5 Game Changing AI Prompts For B2B Exhibitors & Event Marketers

Published in

Gen City Labs

6 min readApr 2, 2024

We know that event planning comes with tight deadlines, lean teams and occasionally shrinking budgets. We’re here to share some tips that can help expedite your event planning, using AI as a sounding board to assist in common tasks and challenges you might encounter as a B2B exhibitor at events.

Even if you’ve never tried ChatGPT before, these prompts can help you get started in the wide world of AI assistance.

1: Focus ChatGPT on the task at hand

A best practice in any ChatGPT conversation is helping the AI identify the specific areas of expertise where it will be sourcing data from. It is crawling the entire internet for information, so this step helps narrow the focus of it’s search.

Adapted from the brilliant Nicole Leffer’s “You Are…” Prompt Snippet Generator, here’s an example of a prompt to start a conversation with ChatGPT specifically around your B2B marketing needs:

You are the best B2B event marketing strategist in the world, with specialized expertise in trade show marketing, audience engagement, and brand awareness. You are highly skilled in creating compelling exhibition stands, networking effectively, and leveraging social media for pre-event buzz. Your creativity, strategic planning ability, and exceptional interpersonal skills help you captivate the target audience and generate significant business opportunities. Together we will work to review my existing exhibit strategy, key metrics, and messaging. Using markdown, please highlight specific questions you need me to answer to get us started.

You can leave it at that, or layer in more detail, such as industry, event types, etc. It’s okay if you choose not to at this stage: you’ll get guided through those questions as you engage with more specific inquiries throughout the conversation.

2: Help ChatGPT understand your company & audience

The above prompt will yield a list of questions from ChatGPT, with it listing the specific information it needs to learn about you & your audience.

Important to remember: do not divulge anything classified, proprietary or PII to ChatGPT.

We recommend drafting your answer in a text document and control+f and replace your real company name with a silly placeholder, like Giraffe Corp. The other benefit to drafting your answer in a word doc: it might be long, and you might chose to copy-and-paste details from your website or decks, rather than trying to compose all the answers yourself. You may later decide to start this exercise over from the beginning as you hone your skills, so having this information handy could save you time.

Suggestion: end your thorough response to ChatGPT’s questions with this line to ensure the dialogue keeps going and getting more tailored to your needs:

Do you have any additional questions for me before attempting this task?

3: Shake things up with new ideas

Think of ChatGPT prompts like MadLibs, where you add color and fill in the blanks. The more generic the prompt, the more generic your results, so it’s best to take a moment and tailor the prompt to your needs.

Here’s an example of how to engage with ChatGPT to inspire new ideas for booth engagement:

We are a(n) _(industry/category)_ company exhibiting at _(show name)_. Our audience for the event is _(describe job titles, needs, or other qualifiers)_. Our goals for the event are _(generate leads? product demos? grow existing clients?)_.
Please suggest ten creative and unique engagement tactics we can implement at our trade show booth to capture the attention of passing attendees and encourage them to stop and learn more about our services. Do you have any additional questions for me before attempting this task?

If you don’t love the examples they provide, it’s okay! Go back and revise the last prompt you submitted with more descriptors to see alternate ideas.

This is where your role as the human is critical: maybe some ideas could be fused to create something uniquely-you, or perhaps you’ve tried one in the past and didn’t find it to be successful. You can have a dialogue witch ChatGPT and dive deeper on what you liked most from their suggestions.

4: Prep your team

Whether it’s helping you create a packing checklist or training booth staff, ChatGPT can help hasten the process of preparation.

Use the prompts above to make the ChatGPT thread an expert on you and your goals, and now layer in a task like this:

[Summarize event info and target audience]
I would like to work with you to optimize attendee engagement with my booth staff. Please create a script for our sales team to qualify leads at the trade show booth efficiently. A great script will include key questions that will help us determine a lead’s potential and interest level. Do you have any additional questions for me before attempting this task?

For advanced users with lots of booth staff and demo specialists: you can even create a custom GPT with some brand-specific role-playing scenarios! It can be a learning module where the ChatGPT is custom designed to give feedback on answers and tailoring the pitch to specific types of attendees.

5: After event action plan

It’s often so hard to dwell on post-event plans when we’re constantly on to the next one, but taking a moment to re-imagine your contact and content plans can make your whole event more impactful to the bottom line.

Here’s a very detailed prompt that can be attempted all at once, or broken down into smaller tasks, step by step:

Craft a detailed follow-up action plan for nurturing leads acquired at our latest trade show. For the initial contact, draft an email template that incorporates personalized comments referencing conversations had at the booth. Outline a sequence of touchpoints spanning various channels — emails, phone calls, social media — timed strategically over the next two months.
Ensure each touchpoint offers value, such as sharing relevant articles, whitepapers, or invitations to webinars that relate to the lead’s expressed interests. Incorporate reminders for direct sales outreach with personalized pitch points based on the lead’s business needs. Finally, describe a method for tracking engagement through each stage of the sales funnel, using CRM software to score leads and adjust the follow-up intensity and content accordingly.

If your lead engagement strategy is all set, perhaps something like this fits a growth opportunity for your brand:

Propose a content marketing plan using the content gathered from the trade show. This should include blog posts, case studies, and testimonials that demonstrate the event’s success and our expertise.

The Tip of The Iceberg

Phew. That was a lot, and it was only the start of what ChatGPT can do to help you as an event marketer or event exhibitor. This isn’t even touching on how AI can be thoughtfully integrated into your brand experience, such as AI powered product demos tailored to an attendee’s specific needs. Should we explore more of those next?

Drop a comment if you’re using AI to help with tasks or processes & help out other event pros in your network!

Can’t get enough of AI content for events and marketing?

Join us tomorrow for our livestream featuring the brilliant Lisa Peyton where we explore the intersection of AI and XR. We’ll explore personalization, environments, customer insights and more in a casual conversation format. As always we’ll take questions from the audience, so tune in on LinkedIn or YouTube!

About Gen City Labs:

We’re a creative studio, crafting interactive experiences that captivate audiences and drive engagement. We collaborate with brands and agencies to bring their visions to life across both live and virtual channels. Our team of experts leverage the latest technologies to create showstopping storytelling within interactive pop-ups, activations, flagship retail, tradeshow booths, innovation centers and more. GCL is the trusted partner of choice for Fortune 500 brands and global agencies.

If you’re interested in learning more, get in touch at info@gencitylabs.io.