a big fan of Mary Fisk-Taylor’s for a lot of years and her contribution to the Facebook string about how to be effective at a Bridal Fair was so outstanding, I asked her if it was okay to publish it here on the blog.   You have to stand out in all your marketing efforts and as you read about her current Bridal Fair adventure, think about the generic components of partnership, creativity and excitement and how they apply to other aspects of your business.
 
We have our first show this Saturday and we have the most awesome plan and I really think it will be a show stopper. We have partnered with an invitation/gift company, rental company and DJ/lighting design company.

We are creating Club Wed and will have trusses over the entire booth which is a very large end cap.   There will be a screen over head with our new Club Wed logo and music from the DJ Booth. We have a long bar and bar stools in the middle with the invitation/gift products and wedding albums.

I have fourteen 30×90 inch banners coming in to be hung from the trusses and each one will be lit underneath (thanks to the lighting guy). We will also have a live Twitter lounge with a sofa, etc. where brides can come and chat with a local Web Bridal Radio Show and Twitter Rant/Rave about their wedding planning, vendors the show, etc.

We are even having monogrammed shirts with the Club Wed logo, our personal logo and name made compliments of the DJ’s wife.   I also know of at least 16 other vendors who will have albums, marketing pieces and large collage portraits up in each of their booths made and paid for by Hayes & Fisk,  so I will be represented in many other places at the show.

We offered this Club Wed idea to all of our close high-end vendors, because I did not want to make anyone mad, etc. but these were the only takers. The other vendors did not want to spend the extra money, etc. But I did make sure to make new business cards and 4×5 cards for each of them with some of their images on them, etc. so that they had something nice from us.

I don’t know how Mary could make this any stronger.    One component to success that I hear about so rarely is her working together with other vendors to more effectively reach a common target.   It’s ”consumer bundling” at its best with everyone working together to create excitement, brand awareness and eventually sales.   In fact, there’s nothing she’s done that wouldn’t work for an exhibitor at IUSA, PMA, WPPI, PhotoPlus Expo or any regional or state convention.

Okay Mary, we want to see lots of pictures and a few videos clips from the event!   Congrats on an incredible concept – the only thing more impressive than the launch of Club Wed is your enthusiasm!