Chicago’s central location and massive network of corporate headquarters and offices make it a popular destination for conventions and trade shows. The biggest hurdle for trade show marketers to overcome is attracting and engaging visitors at their booth. Most sales teams are giving away trinkets and coffee mugs, which do little to attract or impress potential clients. Offering a free on-site chair massage at your Chicago convention booth, however, is a unique and cost effective way to drive traffic to your booth and keep visitors there longer.
Our clients report increasing lead gen by 50-200% when using our chair massage based trade show marketing services. Here’s how and why it works:
Making Contact with Chair Massage
Chair massage is an enjoyable experience and people will often wait in line to receive a free seated massage. A line in front of your Chicago convention booth will be noticed by other attendees and they will likely come to see what the excitement is about. This creates an ideal opportunity to interact with potential clients and show them how your company and products can meet their needs.
Convention goers usually travel long distances and find themselves feeling tired, aching and mentally fatigued. A short chair massage session will soothe away aches and pains, while revitalizing the mind and spirit. Your sales pitch will be remembered along with the positive feelings that chair massage has given them.
Trade Show Marketing Strategy
Our flexible time and budget scales allow us to provide one or several certified massage therapists to your Chicago trade show booth. There are three factors that we suggest you consider in order to determine the proper number of chair massage therapists:
- The number of sales representatives at the booth
- The number of event attendees
- The estimated number of guests who will want a free chair massage
The most important factor to determine how many chair massage therapists to have on hand is the number of sales representatives at your booth. In order to take full advantage of this marketing tool, it is important to have the right balance. We suggest having 1 massage therapist for every 2 sales people. Using this ratio will help to keep everyone at the booth busy.
If too many chair massage stations are set up, your sales representatives may not have enough time to make contact with clients before they leave after receiving the massage. If too few chair massage stations are offered, guests may see a long line and not be willing to wait, or may get frustrated with the wait. We recommend a waiting time of 5-7 minutes. This will keep attendees from getting frustrated and provide you with a prime opportunity to introduce yourself and present your sales pitch.
It is also important to evaluate booth space. We recommend a minimum of 20 square feet of space per chair massage / therapist setup. This amount of space will maximize efficiency. If you have more space to dedicate you can create a more luxurious feel for the experience.