14.04 – Maximising Your Tradeshow ROI
Trade shows are one of the most traditional yet effective ways to mingle face-to-face with prospects and nurture your existing network. But you can’t just show up and expect people to come to your booth. You must have a message and a plan, just like you do with any marketing campaign.
Components of Your Plan
- Relevant Messaging: Tailor your messaging to the attendees. If the show attracts millennials, use messages in your display and promotions that are meaningful to this group, such as statements about your social impact and commitments to equality and justice.
- Appealing Visuals: Create visuals that reflect the persona of the consumers attending, using colours, fonts, images, and energy that appeal most to the core audience.
- Engaging Experiences: Provide a relevant experience for your attendees. Offer something of interest or fun to draw people out of the aisles and into your booth. This could include magician performances, bistros or happy hour events, free gifts, chair massages, or games with prizes.
Once you have your trade show message and plan, you’re ready to start implementing them to ensure you get the most return on investment (ROI) out of your experience.
Locating Trade Shows
Your most reliable source for trade show info is your customers. Ask them which shows you should attend. Email your best customers for advice.
Other sources for trade show information include:
- Exhibit & Event Marketers Association (E2MA): Provides information about shows in your industry and training for trade show booth designers and exhibitors.
- Trade Show News Network (TSNN): A clearinghouse of listings for vendors and companies in the trade show industry. Check out TSNN’s list of top 250 U.S. trade shows for venues that may be good fits for you.
Tips for Choosing Trade Shows
- Association Events: Get a list of all events hosted by associations you belong to, along with attendance and expo hall activities.
- Exhibitor Satisfaction: Find out how satisfied last year’s exhibitors were with traffic and lead quality.
- Competitor Presence: Preview other companies signed up to exhibit to assess competitor presence.
- Potential Partners: Look for potential partners on the exhibitor list and reach out for alliances and joint presentations.
Building the Foundation for a Good Booth
Develop a full-blown trade show strategy by answering these questions:
- How do we attract the right attendees to our booth?
- What do we want visitors to do at the show and in our booth?
- How can we communicate with and motivate visitors when they get to our booth?
- How can we capture information about them, their interests, and their needs?
- What can we send visitors away with that will maximise the chances of them engaging with us after the show?
- How can we follow up to build or maintain our relationship with our booth visitors?
Booths can take on many formats that enable you to interact with visitors in various ways:
- A small panel display on a tabletop and a couple of chairs in a 10-x-10-foot booth
- A 10-x-10 panel exhibit with kiosks for computer displays and handouts, with a small table and stools for chats
- A larger space with multiple interactive digital displays, sitting areas for group presentations, and private spaces for one-to-one meetings
Experts can help design and build your booth or other displays, manage your trade show program, and handle sales leads. Many firms offer services to ship and assemble your booth at the event venue, though this comes at a high price.
Selecting Space on the Expo Floor
Location is often more important than booth size. Choose a booth on a heavily trafficked aisle, such as near the entrance, leading to dining or sitting areas, or near a large company that tends to get a lot of traffic.
Getting a good booth can be tricky. Hosts schedule exhibitor meetings to select booth space a year in advance. Be sure to ask about scheduling time for the following year to avoid poor locations.
Consider sharing a booth with a similar business if a major booth at a big national convention or trade show is beyond your budget. Sharing space with regional affiliates can also be a cost-effective option.
Getting People to Your Booth
Your trade show booth competes with others for traffic and staying power. Work the crowd before they show up by getting an attendee list from the organisers if available. Although you might have to pay extra for this list, it can be worth the investment.
Here are some direct marketing ideas for using attendee lists to up your trade show ROI:
- Offer: Give people a reason to come by your booth, such as a white paper, free audit, or product/service discount.
- Experience: Create an offer or experience worth their time, like a free informational mini seminar with an expert.
- Contest: Offer a chance to win something desirable, like a free iPad, hotel stay, or gift card.
- Free Product: Provide premium swag that’s useful and stands out from what others are giving, ensuring it’s relevant to your audience.
- Presentation: Submit proposals for sessions or workshops around your expertise to drive traffic to your booth.
Bringing customers together with your team at trade shows sparks relationships that can pay off for years. Create meaningful experiences that are worth customers’ time and will be remembered long after the event.
