“What if we do a giveaway?”

“What if we have epic swag?”

“What if we throw an awesome party?”

Over the years I’ve been part of hundreds of meetings with marketing teams to brainstorm how to stand out at an upcoming conference.

Most of these conversations result in doing something practically identical to what every other vendor is planning on doing.

At a time when a company desperately needs to do something different, most just end up doing essentially the same thing ever other vendor does with slight degrees of “different”.

To rise above the noise and stand out in the sea of sameness, you need a unique way to get attendees to engage with your brand so you can drive revenue from that incredibly expensive conference space you’ve paid for.

There is a way to make that happen. We’ve been doing it for the past two years for clients. Here’s how:

Turn your booth into a podcast studio

The concept here is simple: part of your conference booth becomes a podcast studio. Then, you invite attendees, journalists, analytics, speakers, and industry thought leaders at the event to swing by your booth to be interviewed.

While other vendors are running campaigns and spamming attendees by saying the exact same thing, you stand out with a unique offer: the chance for them to feel important, respected, and celebrated.

Why this is so effective:

#1: Build relationships: All relationships have to start somewhere. Why not have that relationship begin with you collaborating together to create a piece of content?

#2: Book one-on-ones: Every vendor at a conference is trying to get attendees to meet with them. Sitting down one-on-one for a podcast interview is a unique offer that few others will offer.

#3: Stand out: While all the other booths try desperately to stand out, walking by and seeing a podcast studio with two people passionately speaking into microphones is sure to grab their attention.

#4: Create content at scale: You can never have enough quality content to share and distribute. From a single podcast interview, you walk away with blog content, micro videos for social, YouTube videos, and more. Imagine just doing 10 interviews during a conference. That’s a lot of content.

#5: Establish thought leadership: Hosting your own podcast positions your name and brand at the heart of industry discussions. Collaborate with target customers and influencers to gain insights into their language, priorities, and perspectives. By including others in the conversation, you transform from just another talking head into a dynamic hub for thought leadership.

How to execute this idea:

Step 1: Dedicate a section of your booth for your podcast studio. Design the backdrop with the name of your show and other related podcast paraphernalia, like  Apple or Spotify logos. You want this to look as eye-catching as possible.

Step 2: Sort through the list of attendees and mark all that either fit your ICP or you’d like to have a meeting with for whatever reason. Do the same for the list of speakers at the event.

Step 3:Cold email them and invite them to be a guest, in person, at the upcoming event. Get times locked in and create a brief for them that prepares them for the podcast.

Step 4:Conduct the interview. Have your one-on-one conversation and use that as a starting point to establish a relationship with them. Think about this like dating, your job for this first date (interview) is simply to get a second one.

Step 5:Produce the content. Each interview should include at least one blog post, fully produced audio for Apple and Spotify, full-length video for YouTube, and micro video clips for social media.

Lessons learned from doing in-booth podcast studios:

For the past two years, we’ve set up these mini podcast recording studios for our clients when they attend major conferences. Here’s what we’ve learned that you can apply to your podcast recordings:

1. Record from the booth— We’ve experimented with renting out a hotel room to do the recording but overall, we’ve found recording at the booth gets way more attention from all the attendees.
2. Prepare your on-site team– Outside of the cold emails to attendees, tell your on-site team that they should invite everyone relevant that they need to be a guest. Have a booth visitor that’s interesting? Invite them to schedule a time to have their expert insights featured on the podcast!
3. Have the founder host— Ideally, you want your company’s founder to be the podcast host. People buy from people and there’s no better person to make the face of your brand than the founder. This become less important the later stage you are.
4. Ship the content quickly— Get the content out into the world as quickly as possible. For those who aren’t attending the event, this can be a great source of content to learn from those who attended.
5. Invite everyone that matters — In addition to the attendee lists, also consider inviting others to be at the conference. This can include inviting industry journalists to be interviewed as well as session speakers and keynotes.
6. Get the guest’s cell phone — Conferences can be crazy and hectic. Always make sure to get their cell phone number so you can text them to confirm, decreasing no-shows (we’ve found that no matter what, 10-20% will miss the interview).
7. Hire a local film crew — If you are going to be in people’s ears or in front of their eyes, make sure the quality isn’t garbage. There are many different setups but we normally recommend outsourcing this to a local company where the event is taking place. They will bring all the equipment and then can share the files with you to produce them.
8. Market your show — This is a great time to market your show. While everyone is marketing their products, you can stand out by marketing content that adds value. Add a QR code to the backdrop, print out flyers with the podcast, and do everything you can to raise awareness of your podcast and your brand.

Solving your awareness problem

Every startup struggles with the same problem: not enough of their market knows they exist and understands the value they can provide.

Conferences full of attendees can be a great opportunity to increase your brand awareness. However, you are also up against hundreds of other vendors all battling for attention and desperate to see an ROI from the conference.

By building out a podcast studio at your booth and inviting hand-picked attendees, you can rise above all the noise: you get one-on-one meetings booked, you attract more visitors and eyeballs to your booth, and you walk away with quality content that can be used to build your own audience.

Use this tactic at the next conference while it’s still novel — 2 years from now everyone else will be doing it too.