Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.

During Affiliate Summit I visited both the Meet Market and the exposition hall to see the booths.  I was impressed at how good some of the booths and tables were, and also at how bad some were.  If I could recognize they were bad as a first time attendee, they must have stood out to veterans.  Here are some general comments based upon my experiences.

• Have a banner behind the table, giving your name and hopefully an idea of what you are (network, merchant, etc.)
• Have a give away: this is something that will make people remember you later.  It is even better if it ties in with your company name, slogan, or something of that nature.  It never hurts to be unique.
• Have people at the booth (I would have assumed that was obvious).
• Be friendly (again, obvious).
• Don’t have several people working the crowd and handing out stuff (I got asked if I wanted Perfect English at least 10 times) and no one at the table.
• If you have a giveaway or are doing a contest make sure to enter people that come up in it.  If there is a scanner make sure that all of the people working the booth know how to use it.
• Make sure that you are not crowding into the booth next to you.
• If your giveaway is beer make sure there is plenty of room for people (very good attention getter in my opinion, but a zoo if not handled right).

I would have thought most of these would be completely obvious, but I saw multiple examples of each.  Companies are paying for these tables, so the focus should be optimizing the experience to bring in business, not turn it away.  I was really impressed with adCanadian and how every little detail of their table tied into company branding – their banner, the sticker, the giveaway, their jersey – and they were really nice guys to boot (eh!).  They created a positive, lasting impression, which is what you should be doing when representing the company at any conference or industry event.  Keep these tips in mind when planning your own Meet Market table or booth for future conferences!

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Okay maybe it’s been closer to half a day of festivities for me, but my feet are killing me already, I’m annoyed with the venue, and missing some boxes that were supposed to be shipped. But with my track record, it just wouldn’t be a true trade show if I had everything prepared like clockwork

After having some breakfast I went to set the room service tray just outside my door for pick up and the door shut behind me and I was without my key. So I had to call down to get someone to come up and open the door, but I managed to be helped by housekeeping first and got let back in AND got fresh towels. Bonus!

So I hauled down to the registration area and got my badge and went in with my colleague to set up our modest booth. We don’t have a big dynamic display like most companies do; just a table cloth with our logo, a banner, the highlighters we had made to give away, and the printed materials about our affiliate program. I brought the table cloth and sales sheets with me, we found the highlighters there shipped from the vendor, and the other things we’d shipped out here – our banner, a fishbowl for a giveaway, and a sign holder announcing our giveaway – were nowhere to be found. As well, there was no table there from the convention services company.

After procuring a table and still not locating the box or getting our manager on the phone to get more details about the shipment, we set up what we had and headed to the meet market, where we proceeded to be asked to grab Andy Rodriguez’s nuts & naughty nurses asked us to enter to win a hummer.

Yes, you read that right.

Of course it would have been genius if they two tables had been beside each other, but they weren’t. Andy Rodriguez Consulting was handing out packets of cashews and the company that hired the naughty nurses luring people in for a chance to win an H2 didn’t really interest me so I don’t remember the company name. They were some kind of information source like a magazine and I remember the man at the table was also at yesterday’s Affiliate Classroom Live event.

It was good… got some cool freebies (heee!) and did some light networking. My feet were soon killing me and I came back up to the room, only to find that my room key had somehow gotten demagnetized. Locked out AGAIN! So I opted to wait for security to come let me in rather than walking my tired feet all the way down to the lobby to get the card redone. I took care of it when I went out again for dinner.

So more will come tomorrow!

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The beginning is the most important part of the work.

-Plato

Affiliate Summit West 2008 kicks off today (officially!). Stopping in around 2 to set up our booth and then heading over to the Meet Market with plenty of spiffy die-cut business cards in hand! Too bad they all have my former title on them :p

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