The Nuts & Bolts of Trade Show Marketing
As printed in the September 2005 issue of Business Watch magazine

By Laurie Rebholz
General Manager, Exhibitor Source LLC

Today’s business world seems to revolve around belt-tightening tactics: leaner budgets and fewer employees. When it comes to trade shows, they can be an invaluable tool in your marketing mix. However, trade shows involve a lot more than just showing up!

How can you create success for your business? Look at some key areas:

Why are you there? Believe it or not, a lot of companies don’t know why. For instance, are you at the show to meet new customers, generate leads, create brand awareness, or introduce a new product to the market? Define your target market and choose shows which best fit your company’s goals.

Who’s representing your company? Take time to train your booth staff before the show. It’s important for your employees to be aware of proper booth etiquette, how to ask the right questions, how to conduct demos and greet visitors. Your employees are a direct reflection of your company’s image and reputation and can create lasting impressions with future customers.

How do you look? Take an inventory of how your booth looks. An outdated image can cost you more than you realize. Determine if your graphics need a fresh look or if it’s time to invest in a new image. Put yourself in your prospects shoes and ask “Would I buy anything from our company?”

How successful are you? Don’t be overwhelmed with complicated measurement tools like return on investment (ROI). Use small, attainable goals that can be easily measured. Success involves more than just collecting business cards. Something as simple as updating your lead card can be a step in the right direction. Remember, visitors are looking for solutions.

Follow up is essential! This is where most companies fumble and valuable leads slip through the cracks. Assign a team to work every lead after the show and implement a system to track leads through to the final sale.

Studies prove that trade shows are one of the most valuable tools to meet new customers because they provide valuable interaction that is crucial to building a business relationship and trust. Make the most of your trade show investment and do more than just show up!

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Trade Show Success: You Can’t Just Show Up
As printed in the January 2005 issue of Business Watch magazine

By Laurie Rebholz
General Manager, Exhibitor Source LLC

Did you know a trade show exhibit can produce a 10-to-1 return on investment? The problem is many exhibitors let profits and prospects slip away because they don’t utilize a trade show correctly. For example, if you measure results by crowded aisles or quantity of leads, you’re out of touch with the reality of shows. Attendees have changed from brochure collectors to serious shoppers.

Today, the most effective exhibitors are ones who are prepared to spend more time with a visitor than just handing out company brochures or collecting business cards. Making trade shows work for you means providing answers and solutions with personal attention to visitors at your exhibit. Assuming you’ve found the right show, there are certain basics to keep in mind about what you display and how you display it.

1. The Right Message.
You might draw lots of people with games, giveaways or drawings for a prize, but they won’t be your best prospects. Serious prospects are resistant to gimmicks. So says, Dr. Allen Konopacki, a trade show consultant and president of InComm International, a Chicago-based research and sales training organization. “Explain what your product or service will do for them,” he adds.

2. Set Your Goals.
The single biggest mistake you can make as an exhibitor is to focus on image or awareness rather than trying to achieve a specific goal. A specific goal would be something like reaching 50 people able to buy your $10,000 piece of equipment within four to six months. Don’t overestimate the results of exhibiting. Despite predictions that thousands will attend, reality says that a 10’ x 10’ exhibit will probably reach 400 to 600 people. Using 24 show hours as a time frame, that gets down to making talking to 10 people per hour or 240 prospects per booth staffer. Konopacki emphasizes that 10% to 20% can be excellent prospects if you actively greet visitors and not just wait for them to come to you with questions.

3. Don’t Create Barricades.
Granted, most shows throw in a skirted table or two with your booth package. However, studies show leaving the center of the exhibit open will increase traffic by 25%. Place your tables off to the side and always have an open entry. People have a tendency to stand behind a table with their arms folded looking like a palace guard or a sentry protecting the booth. So, don’t create a barricade.

4. Avoid Stacking Brochures.
If you want to avoid the “grab-and-run” effect, don’t stack hordes of brochures on counters and tables. This only causes attendees to walk by freely grabbing brochures and then dashing away with an armload of your company’s brochures. Literature acts as a barrier to conversation and chances are, will be discarded at the first opportunity. Solution: display only one or two copies of a brochure and this will more likely create a request from a visitor.

5. Don’t Overcrowd the Booth.
Companies often send several reps to major industry shows. These people feel compelled to gather at the company booth not only outnumbering visitors, but also monopolizing staffer time and restricting visitor interaction. Company executives are often the worst offenders. Have strict rules regarding employees visiting the show and insist staffers not scheduled for booth duty stay away until their assigned time. As a rule of thumb, you need two booth staffers per 100 square feet of open booth space.

6. Follow Up Promptly.
The key to your trade show success is wrapped up in the lead-management process. The best time to plan for follow-up is before the trade show. The longer leads are left unattended, the colder and more mediocre they become. It’s to your advantage to develop an organized, systematic approach to follow-up. Make sales reps accountable for leads given to them and then measure your results.


Hopefully these tips will help you better understand there’s more to trade shows than “just showing up.” Unfortunately, many companies believe that trade shows last only for a few days; they interfere with the normal selling routine and are often a hindrance to the employees involved in them. In reality, exhibiting is a powerful extension your company’s advertising, promotion, public relations and sales function and is an opportunity for organizations to become more immersed in their marketplace.

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Laurie Rebholz is general manager of Exhibitor Source, LLC, located in McFarland, WI. She has over 15 years of experience in various facets of the trade show industry. Exhibitor Source is a distributor of Nimlok displays and exhibit systems and provides comprehensive trade show services to clients in the Madison area and nationwide.

 

 

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