Mon, 03/08/2010 - 08:19
10 Planning Tips for Making your Trade Show Better
Tip 1: Missing Competitors– Almost all trade shows have an exhibitor list readily available online. Take a good look at the exhibitor list for your show and look for top competitors that are missing. Their absence can provide a great opportunity for your company to get additional visibility and win valuable business. By planning ahead with enough time, marketing messages and graphics can be honed to target the missing competitor.
Tip2: Be Mindful of Deadlines – Trade shows have deadlines from start to finish, including everything from signing up for space to moving freight out of an exhibit hall. Staying on top of these deadlines can save your company important marketing dollars along with creating a lot less stress for you. Read the show manual and create a simple spreadsheet with the items and the dates. Even if your service is taken care of by an exhibit house, there still are important deadlines dates that you must personally be mindful of.
Tip 3: Selecting the Right Space – Choosing the right location for your trade show exhibit can be the difference between success and failure. Your goal is to naturally get the most pairs of eyes to see your company day after day on the show floor. So in selecting a space you should carefully consider traffic patterns, competitor’s location, and possible obstructions. Your company may not be able to get the most coveted space, however there are many high traffic areas on the show floor including space next to speaker locations, work/internet areas, and main aisle ways.
Tip 4: Create Strong Show Marketing Strategies - No matter how many products or services your company sells, it’s important to consider that for trade show messaging less is more. With all the competitive exhibits on the show floor, there is only 1 or 2 messages that attendees will remember about your company. So the question becomes what message do you want them to remember the most. One of the first steps in this process is coming up with a single overarching theme for your exhibit and figure out how everything else fits in. For example, for Metro Exhibits the theme might be “Tradeshows made simple”. Once this theme is established, you should get buy in from all of the company’s departments that are involved with the trade show.
Tip 5: Sales Team Strategies – So you have your exhibit physically ready to go, paper work is in, and everything is show ready. One of the important elements that most companies don’t spend a lot of time focusing on is the exhibit staff. Choosing the right staff to interact with prospects and customers can make or break a show. To generate more leads and to better represent your brand you must create a focused strategy and goal.
Tip 6: Exhibiting in Recession – We recently posted an article on the best strategies and tips on exhibiting in a recession, read all about it for even more tips.
Tip 7: Staffing Schedule - Print up a detail schedule ahead of time and go over with your staff during the preshow meeting. The schedule should include, breaks and lunch times so this ensures your booth is adequately staffed at all times. It also makes your staff aware of your expectations and allows them to stay positive and energetic during the times they are on the floor.
Tip 8: Talking Points - Much like a presidential campaign, it is important to draft talking points that all of your staff receives so they can stay on message. Make sure to impress that they always portray a positive message no matter what is asked.
Tip 9: Lead Reporting - The single most important thing you can do is at the end of each day meet with your staff and review each lead that they received that day and make note of the high potential leads. This will greatly help in two vital areas:
1)This will have your staff aggressively search out leads, as nobody wants nothing to report at the end of the day.
2)This will help your staff organize their leads throughout the day and make them aware you will be following up when you are back at the office. As over 85% of the leads captured at the show are never followed through with. Make sure to have an action plan in place when your return back to the office to follow up with all leads.
Post Show Meeting - When back at the office make sure you have a post show meeting to quickly jot down a list of items you and your staff want to improve for the next show. It may be an item that you did well and want to expand or something that did not work out as well as you had intended, in any event this information quickly gets lost once back in the office and the post show meeting is the perfect environment to capture and store for the next time you are exhibiting.
Comments
Post new comment