Your Best Trade Show Yet?
How to rock your next exhibition? How to stand out and unfold a multitude of opportunities?
Exhibiting at a trade show is a considerable investment and many question its value or ROI. Despite the rumours of trade shows’ decline over the past years, they are alive and kicking.
As a business owner, you should know that the answer lays in your attitude and preparation.
From greater exposure and target reach to credibility or brand awareness increase, exhibiting at a trade show has countless benefits for your business. It provides you with a powerful platform for meeting new customers, catching up with existing clients, and building a more established and trusted brand. Beyond the apparent sales potential, networking, trends-learning, trade shows can also be an excellent place to launch a new company or a product.
To book success, you need a considerate plan of action based on a before-during-after trade show strategy.
Let spontaneity or improvisation be just a tiny and charming part of your exhibition.
I. BEFORE THE EVENT
Set your goals
First, you should sit with your team and answer the critical question: What purposes do you wish to achieve by exhibiting at the trade show? Is it to:
- Sign contracts and close deals?
- Expand your company’s customer base?
- Increase brand awareness? (for your company, for your brand, for your division, in a new industry, in a new geography, for a new product, for your re-brand, after a merger or re-positioning)
- Promote your brands?
- Showcase your strengths, capacity, and product diversity?
- See the newest trends?
- Keep an eye on the competition?
- Get inspiration?
- Get first-hand feedback from your customers, peers, rivals, etc.?
- Or what else?
How will you take advantage of such a unique chance to communicate your brand message to your target audience? How will you implant your brand in the minds of thousands of visitors? How will you address their most important question: “What is in there for me?”
Appoint the right team
In an era of digitalisation, nothing yet beats the personal contact. Make sure that your best people are at the event: your sincere and most passionate brand ambassadors; team members who hold the most extensive knowledge about your products and have the charisma to explain their benefits most convincingly. Train them, practice in advance, and let them be prepared to pay 100% of attention to every person who stops by.
It is crucial to treat each attendee with respect and consideration, regardless of how busy or overwhelmed your representatives are.
Pre-sale and prepare your pitch
Align your sales goals with your team before your next trade show. They should generate as many leads as possible.
Prepare a short, sharp and straightforward pitch. There will be thousands of visitors, overwhelmed by the plethora of companies and brand presenting themselves. Therefore, expect a short span of attention.
Start a pre-event communication campaign
Being at a trade show gives you the best possibility to have a face-to-face interaction with your prospective clients. Do not just expect that they will show up and stop by. Invite them proactively.
You should communicate well in advance your presence at the event. Invite as many people as possible — your current customers, your followers in social media, your prospective clients.
Make a big fuss around it. Create digital banners, include news on your website, on LinkedIn, on all social media. Think about creating your own hashtag.
Keep the branding simple
As you wish to stand out at a trade show, it is easy to fall in the trap of glitter and glamour without considering visual consistency. Your brand (and what it stands for) is your starting point. By following your brand guide, you rest assured that your message remains on target with the values your brand wants to push forward. Keep it simple and be authentic.
Create a visual anchor that attracts visitors to your stand. Be disruptive and unexpected. Think out of the box. For example, you can put a screen projecting faces that stare at people. On a psychological level, they get drawn up and pay attention. It is impossible not to look at it. Unlike brochures or sales folder, the “visual anchor” is more engaging and entertaining.
If “A picture is worth a thousand words,” what is a video worth?
Do not do this by yourself — partner with a notable branding agency to support your mission. Getting a piece of professional advice at this point is an absolute must.
Position yourself strategically
Think about the right position of your booth. Do you wish to be associated with a specific geographic region? Do you want to to be among the start-ups or the blue-chip companies?
Prepare your handout materials (leave-behinds)
The right leave-behind materials have the power to ‘make or break’ your initial goals. They also position you as digitally-native or more traditional, or even old-school. It’s an abundance of materials at your choice to cater your message further and leave an impression .
- a physical sales folder
- a USB stick with your presentation
- a business card
- a brochure
- some samples
- a price list
Please consider a clear call to action embedded: a landing page, a phone number, or contact email.
You can always test the materials before the event. Ask some of your clients or potential customers about their feedback. It is also a great moment to reconnect. Not to mention that in our human nature, we get flattered when our opinion is considered. So, extra points.
Also, do not forget that trade shows usually get significant media coverage. It will be smart to prepare a small information package that you can give away to journalists, content creators and influencers.
II. AT THE EVENT
The event itself will be a rather exhausting experience for your team. They should be at their best to persuade prospective clients in the benefits a future collaboration holds.
There are three fundamental rules that you should follow like a mantra during the exhibition:
- Pay respect and attention! Interact with all visitors to your exhibition stand, as they could turn into customers.
- Keep notes or track record of your interactions, and write them down duly after each conversation, so that you can follow up after the event.
- Use every quiet moment to leave your booth and walk around on a quest of learning what your competitors are doing right and better. Observe which stands are attracting the most attendees and learn from their approach.
Remember that a trade show gives a unique setting for your sales team — for a change, the prospects are not busy or unreachable by phone, on the contrary — they are physically present at your stand. Typical objections or ‘not-interested’ mode gives in to a buying or research-focused mood. Capitalise on this opportunity. Treat every interaction with a prospect as a fair chance to close the deal. Right now.
III. AFTER THE EVENT
This phase is probably the most critical one of the entire event participation. Now is the moment to sit with your team and evaluate your performance. You should be transparent and point out the areas of improvement.
It is also crucial to capitalise on the mood of the event and follow up with the hot prospects sooner than later.
Additionally, generate content about your experience at the show (before-during-after).
Think about how sharing news on your website or social media, videos and images can be instrumental in conveying the amount of work invested into setting up your stand.
9 KEY TAKEAWAYS
In conclusion, exhibiting at a trade show is a great way to strengthen, sharpen and shorten your sales cycle. To maximise your ROI when presenting at a trade show, focus on these:
- Choose the right trade show
- Create and follow a plan
- Appoint the right team
- Team up with suitable partners like a trusted branding and communication agency
- Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and answer the question ‘what is in there for me?’
- Build a community around your business
- Think outside the box, be transparent, authentic and reliable
- Get feedback
- And FOLLOW UP.
