Bologna Children’s Book Fair

Bologna Fiere chooses Lovemark for strategic consultancy on the occasion of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair

Bologna Children’s Book Fair is the event organized by the Bologna Fiere Group dedicated to publishing for children and teenagers and has reached its 60th edition. An international event, which recorded the participation of around 90 countries and regions and the presence of numerous prominent guests from all over the world.

For the third consecutive year, Lovemark proudly worked on the event, dealing with the online promotion of content through careful advertising on the web and social platforms.

The support was dedicated in particular to strategic consultancy, which allowed direct collaboration with the managers of the Digital Marketing area of Bologna Fiere itself involved in the initiative.

Great attention was given to monitoring the constant evolution of the website, in line with the other numerous initiatives that were already taking place in the period before the fair. In particular, an advertising activity was structured focused on promoting the online platform Open Up – The BCBF Skill Box, a digital environment created for the online and on-demand use of masterclasses, conferences, training courses and events dedicated to the world of translation and illustration.

To measure the actual yield of online channels and the promotion of Open Up initiatives, as well as the whole ticketing part, an effective performance measurement plan has been set up.

In addition to monitoring advertising channels, this plan included the detection of traffic coming from referrals and the various media partners involved in promoting the initiative, also through native ads activities, such as in sector magazines.

Finally, this promotional activity was accompanied by support in the management of the event calendar, the program of activities organized during the fair by individual exhibitors, with particular attention to the work of web editing and updating the initiatives.

The 2023 edition was record-breaking, not only in reference to the anniversary, but because it marked the confirmation of the prepandemic numbers in terms of turnout, also on digital platforms: over 2 million views of the site, 200,000 unique users, over 60,000 registered users to online services. A substantial increase also regarding social communities: +23% of followers regarding Facebook and Instagram, +41% on the LinkedIn platform.

A fruitful collaboration that we hope will also be renewed for the next edition of the fair.

Lovemark is increasingly committed to supporting companies in promoting their trade fair activities.

In recent times, thanks also to the health emergency of 2020 which effectively blocked trade fairs for a long period, we have witnessed a strong acceleration in the process which has seen companies shift their marketing investments more and more towards online, discovering that they can achieve effective and measurable objectives with even lower spending than most traditional marketing activities require, such as participation in trade fair events.

Once the fairs were restarted, this led not to abandon the online advertising channel, but to combine it with trade fair activities to maximize the return in terms of results with synergistic work.

An integration of the two worlds that is increasingly gaining ground and which leads to improving the visibility and relevance of brands both online and offline at a trade fair event, overseeing a greater number of touchpoints with which companies can get in touch with prospects.

The campaigns implemented as support for trade fair activities certainly have a focus on brand awareness and the generation of interest, to increase the notoriety of the companies involved in the fair and make users aware of their participation in the event. But another very important focus is on lead generation, with campaigns working to generate online leads to be worked commercially at the trade show event.

In this way, online and offline work synergistically: they create strategies aimed at reaching users in line not only with the offer of the brand but also with the characteristics of the trade fair, thus maximizing results both from a brand awareness and of lead generation.