Let us first get clear with what is “trade show marketing?” basically it’s a strategically planned business exhibition for astronomic companies in a specific industry to showcase, launch and demonstrate their new-sprung product and services, generally trade shows aren’t open to the public visits and can only be accompanied by various company representatives, members of businesses offering franchises and the members of press conference.
These trade shows are generally sponsored by trade association for specific industries and their product allocation and facilitates significant business oriented conversations among respective industry representatives regarding upcoming competition, consumers outreach, business hike and engagement strategy moreover these kind of trade show exhibitions are open to only those industrialists and manufactures who register in with the organizing association, external people come to trade shows to become familiar with the latest products being introduced, and small to large scale entrepreneur over the globe from varied business groups including musician bands, artists, multimedia exhibition and many more can also exhibit into trade show via following a genuine registration process, such kind of trade show helps in exaggerating business outreach and extend people’s view point, innumerable companies with different types of specification are taking benefits of trade show marketing and there’s no shortage of ways to make an impact of it.
Now, there exist several phases or steps that you must follow to participate effectively in trade shows
Start with a plan
Planning is the most prior step you must start with before launching anything in your business as well as personal living too, systematically jot down all the necessary ideals of your business goals and use information gathered from your past shows if attended, if not then look back at your previous sales goals and marketing objectives so you could much effective medium of market, decide your floor-plan and keep eyes on the most triggered areas containing highest possibility of traffic.
Estimate your budget
Budgeting is very much crucial for overall success acquiescent, deciding and planning thing while keeping your budget in mind will help you achieve your target with more edification, you must create small budget block for variable storage and to promote flexible step by step movement of item and task within it, you may divide your budget into custom designs and rental, exhibition pavilion layout, promotional giveaways, celebrity appearance, event advertising etc.
Create timeframe
Time management has been taught to us since childhood but now it’s the most appropriate phase to apply it on your business platform, plan and execute everything within the limited time frame and even plan for cries scenarios like flight delay or bunk by employees or sickness just plan from best to worst it would help you majorly in acquiring your goals.
Depth research
Understand your audience and dig deep while understanding key demographics, personalities and target distance, research on how you could make your products speak to the audience itself and can create an everlasting impact.
Attract prospects to your booth
The actual benefit of a trade show is when you have attracted enough visitors at your booth location Drive attendance and pull greater audience participation at your prime booth by promoting it before your event takes place, target on social media interaction or opt for Google ads, videos, newsletters, posts, texts and bulk mails.
Limit giveaways
You must limit your giveaways only to those who gives you their full attention and contact information or another qualification standards and show much interest in your product and ideas, you must ensure that you are spending your time wisely and must have already set a number of hours to hook up with external as well as inside attendees, plus prizes, gift cards, discount voucher should be given to only limited potential customers, and should not be wasted on random passerby who only sweeten your efforts for a specific duration until you are beneficial to them.
Follow leads promptly
This step is mostly ignored, but you must keep in mind as you get your sales leads, follow them immediately and tighten up your grip on genuine and reliable customers and connect them within 72 hours of show, it will act as a reminder call to your customers about the deals and ideas you have shared with them and then prompt deal closing action like last 5 hours of sale, so they could also act more frequently.
Measure your result
Once you’ve done following your leads and successfully come to the conclusion point, it’s time to judge your performance and measure your results, look back at your targeted goal again and evaluate yourself whether you have accomplished your target or not, use both anecdotal and analytical indications in your evaluation, it you have met or outperformed your goals, look for more opportunities to optimize your strategy, in case, you have not achieved your goal or somewhere lack in performance, find the loopholes and rebuilt your goals plus re-plan strategies and optimize business module.
So the overall conclusion says that, B2B branding and marketing at trade shows can be an immense boon if strategically planning and executing all the tweaks that helps clients to optimize business, investing so much of time and money should be done wisely, since the purpose of trade show is to bring together members of the trade industries and making your message clear and able to be reach everyone, carrying off a successful trade show involves a great and accurate mix of planning with time frame, a lot of business expertise and of course magnitude sum, so make sure whatever you have invested must give you 10 times greater ROI and justify your overall efforts and investment.