UNMATCHED EXPOSURE FOR YOUR BUSINESS; A UNIQUE MARKETPLACE

Major in-person trade shows are challenging.  Why choose to spend your investment of marketing time & effort at the Wisconsin Fishing Expo?  Here’s just a few reasons:

• A nearly 40-year track record of excellence in presentation for consumers, with a carefully curated mix of vendors, non-profit exhibitors, expert seminars and activities for kids. If you are selling products or services; we bring thousands of consumers to see/touch/BUY your offerings – something the Internet cannot offer.  The Expo offers the opportunity for you to personally CONNECT with a rabid audience of potential customers that we bring to your exhibit space.
• More than 155,000 sq. ft. of prime exhibition space, with multiple easy accesses from Madison’s “beltway” highway, with ample parking (5800+ spots), chock-full with more than 350 booth spaces, and 32,000+ sq. ft of marine boat displays.  We sell out every year, without lowering our standards, and work a wait-list of vendors who want to join.
• Our reputation with Wisconsin’s & northern Illinois’s customer bases, coupled with incredible marketing efforts ensure we routinely host 20,000 visitors to our Alliant Energy Center Expo Hall venue, for the annual three-day Expo event.
• Our customer service focus with our vendor-partner family ensures you a smooth process from your first contact, through contract & deposit, all the way through the tear-down at the event’s end.  Easy on-line management of your exhibitor experience, paired with a real person on the phone when questions arise.

Want to learn more?  Contact Don Kirby: dkirby@bastdurbin.com, to find out more about current inventory of display space, pricing, contract information, and have any of your questions answered.

How do we support/promote our vendor-partners?

We are a unique team.  As a full-time advertising agency, servicing the outdoors industry, we are uniquely qualified & experienced when it comes to promoting the event. The WFE spares no expense when it comes to focused advertising to drive business through our doors and to your booth or bulk space!  We place thousands of spots on top radio stations. We schedule hundreds of commercials on both cable-TV fishing blocks and network affiliates like NBC, FOX, CBS during prime news!  We place ads in key local & regional publications like: Wisconsin Outdoor News, Madison Newspapers, On Wisconsin Outdoors and dozens of local shoppers.  We select top digital billboards around Madison.  We coordinate a significant schedule of targeted ads on social media, emphasizing our unique speakers, vendors & sponsors, in addition to the year-round messaging to the nearly 10,000 followers of the WFE Facebook page and other social channels.  This balanced advertising & promotional campaign means millions & millions of impressions to ensure consumers are READY to come out to the Expo to see YOU!

Want to get involved more directly in promotions? What do we need from you?

Opportunities for additional exposure for vendor-partners are available as well.  Our team is focused on helping our exhibitors build brand and product exposure on multiple levels.  One example is as simple as our Expo vendor-maps:  be sure your vendor profile is complete/current – a potential customer can reach out to you, by clicking the map from the past Expo, even months later.  We retain the live-link maps for more than nine months after the event, at: wifishingexpo.com, before it gets updated, about eight weeks before the next event.  Other opportunities:

Simply provide our team with a written description of one of your company’s new or current products or current services (150 words or less), along with a high-res image (under 5mb). Each exhibitor is guaranteed at least ONE annual company product or service profile, provided they submit the required information as indicated. The WFE will accept additional products and service profiles for consideration and may choose to run at their discretion. Please email to ddurbin@bastdurbin.com for participation in this program.  See the community on Facebook here:  https://www.facebook.com/WisconsinFishingExpo

Vendors:  want your product to be show-cased during the run of the event?  Contribute an item to our Prize Patrol – where random Expo attendees are awarded surprise gifts, and then are interviewed in a Facebook Live post – bringing a spotlight to your selected item or service, and further encouraging others to “come on down” to the Expo to join the fun!  Please email to ddurbin@bastdurbin.com for participation in this program.

Sponsorship programs are also available for vendor-partners (and potential select non-exhibiting partners) seeking more exposure for their brands, products, and services as well.  Contact our team to learn more about how we can customize a program for your enterprise that places you in a very positive light with a family-friendly event, and helps promote the sport of fishing in Wisconsin as well

WI Exhibitor/Temporary Sellers Permit: www.revenue.wi.gov/Pages/HTML/tempsell.aspx

STILL not enough exposure?

As previously mentioned, we are a unique team, as show-organizers.  Bast-Durbin Advertising, the producers of the Wisconsin Fishing Expo, offers a full line of marketing, advertising and PR services. From display ads, catalogs and brochures, to media buying/placement, press releases, and product photography—Bast-Durbin Advertising has over 20 years of experience focused on the outdoor industry, and is ready to help you reach the next level of performance you’re seeking for your enterprise.

Visit bastdurbin.com for more information, email: ddurbin@bastdurbin.com, or call 800.975.3474 to inquire & start a conversation with our team.

REMEMBER—when you exhibit at the Wisconsin Fishing Expo—your business’s exposure doesn’t stop within our Expo walls! Break out and let us help you reach YOUR CUSTOMER!

Existing vendor portal