How to Turn Any Trade Show Into Wall-to-Wall Press Coverage

For many marketing teams, trade shows are a necessary evil. Between the booth costs, travel expenses and staff time away from regular duties, the investment is massive. Ask anyone who’s spent the holidays planning for CES, and they’ll tell you: It’s stressful, expensive and often underwhelming.

But the truth is that most companies aren’t maximizing the opportunities in front of them. With the right PR strategy, you can transform your tradeshow presence from a cost center into a coverage-generating machine.

Here’s how to make public relations an integral part of your next show.

Pre-show planning

Prior to any show, ensure the entire internal team is aligned on what the key messaging will be. This should be tightly integrated with what the overall brand of the company is, which should ideally already be communicated through all customer-facing marketing touchpoints. Making sure all attendees are briefed on what the top message will be will not only benefit public relations efforts but also sales and marketing. Create a very short brief that reiterates the main message along with no more than three sub-messages that reinforce the main point. Successful marketing relies on repetition, as does successful media relations.

Next, request the attending media list from event organizers. Most will provide attendee information in the form of a spreadsheet, and if you’re lucky, email addresses too. Without emails, you’ll need to do some digging. PR agencies often use databases like Muckrack, but a Google search or visit to a publication’s website can work just as well. Highlight the key reporters that are top priority for potential coverage.

Remember that reporters at major shows are drowning in pitches. To cut through the noise, you need hard news, such as a product launch, partnership announcement, executive hire or major client signing. Reporters are hunting for what’s new and noteworthy. Without that hook, you’re less likely to convince a reporter to allocate their precious time to visit you. When searching for news to announce, keep in mind that it can be something from the recent past that was not publicly announced. For example, if a new feature was recently released in the past few months, it can be repurposed into a formal press release and used in your outreach to reporters.

Lock in specific meeting times and send calendar invites. Follow up with reminders the day before and morning of the event to try and maximize attendance. Ask reporters for their cell numbers, and feel free to send them polite text message reminders during the show. This has a side benefit of getting their cell number for future PR outreach use. Still, brace yourself as no-shows are common due to reporters juggling competing demands.

Draft your press release early, have it fully approved and plan to distribute it via a wire service roughly 24 hours before the official start of the event. Send the press release to the attending media list “under embargo,” meaning they cannot publicly publish any information about the news until the date and time you provide them.

During the show

The bigger the show, the tighter the reporter’s schedule. When they carve out time for you, make it count. Cap meetings at a maximum of 30 minutes unless the conversation is flowing naturally and they’re clearly engaged.

Your spokesperson matters. Assign someone director-level or higher who has completed formal media training, ideally a vice president or C-level executive. This isn’t the time for junior staff or anyone who might stumble into common interview pitfalls. Match your subject matter expert with the publication they are speaking with. For instance, if a reporter is from a technical magazine, have someone with engineering or deep project expertise to speak with them.

The opportunity for face-to-face interaction at a live event is irreplaceable. Use this opportunity to walk reporters through a product demo, whether hardware or software. If they’re taking notes, slow down and ensure they capture the key details.

Stick to the three key talking points from the messaging brief. Weave them throughout the conversation and don’t hesitate to repeat; reporters need to hear things multiple times to internalize them. And remember: Everything is on the record. If you don’t want to see what you say online, don’t say it. When faced with an uncomfortable question — such as your annual revenue — politely decline to answer. It’s also perfectly acceptable to tell a reporter you’ll follow up with information you don’t have on hand.

Post-show follow-up

Once the show wraps, monitor for coverage using free tools such as Google Alerts. Meeting with a reporter doesn’t guarantee a story, but their time investment suggests a strong interest.

Send a brief thank-you email with any supplemental information that might strengthen their piece. Share images and videos through a cloud drive link rather than clogging their inbox with large attachments. Offer to answer follow-up questions.

Remember not to ask to review the story before publication. It’s considered bad form, and most reporters will refuse anyway. If the reporter didn’t publish a story, all is not lost. You’ve built a live connection that can be highly useful for future story opportunities. Stay in touch with the reporter by sending important company updates or offering to be an expert source for any of their needs.

Finally, compile a results report: reporters contacted, meetings booked, actual attendance and published coverage. This data proves ROI and helps refine your approach for the next show. Conduct an exit interview with team members who spoke with reporters to identify common questions, exposed gaps and potential areas of improvement for future shows.

Follow these steps, and you’ll stop viewing tradeshows as a necessary evil and start seeing them for what they can be: a press bonanza.

For many marketing teams, trade shows are a necessary evil. Between the booth costs, travel expenses and staff time away from regular duties, the investment is massive. Ask anyone who’s spent the holidays planning for CES, and they’ll tell you: It’s stressful, expensive and often underwhelming.

But the truth is that most companies aren’t maximizing the opportunities in front of them. With the right PR strategy, you can transform your tradeshow presence from a cost center into a coverage-generating machine.

Here’s how to make public relations an integral part of your next show.