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The Essential Checklist for Choosing a Tradeshow Company

You’ll need a lot of planning and preparation for a trade show. You must create a budget, craft your brand message, set goals for attending the event, and prepare your supplies in advance. Choosing a tradeshow exhibit company to assist you with this can help you to get the most out of your investment.

Craft your brand message

There are many things to consider when choosing a tradeshow exhibit company. One of the first steps is getting a good idea of your business and its offers. Once you have a clear picture of what you want to achieve, it’s time to start thinking about what you can do to make your brand stand out. One way to accomplish this is to build an integrated marketing campaign that includes print, online, and even electronic outreach. This way, your booth can be the center of attention while still being able to connect with your prospective customers. Another effective tactic is to offer giveaways that tie into the central theme of your exhibit. These may include promotional items such as pens, key chains, or t-shirts. However, it would be best if you were careful not to overwhelm visitors with too many choices.

Set specific goals for attending a tradeshow

You must set specific goals to make the most of your 7 Trade Show Booth Ideas for Small Budgets. While getting caught up in the event’s excitement is easy, setting goals can keep you, and your team focused. Whether you’re exhibiting your company’s products or services, setting specific goals will help you get the most out of your investment. The right goals can put you ahead of your competitors. Your goal could be to increase your brand awareness. An excellent way to do this is to make a memorable first impression. For example, you could offer prospects a personalized photo of yourself if they fill out a personality quiz. Or you can acquire a few email addresses. Identifying your goals before the event will make choosing an exhibit company that fits your needs more leisurely. Make sure your goals are in line with your marketing plan.

Set a realistic budget

Getting ready for a trade show can be a costly process. Setting a realistic budget to make the most of your investment is essential. Let’s start by planning early. One of the most considerable costs involved with exhibiting is booth space. The cost of a booth can range from twenty to thirty-eight percent of your total budget. While you may be tempted to go for a more affordable booth space, sacrificing quality can result in your trade show needing to be taken more seriously. For an adequate budget, you need to take into account several factors. These include the size of your market and your target audience. It is also essential to account for the amount of time you dedicate to your display and your goals for the show.

Follow up on trade show performance

If you are looking for a tradeshow exhibit company, you will want to ensure they can help you measure and improve your post-show performance. The best way to achieve this goal is to set objectives and metrics before the event. Those objectives should include the sales and non-sales goals of your team. Measuring and tracking the effectiveness of these goals is an essential aspect of any marketing campaign. For example, your objective may be to generate leads, but how can you determine whether or not those leads were generated through effective meetings, foot traffic management, and lead tracking? Some critical metrics for trade shows include the number of contacts invited to the show, the number of press distribution entries added, new connections made, and the progression of CRM prospects in the funnel view. However, you must note that these measures are just some of the ones you should consider.

 

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trade show, exposition, marketing B2B, trade show marketing

Trade Marketing tips

You asked us about Trade Marketing.  This is when you sell something to another business and they sell it to the ultimate customer.  Fundamentally it’s just selling but because it’s restricted to selling within a single industry or “trade” it gets another name…. the key thing for you to know is that the principles of B2B marketing still hold true.
 

Trade marketing is a sub-type of B2B

What I love about any B2B is that the audience is individually identifiable. You can get or build a list of actual individuals who you can sell to.  The best way to start that is through identifying these things

  1. industry type
  2. sub-type of industry
  3. job title of decision makers and decision-influencers
Then you are within reach of a clearly identified audience.  List broker will sell you lists, you can research and build your own too.  If you choose the latter, please start with the trade association or professional body for the industry.  That’s a great way to short-cut list building.

After the list, how to approach

Getting a list is only the beginning.  You need to brand build with specific campaigns so that prospects recognise your business name or your product name (or both).  Trade shows can be useful here because people who are interested are all gathered into a single location on a single day and you can meet many face to face.
Getting your strategy aligned with the prospect’s need is critical.  Because it’s so easy to mess up an approach and build bad feeling against your brand.  For this reason we always create a hypothesis and we test this out before a general launch.
Today a mailing list of 100 names is being tested for a client.  When we see how it’s received [Good so far, thanks for asking 54% open rate 4% click through] then we can make decisions about whether to adapt / improve or just to roll it out to the rest of the prospect list.

Top 10 tips for trade marketing

  1. Automate follow ups – have a pre-set process for capturing and following up
  2. Time is always short – but don’t cut short conversations on the stand.  Invest in the people who do come to build relationships
  3. Connect on LinkedIn to everyone you meet if possible
  4. Be very clear about what you are promising to prospects
  5. Have a “cute” offer [fidget spinners are popular now]
  6. If you use scrolling video at a trade show, always sub-title it so people get the message from afar
  7. Put on your best smile.  It’s my biggest business success tool – people remember my warm smile
  8. Make eye contact and be the first to break contact after smiling and saying hello.  This is un-threatening
  9. Have a ‘golden question‘ or two ready for your prospect discovery questions
  10. Turn up every year – as long as the show brings in prospects, plan to be there.  Consistency pays off
Creative Agency Secrets is expert in B2B marketing.  We understand how to research trade buyers, how to build a list of possible buyers, how to present your product or service to them and how to get them to buy from you over and over again.
If you want to learn more, read this article about Trade Show Marketing.  And this case study about your business location