9 Powerful Marketing Tips for Trade Shows and Events

Trade shows are a fantastic way to promote and market your business. It’s a chance to talk directly to people in your industry as well as potential customers or suppliers.

This means the way you and your business come across at trade shows can have a huge impact on your business.

We’ve outlined 9 powerful tips that anyone can implement when thinking about how to market their business at a trade show.

Marketing Tips for Trade Shows and Events

• Stand Design

First impressions count so invest in a stand/booth that will best reflect your brand image. From proven exhibition stand designs, to completely bespoke and unique designs, a company like Smart Display can help you get the most out of this as well as helping with the logistical side of attending an event.

The stand should be designed in a way that will maximise your efforts and get the results you want from the trade show.

• Offers

Successful marketers will think carefully about the customer’s journey and where they are within that journey when they are attending a trade show. If a customer has never heard of your brand, product or solution, standing there and pitching a high value product could struggle to gain much traction. Instead, perhaps think about low entry offers (free consultations, cheaper products, bundle offers, special offers, discounts, goodie bags, etc) that might help gain the attention of potential buyers without scaring them off with technical details and sales pitches.

The “offers” you present prospects with is a big factor in how many leads you collect. Therefore, think about offers that are hard to turn down. Offers that are so good that your target market would happily exchange their details for it. This is how businesses can leverage trade shows to generate huge numbers of leads.

• Follow Up with Leads

Trade shows are a great way to generate leads and find prospective buyers for your products or services. If all goes to plan, after the event, you should have gathered some leads for your business. But it’s paramount that there is a process in place for following up and developing these relationships further. Ideally you want to follow up as soon as possible. Waiting a few weeks or months is likely to result in a much lower response rate.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you try and sell them immediately after the event. It could mean reaching out to organise a more formal meeting. The important thing is to provide value and illustrate how you can help them.

If following up by email, it’s also useful to include a call to action, so that the respondent is encouraged to reply or perform an action. This prevents someone reading your email but then forgetting all about it.

By approaching this very personally and making sure you aren’t just sending out an automated response or being overly salesy, you can use trade shows to really boost lead generation for a business.

• Use Technology

There are plenty of tools and software that can help save marketers time and money, as well as helping improve the customer journey. Instead of handing out business cards and hoping for replies, using something like a scannable Facebook Messenger icon could mean visitors to your trade stand could just scan their phone and get immediate access to PDFs, resources or other offers. This is quick and also means you can follow up anyone who scanned the icon within the Messenger platform automatically.

Similarly, you could sync CRMs or email newsletter software at the event to help streamline customer onboarding.

• Stand Out and Be Different

At a trade show, you’re often competing for people’s attention. This means doing the same as everyone else can mean you simply blend into the background. Instead, try to stand out and present yourself in a whole different way.

Perhaps use engaging videos, games, entertainment or use interactive display stands. This will not only get people’s attention but will help make your business more memorable.

• Generate Awareness Before the Event

One of the most common mistakes businesses make is simply turning up to a trade show or event unprepared and being unaware of who else is going. Try to do some research and even reach out to businesses before the event. This can help allow those in your industry to visit your website or social media profiles before the event and learn a bit about your business. When the event comes around, you may benefit from having already generated a bit of awareness and interest.

You could even “reserve” special gifts and unique prizes to hand out to people during the event, from activities/competitions done before the event is held.

• Be Active on Social Media During the Event

Having people engage with your display stand and being interested in your business makes for great content on social media. Don’t miss out on the chance to live stream, upload pictures and commentate on other stands to maximise your impact on social media from a trade show.

Highlighting other exhibition stands you enjoy on social media can also be a great way to build relationships within the industry.

• Be Clear and Concise

In the battle for people’s attention at a trade show, it’s important to be very clear and concise about what your business does, and how it can help that specific individual. Trying to give people a big lengthy sales pitch is likely to go down pretty badly. Instead, keep it clear and concise.

• Ask Lots of Questions & Listen

Success at a trade show is less about shouting about your own product or service, but rather about listening to those visiting your stand and trying to provide them with as much value and help as possible.

Successful trade show marketing is about gaining awareness and then developing real relationships with those people. This means asking questions, listening to their pain-points and helping provide solutions.

Better Exhibition Stands with Smart Display

If you are looking to make the most of trade shows and event, make sure you get in touch with us here at Smart Display. Our experienced team can guide and inspire you through the whole process, from initial scribbles on some scrap paper, through to full colour 3D visuals and tech drawings, manufacture, print, installation and removal. Whether it’s a one-off event or a multi-show schedule, UK or overseas, we have a wide range of solutions perfect for those looking to maximise their presence at trade shows and events.

Contact Us Today