Lot of businesses these days depend on industry trade shows to promote their brand and products. Are you one of them? Are you sure that you got best ROI from your trade shows?
Highest ROI! What does that mean? My question is simple, and I am wanting to draw your attention towards, “what are you getting from an exhibition”? Are you getting a proper return of your efforts and the money you spent in participating in an exhibition? I am sure you are interested to know, how to maximize your Returns from A Trade Show. Here are some time tested secrets which you can use for getting the best return on your investment of your money and efforts.
Set very clear goals and objectives of participating in a trade show, like; how many footfalls (visitors) you want at your stand.
How many leads you want to generate?
How much business (revenue) you want to close during the trade show?
How many competitors stand you want to visit? What kind of market research you want to do?
And other objectives you have in mind?
Depending upon the goals you decide, you need to do a proper preparation for the activities to make your trade show a great success. You can divide these activities into these distinct categories:
Before Trade Show:
Depending upon your goals you need to plan and perform certain activities before the trade show happens. Plan for number of visitors to be invited. Create your email list of prospective visitors. Send them information email well before schedule date. Send them proper invite multiple Times. Make telephone calls to selected customers and prospective visitors. Send small gift along with invite to some special prospects.
Ensure to reserve the space for your Stand at a proper location. A strategic location and space will attract a greater number of visitors.
An Eye-catching display design will help you compete with the lot of other exhibits in trade show. You understand there is a huge competition for the eyeballs and footfalls in the exhibition halls.
Plan for interactive experience with your visitors. Let the visitor get very interactive experience. Your displays need to actively interact with the visitors and provide them near ‘real life’ experience.
Select and train your team for providing the best attention to visitors during the trade show. Your team must be trained to manage the traffic during the busy hours. None of the visitors must go unattended. They must be trained on questions; the potential visitors might ask. Good product and company knowledge, good appearance and pleasing personality is the key criteria for selecting the team members to man the stand during show days.
During the trade show:
Attend your visitors with care. Answer their questions as a qualified prospect.
Display your product and services and note down their interest areas.
Give them a small gift for visiting and showing interest in your product.
Create a record of each visitor. Create the list of Leeds for follow up.
Look of business opportunity. During the trade show you can also close some real business.
Trade show is also a good place to participate in some industry meetings and panel discussions. It is a good place to position yourself as an expert in your category.
Sometimes the visitors come along with their team members. This can be a good opportunity to personally meet the senior people of your potential customers and build relations with them.
Lots of exhibitors use this opportunity to hunt the potential employees. You can go around and meet / explore certain future employees.
This is also good opportunity to go around and do some market research on new products and services being offered by your competitors. Search for new technology available at the marketplace.
This is also a good place for networking. You can meet some potential suppliers and vendors. As a bonus you can meet some old friends as well.
After the trade show: What do you do after the trade show is going to decide the outcome of all your efforts and investment. We suggest the following to get the best outcome of your exhibition investment and efforts.
Immediately send a thank you letter to all the visitors.
Start following up with the leads generated during the trade show. Send samples wherever required.
