The Country’s Largest Automotive Trade Show

Whilst working for Automechanika Birmingham, I was in a small but dedicated marketing department . Being a small team, I effectively took the position of website copywriter, whilst also covering the data and analytical stuff through social media and our CMS.

The strategy was to increase visitor registrations to increase our footfall and thus the efficacy of the advertising and sponsorship we were selling. Our product, the actual show event, had two sellable components – exhibitor stands and sponsorship. It was therefore important for me to condense often technical language into brief company descriptions – it was essential for competitors to understand how much of their section of the industry would be present and in direct competition. I effectively had to make the exhibition unmissable for any brand in the industry by driving up the value of our own brand.

Some of the important skills I learnt and tasks I completed:

• Translating industry and engineering jargon into informative vocabulary to describe brands and products
• Converting potential clients into exhibitors by illustrating the utility of having an exhibitor stand
• Design work – making the website cohesive across all pages and intuitive

This was alongside from other marketing assignments:

• In-depth use of Google Analytics and other analysis of visitor data – this afforded the chance to realise the importance of data driven copy with tangible conversion rates, rather than simple ‘creative’ prose
• Social media tools – Mailchimp, Hootsuite and most conventional tools to gauge the specifics of engagement with our campaigns, such as specific morning-based posts, by far the most active time for the automotive aftermarket
• I became accustomed to writing press releases – this was vital to add to my tone of voice skills, and seeing how to alter your own tone to inform news and media outlets