What your booth looks like after the show ends
If you’re exhibiting at IBC or SBC Summit this year, you know the drill. Months of prep, a booth build, a team flown in, days of product demos and networking. Then the show ends, everyone flies home, and what’s left to show for it?
For a lot of software and hardware exhibitors, especially the ones without a dedicated marketing person, not much. A few blurry iphone photos, a badge on a lanyard and some leftover merchandise. Nothing that actually captures what the 3 days looked like.
The real cost of not having professional coverage
Hiring a photographer for a show usually gets weighed as one more line item on a stretched budget. But the real cost of skipping it is the two weeks after, when you’d normally be posting recap content and staying visible while the event is still fresh in people’s feeds.
Without coverage, that window closes. Nothing to post. No proof the show happened, beyond a lanyard on someone’s desk.
What good coverage actually gives you
A photographer on your stand isn’t there for a few polished portraits. They’re building you a content pipeline: booth interactions, product demos, the moments your team can’t capture because they’re busy running the booth and making conversation. Usable, varied, ready to go out over the following weeks, not just on day one.
For a company without a marketing team, that’s often the difference between a quarter’s worth of LinkedIn content and none at all. The show becomes the content plan, whether you planned for it or not.
The stack of business cards on your desk
Every exhibitor leaves a show with a stack of business cards and good intentions. Most get a cold follow-up email two weeks later, from a name the prospect can barely place.
That prospect scrolls LinkedIn a few days later and recognises your face, your booth, the conversation you had with professionally lit and edited photos. That’s not a cold follow-up anymore. As far as their memory’s concerned, you’ve already met.
People don’t remember a stack of cards. They remember faces in their feed. It turns the follow-up into a warm one without any extra time and effort.
Don’t leave it to the week of
Photographers and videographers covering IBC and SBC get booked out well ahead of the show. Wait until show week, and you’re scrambling for whoever’s still available, or going without.
If you’re exhibiting at IBC in Amsterdam or SBC Summit Lisbon this year, now’s the time to sort this out, not the week before you fly out.
Either way, the show must go on. The only question is whether you’ll have something to show for it afterward.
Contact me if you’re exhibiting at IBC or SBC this year and want to talk through coverage.
