If you go in with the right strategy and the right mindset, a trade show can work absolute wonders for your business. Trade shows are heaving with motivated people who are interested in a wide variety of products and services. They may be people looking for exactly what your company provide. They may be people who are looking for a worthwhile and profitable investment. Whatever it is, they are people who have attended the show with the plan to spend money and gain information. And this is exactly what any company wants in a consumer or investor.
You could argue that the same benefits are found in strong advertising. With a great television campaign, good social media marketing and clever SEO, you can indeed get droves of new customers. But it still doesn’t quite offer what a trade show can offer. You may see trade shows as events that are too exclusive, where the focus is too narrow. But don’t dismiss them. Trade shows can bring you a lot of business from various sources. That business also tends to be of more quality.
Trade show exhibit vs traditional advertising and outreach
As I’m sure you know already, traditional advertising can be extremely expensive. Getting your company’s name on the map on a large scale is only getting more and more expensive. Costs are getting prohibitive. There is also a large time investment to consider. An increase in your marketing often means more internal strain on your sales and marketing departments. Often, it will result in needing to hire more employees. For some companies, that’s just fine. They have the absurd capital and office space to do that.
At the end of a marketing campaign, you’ll be able to work out the cost per sale. That is, the cost of your marketing campaign divided by the number of customers you believe you gained as a result. Companies will often find that there’s not a massive gap in the numbers. This is okay – a customer base can grow organically from this point, so it was worth it. But trade shows offer a much lower cost per sale. Customers, investors and suppliers can all be spoken to en masse. It saves you the time and trouble of approaching these people one-by-one in the outside world. You’re marketing your product or service in the most personal way possible, in a room filled with people who want to spend money.
There’s also a cynicism or resentment that often comes with traditional advertising and outreach. By making calls to potential clients or advertising aggressively, you could be creating a nuisance. This negatively affects your company’s reputation, even if sales do increase as a result. This problem disappears at a trade show. Your prospective customers usually need to have their time taken from them by you; here, they are enthusiastically giving it to you. They want to buy, to research, to invest. You can take a more direct approach with them.
Getting the vibe and gathering data
As with any business plan, deciding to go to a trade show takes a fair amount of research. Not only that, but exactly what trade show you want to go to also needs to be researched. And there’s really no better way of doing this than by visiting a trade show yourself and seeing what it has to offer. This is the best way to get a feel for the trade event’s vibe. What kinds of businesses are working at the event? What kinds of customers is it attracting? All suit and tie types? Families with kids?
By visiting a trade show, you can learn many things. They key is to pose as a customer and interact with the businesses on display. So, yes, you are being advised to live out your childhood dreams of working undercover. (And this does also mean that perhaps not 100% of the people coming to your own stand are interested in buying your product. They may simply be doing research for their own future trading booth. But still, you’ve got them and their attention, so they’re still a sales opportunity!)
By interacting under the guise of a customer, you will get information you may not have been able to get while approaching them as a fellow trader. After all, you’re very much their competition when you’re a trader at the same trading event! Bring a notebook and take some notes as you go along. What booths are attracting the most attendees? How are they doing it? What are their prices like? What special deals are being offered by businesses similar to yours? And, again, be sure to interact with them directly. Don’t just stand back and make your observations there. Talk to them. How are they carrying themselves? What questions are they asking you? What answers are they giving? What opportunities for further contact are they offering? You should be making notes on all of these things for several booths. You should also be researching the ones that aren’t so heavily attended. Why aren’t they attracting as many people? This is as important a research base as the more obvious successes. Read more about trade event no-nos at www.pardot.com.
This kind of data gathering is utterly essential if you want to come prepared to ready to stand out amongst the crowd.
Preparing your stay
You need to get a strategy together. To do this, ask yourself why you’re going to a trade event. What are you hoping to accomplish? Obviously you want to get more sales. But how do you want to go about that? Do you have a key audience in mind in whose demographic you want to expand your customer base? Maybe you want to sell more of your product to families, for example. This will determine what kind of trade show you’re going to, of course. But it will also shape exactly how you’ll present yourself. Everything from your face-to-face interactions to your booth design must be tailored to the audience.
For example, you may end up speaking to a lot of kids if you’re at a family-oriented trade show. In which case, you need to ensure the employees who will be at the booth are good at interacting with children and their parents. Not everyone who is great at speaking to potential clients is great with kids! Make sure you know the strengths and weaknesses of the people you’re going to have at the show. This research will also help you determine what freebies you’ll provide at the event. Kids will love something cute and cuddly, for example. (Which isn’t to say some adults won’t!). Look into branded trade show giveaways at www.QualityLogoProducts.com.
There’s something we’ve yet to discuss that is absolutely key to your success at a trade show. Think about it: what attracts you to a booth at any given show? There are so many booths in there; what makes one more attractive than the other? You may have answered “the product” or “the freebies” or “the good-looking people manning the booth”. But none of those are quite as accurate as the booth itself. Ever been to a trade show and noticed that a lot of the booths just sort of blur into each other? You need to make sure your booth sticks out amongst the crowd.
I’d recommend working with a company that specialises in booth design. Who you go with will often depend on your location. Let’s say you’re going to a trade event in Las Vegas. (In which case, lucky you! Las Vegas is pretty much the best trade event city there is!) You’ll want to look into booth designers in that area. They’ll need to be pretty darn good, too, considering how many big names attend trade events in Las Vegas! Read more at www.SteelheadProductions.com.
Before you head off, see if you can find out what other companies are attending the event. This will help you refine your offers to the tastes of the people there. It will also help you prepare for the competition. You may even see a fellow business person on the attendee list that you want to meet!
While you’re at the event
Don’t think that your exploration of trade events during the research phase means you can just stay at your booth! You need to get out there, move around, keep an eye on the competition. They could be employing some new tactic that you didn’t see at previous events.
Interact with everyone you possibly can. Remember: everyone at the event is a potential customer. They are there to interact with business people like yourself. And don’t keep the interaction merely to the attendees wandering the floor. Interact with the business people in the other booths! Trade events are like an odd little micro-society. You shouldn’t look at this event as simply an opportunity to increase direct sales. Trade events are also an amazing way to network. Find out how your experiences relate with the other vendors. Who knows? You may be able to strike up a profitable partnership with enough chit-chat and cocktails!
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