Exhibit at conferences: promote your book and get known!
My booth at the 2013 Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference
A great way to get exposure and get known, connect with people and showcase your book, expertise and services is to exhibit at conferences and events.
Here are some tips for having a great looking and popular booth:
- Set it up at home before you go to make sure everything will fit
- Make it appealing and colorful: get a fruit display and/or flowers and use a bright table-cloth
- Have bold signage. I suggest getting your book cover made into a large poster that you can either stand on a tripod on the table or hang behind the booth. My book cover sign The Antianxiety Food Solution is big and bold and visible! It’s also great as a backdrop for photos with fans.
- If you’re short on space go “up”. Empty boxes with colorful cloths draped over them work well. It also makes the display materials more appealing
- Have samples or give-away goodies. I give away herbal tea-bags and offer roasted pumpkin seed snacks. I also do zinc status testing. It’s so popular that my booth visitors send all their friends to visit my booth!
- Find co-sponsors and share their products to provide an interesting and useful booth experience. At the IMMH conference I had Organic India donate herbal tea bags, Designs for Health donate zinc challenge, Mira Dessy’s The Pantry Principle book for sale and Hawthorn University fliers on display. And be sure to thank them afterwards with a blog post and thank you note.
- Get ideas from other booths. I walk around and take pictures of other booths at every event I attend and make improvements each time I exhibit
If you are speaking at a conference, I suggest you also get a booth. This gives you an opportunity to sell your book and products and go deeper with conference attendees. It is also a wonderful opportunity to make one-on-one connections with attendees and to partner with sponsors. I did this when I presented at the NTA conference earlier this year.
Of course, a great way to promote your presentation and booth is to blog about it. This is a great example of a blog post I did to promote the 2013 NTA Conference on Inflammation.
Let me help you be a great exhibitor! Join me in my upcoming “Speak NOW!” training. We’ll be discussing exhibiting in great depth. We will also go into speaking, teleseminars, telesummits, and poster presentations. Listen to the preview call and register for the training here
You are doing such great PR for your brand Trudy and helping others with sharing your tips. This tip is so simple and yet could save a lot of headaches: “Set it up at home before you go to make sure everything will fit.”
Thanks Heidi – setting it up before-hand really does help because you often have different products/materials for different conferences. Big tip: get the correct table size! one time I set it up on my dining room table and got to the event and discovered that the table there was much narrower!
So true! I always sell my books from my booth after speaking at a conference. I like the idea of partnering with other people to sell their items at my booth. Thanks!
Yes Jessica, partnering with other authors is great! Mira and I actually trade off and she promotes and sells my book when she is at a conference. It’s great because we can’t all be at every conference! And what a team when we go to the same conference and actually do share a booth!
Great advice and thank you for the shares. I love doing conferences with you and always learn so much! My booths are so much better because of what I’ve learned from you.
Mira – you are so welcome. Your great book makes it a no-brainer to promote and share! I also love doing conferences with you – we’re a great team!
All great tips, Trudy. It’s amazing how much color can draw people to your booth. I always chuckle when people tell me they were drawn to my booth by the flames in my BrightFire logo. Exhibiting is a great way to sell books and also build your community by adding folks to your database.
Your flames in your BrightFire logo are stunning! and yes, you do want to have a signup sheet or drawing so you can build that community and stay connected with your fans
I love the idea of “blowing up your book cover” and then using it in background for shots with people who stop by. Very good!!!
Glad you love this! Funny thing is that it didn’t occur to me right away and now it’s the obvious thing to do. People love to pose with me with it in the background. It’s also been a good backdrop for video testimonials!
Great tips and advice for conference displays and more.
These will save people a great amount of time and possible mistakes.
Great tips, Trudy,
What tips do you have for promoting books beyond trade shows, sponsorship opportunities and displays?
Write on!~
Lisa
Tons and tons Lisa – speaking both live and on teleseminars and telesummits, radio and TV, memeberhship sites like GaiamTV, blogging, blog tours, book signings, guest blogging, using HARO to get press, press releases and so much more!
Great tips, Trudy! I’d like to emphasize the give-away one. People, ALL people like to get things for free… best if it relates to your offering in some way but not necessary. Love, Katherine.