If you are, you want to ensure that you get the best value from your investment of time and money. Setting up and running a stand is relatively easy - successfully promoting your brand and generating valuable leads can be much more difficult.
Here are ten tips for getting the best from a trade show or business exhibition, based on experience as both an exhibitor and attendee.
1. Visit an event as part of your planning. Go to a trade show as a visitor to critically assess how the exhibitors are running their stands. See what appears to work and what doesn't, what you like and what you don't like. Ideally go with someone else to get a broader range of views.
2. Set clear and measurable objectives. You need to find ways to measure the benefit of exhibiting, with the most obvious being the number of leads generated. Other measures to support this could be the number of people spoken to or even the number of business cards collected. Set targets, both daily and for the entire event.
3. Make it look good. Your stand's appearance, even if it's a tiny booth, is part of your marketing message. If it looks cheap, what does that say about your business? Professionally produced graphics and a consistent appearance will make a huge difference. By saving a few pounds on your marketing material you could be losing a lot more in missed opportunities.
4. Have a clear and immediate benefit statement. Make it obvious what problem your product solves and how it can help customers. Most trade show stands are headlined with company names and a summary of what they do, and if you speak to someone on the stand they repeat the same information. A great way to start is by asking a question, such as: would you like to save money on [whatever problem your product solves]? The answer's always going to be 'yes', allowing you to take the conversation further.
5. Proactively greet people as they pass. If lots of visitors seek you out and keep you busy, that's great. But if not, you need to find a way of keeping your stand busy and engaging with visitors who'd otherwise walk past. A friendly 'hello' is often all it takes to catch someone's attention and make them stop, and it's better to engage with people than waiting hopefully for someone to stop for you.
6. Make giveaways available to anyone. One objective of exhibiting is to build your brand and you never know whether today's casual visitor could become tomorrow's potential customer. Everyone you engage with should leave feeling good about your business and if that means offering them a branded pen or the chance to enter your prize draw, then do it.
7. Engage with competitors. A business exhibition is a great way to find out what the competition's up to and to share experiences. You can probably learn from them, but expect them to reciprocate!
8. Don't eat smelly food at your stand. It might seem obvious, but when you're busy it's tempting to take that hot snack back to the exhibition hall. How will the next visitor to the stand feel when you offer a greasy handshake and brush the pastry crumbs from your lapel?
9. Make every visitor feel important. You're at the show to look for leads and build your brand but these require different skills. Looking for leads means focusing on people who may want your product while strengthening the brand means leaving everyone feeling positive about who you are. Don't qualify out people as you talk to them and starting looking over their shoulder for the next prospect. Your body language tells them you're not interested in them and that will devalue your brand.
10. Have a formal debrief and record how it went. Once you're back in the office it's easy to put the trade show behind you and focus on following up the leads. Take time to sit down with colleagues and record what worked and what didn't and any other lessons you learned from the show. This will be an invaluable resource next time around.
