First SHOT Show Exhibitor Academy a Hit

Last week in Las Vegas, representatives from 100 exhibiting companies attended the first-ever SHOT Show Exhibitor Academy to learn how to maximize their time and budgets while exhibiting at the world’s largest trade show for shooting, hunting, outdoor and law enforcement products.  Filled to capacity, our first SHOT Show Exhibitor Academy was a home run and included presentations on how to build the right booth, garner media attention, use social media, develop a show budget and navigate the show’s Exhibitor Resource Center, in addition to meeting and asking questions of the show’s management team.

Attendees were also treated to a back of the house tour of the Sands and the opportunity to experience several potential hospitality venues first-hand.  One of the highlights was a presentation on using social media to promote your exhibit by social media expert and book author Traci Browne.

Another was the opportunity to meet one-on-one with individual SHOT Show vendors including the Sands Expo, Freeman, CompuSystems, Century Security, onPeak, Venetian/Palazzo and all of the hotel partners in Las Vegas, as well as many other vendors that help produce the SHOT Show each year.

Our goal was to provide exhibitors with information that would make their SHOT Show experience more cost-effective and less stressful while increasing their ROI.  I’m pleased to tell you that 97% of the attendees said that they would recommend SHOT Show Exhibitor Academy to other exhibitors and that the experience was worth their time.

The exhibitor academy was something that ConvExx mentioned in their presentation to us last year and planning began soon after we selected ConvExx as our new show management partner.  That kind of creative, value-added, experiential exhibitor education makes our customers more successful in the long run and that helps make for a stronger show and industry.

Chris Dolnack is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @ChrisDolnack.