IAAPA 2019 Convention Recap From a Marketing Team’s Perspective
What is IAAPA?
IAAPA stands for International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, and we here at Dion Marketing are proud members! This organization aims to connect industry professionals through their global events and conferences as well as provide tools and resources to educate its facilities, manufacturers, individuals and students. With over 6,000 members, IAAPA is the primary resource for inspiration, growth and connections within the attractions industry. Interested in joining this association? Each year IAAPA hosts a trade show open to all members and nonmembers. This year, six of us from the Dion Team were able to attend!
Convention Highlights
This year’s trade show was held from November 18-22 in Orlando, Florida, only a couple of hours away from our office. With over 100 countries being represented, there were 38,000 attendees, 24,000 buyers, 1,000 exhibitors, 90 educational sessions and 50 networking events! The Dion Team was thrilled to experience this year’s IAAPA Expo, where we were able to connect with our clients to recap the prior season, discuss upcoming marketing goals as well as learn about this industry’s new trends and changes. And exploring the trade show floor is hard to describe as anything other than an indoor carnival on steroids where everything theme park-related is in one place! One HUGE place that makes up miles and miles of aisles.
Below we’ve listed some of the team’s takeaways from our favorite marketing workshops.
Think Globally Connect Locally: with Hyper-Local Experience
Relate with your community on a genuine, local level
Invite local groups and organizations to come to your location and host exhibits and/or trade shows. These groups will bring their own following that may not end up at your establishment otherwise
If you create spaces that your guests will promote on social media, they can do your local marketing for you
Tracking Success with Social Media
It’s all about engagement. Facebook and Instagram Algorithms look at shares, comments, clicks and reactions, all forms of social engagement to determine which 50 posts out of 1500 will show up in your feed
Listen to your audience. They will tell you what they want to hear. What we say is irrelevant if it isn’t what they want to listen to
Review analytics social weekly
Driving Revenue and Attendance with Themed Events
Special events are a great way to drive new audiences dedicated to a secondary audience
Planning events help build relationships with people in the community and is a great way to create partnerships (finding compatible sponsors is the key to success!)
It’s important to remember that events compliment the brand, they do not replace the brand
Having events scheduled allows you to be a resource and facilitator for your community and creates invaluable content.
Best Practices in Employee, Volunteer and Contractor Social Media
The key to success with social growth is engagement! It’s also crucial for your brand to know who their audience is
Every company needs a concise social media policy that sets out clear expectations and consequences, protects the brand reputation and increases employee advocacy
It’s important for a company to proactively teach employees how to use social media, share company content, protect online privacy, spot information, and to how to report bad content
We learned a lot, caught up with clients and met with potential new ones. But the best part was spending time out of the office with each other, having a blast while immersing ourselves in a lot of our clients’ industry. We also visited Andretti Indoor Karting and Games for a little team building and friendly competition in this modern, adult-centric entertainment complex. As the attractions industry evolves, it has become less of a service industry and more about the overall experience. And as marketing evolves with more digital marketing options and ways to reach target audiences more efficiently and effectively, Dion Marketing strives to stay on the cutting edge of marketing trends in order to best serve our clients.
If you’re looking for a firm to work with that has experience in attraction marketing, we encourage you to contact us. Dion Marketing specializes in this industry and can offer strategic planning and insights to help align your brand’s goals with positive results.