Your Thought Process about Trade Shows May Be Wrong

Tradeshows can be a vital component of your overall marketing efforts, but if not correctly executed, the show itself along with the time, resources, and budget allocated can go to waste.

So, while you are spending time figuring out which products to highlight, what color to make the backwall, and how many interns to hire to staff your booth, it may be wise to take a step back and look at what matters the most.

Leads.

How will you generate leads?  What is your lead magnet at the booth and method for collecting contact information?

Let’s assume for a moment you have your booth staffed adequately with high energy, smiley-faced interns as well as the more serious “Closer” / management types, and you have the right balance of free branded pens, contests, display screens with case studies, and the like.  In other words, this article will not be about best practices for getting people to STOP at your booth.

But what about making your booth a DESTINATION or even more significantly, a BRANDING TOOL for your company?

Why a “Destination”?

If you make your booth a destination, you are effectively making YOUR BOOTH/company one of the main reasons or perhaps even only reason someone will be visiting the expo.  “To come to see you!”  Amazing, isn’t it?

But how?

Well, first off, do well with what you have first!  In other words, leverage your EMAIL lists and SOCIAL MEDIA to drive traffic to your table.  You should, ideally, have a “house email list” with potential prospects who might be interested in coming to see you.  Send them a personal invitation, or better yet, decide if it makes sense to hyper-target individual prospects with a phone call.  Depending on the type of product/service you offer, you might offer a “trade show discount” for prospects who come see you and make a purchase or some commitment (an estimate, a quote, a proposal, etc.)

In other words, it’s always better to close a few more of your existing prospects than to have to generate all new candidates.  While new possibilities are essential and a BIG part of a trade show strategy, you can do just as good for your company by ensuring to leverage the fact that you are even there.

Leading to the next point:

The show as a BRANDING TOOL

Let’s say you have announced your appearance to your database and on your social media channels. Perhaps you are advertising for additional outreach (more on this in a moment), yes, it’s true that you may notify 1000’s of contacts about your show, and maybe only a small % of your internal database may show up, but you just showed the rest of your database that you are AT THE SHOW.  Don’t discount the importance of proving you are heavily engaged in your industry by attending relevant events.

Low and behold?  Your sales pickup from existing prospects in the weeks following your show.  The show and your announcing your participation, pushing out pictures of the event, and so on, give prospects who are on the fence about your company another reason to trust you, like you, and want to buy from your company.

The reason why I reiterate these points is because I have seen companies make a HUGE mistake of getting so far in the trenches of on-demand marketing like paid search, Facebook ads, etc., that they forget to keep some traditional strategies in place to round out their marketing.

Speaking of paid search and Facebook ads, should you be using these types of platforms to drive traffic to your booth?

Yes.  Like mentioned above you can market to EXISTING and NEW prospects through these channels.  For example, you can sell to existing prospects by running a “Retargeting” campaign in Google or Facebook, targeting individuals who either are on existing email lists or who have visited relevant pages on your website.  You can remind them through banner ads that you will be at the show, when, and even present an offer like a “Free Pass” or maybe a discount to the event.

So, tradeshows can be a complex, and even expensive endeavor and while I am a proponent of them, I do encourage you to select your tradeshows carefully, allocate budgets within reason and have a proper pre and post-trade show marketing strategy.

About the Author

Justin Gross is the owner and lead consultant of Hop2TheTop LLC, a Google Certified internet marketing company specializing in paid digital media and conversion optimization strategies for brands around the world.