The Exhibit Source Blog

With the New Year comes a new season of trade shows to prepare for. If you’re exhibiting at industry expos pre-marketing needs to be a big part of your branding strategy – and the time to start planning is now.

Trade shows provide unique sales opportunities that help in generating new leads, assessing the competition, and improving brand awareness. Trade shows require advanced planning pre-marketing strategies to maximize ROI and ensure ultimate success.

Here are five great pre-marketing strategies that will help ensure that your trade show investments of time and money pays off by translating into better leads, brand awareness, and more closed deals.

Get the word out with email
Prepare an eye-catching email inviting your contacts to attend your next event or meet you at your trade show booth. One or two emails in the month prior will do the trick. Include information on any special promotions or prize giveaways you’ll be offering at the event.

Schedule one-on-one meetings in advance
“76% of trade show attendees rate face-to-face meetings as extremely important in choosing new products and making lasting connections.” So, contact as many attendees as you can before a trade show and schedule them to a one-on-one meeting with you during the show. Offer them an incentive to encourage prospects to agree to a meeting in advance.

Utilize your sales team in advance
Your sales team talks to customers and prospects on a daily basis. Use them to generate a buzz about upcoming trade shows beforehand. They should mention something about your next trade show on every call. This is possibly one of the best ways to get your customers and prospects excited about meeting you and putting a face to a name.

Tweet
Twitter is used by your clients and prospects as a primary way to stay connected. For trade show marketing, be sure to send out tweets leading up to a trade show to announce show specials, and tweet out updates on where your booth will be located. Also offer incentives or prizes for people who stop by. Use event hash tags if available.
 
Get Creative
Trade shows should be anything but ordinary. Use your creative license to drive prospects to your trade show exhibit by generating excitement early on. For trade shows, try organizing a special promotion that gets show attendees involved. The more captivating a booth, the more buzz there will be about it and the more folks will stop in.

For assistance creating a captivating  and show stopping trade show booth, contact the Exhibit Source.

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If you have decided to market your business at a trade show, don’t do it last minute. There is much you can do ahead of time to maximize your trade show experience. Give yourself a few months to think, plan, and carry out the plan in an effective way.

Make A Plan

The first thing that you should do is to make a plan. Gather those who are an important part of your team and sit down to brainstorm. Ask yourselves these important questions:

• Who is our target market?
• What is our goal at the trade show?
• How much do we have in our trade show budget?
• Who can be the most effective in our plan and where do they fit in?
• What is our time frame?
• Who should we contact beforehand to invite to the show?

As you consider these questions, you can come up with a general outline of what you are going to try to accomplish at the trade show and before.

After you have a plan you need to talk about a trade show booth.

Choose A Booth
Another reason why you should plan in advance is so that you can design a trade show display for the exhibition that will best suit your marketing needs and your budget. Waiting too long will sometimes get you a small booth in a secluded corner where nobody will really notice you. Look into sizes, locations, designs, and even the lighting, so that you will choose the best booth for your needs.

Use Graphics
When you are considering the design for your booth, don’t forget the graphics. This means that you have a graphic that people will remember and connect to your business. If this means a distinct logo, then that’s what you should use. Check out some exhibit companies that provide graphic design so that you will have the best graphics at the show.

For information on designing the most effective trade show booth, contact The Exhibit Source.

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B2B companies who measure their trade show ROI are able to increase the effectiveness of their exhibit marketing investment and determine which trade shows are working.

Many companies keep doing trade show exhibiting without much hard analysis of if the trade show is generating a positive ROI.

Determine if a trade show is worth the investment.

1. ROI

The best way to track ROI is using this formula:

ROI = Gross Profit – Marketing Expenses

It’s important that the gross profit number reflects deals that happened due to attendance at the trade show. For the purpose of the calculation, you would assume that the deals would not have happened if you didn’t attend.

2. Tracking

To determine what leads and sales were generated as a result of the trade show, a CRM tool is recommended. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is software for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects.

During or immediately after the show, enter every lead generated (via badge scanning, business cards, or email addresses collected). Then set up reports to monitor the performance of those leads, and when a lead becomes a customer, calculate the lifetime value of that customer and enter it into an updated ROI calculation for that show.

As the lead matures, you will be able to determine which shows are generating a positive ROI and which shows might actually be a drag on earnings.

For help with your trade show exhibit, contact The Exhibit Source.

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There are five concrete benefits for decision makers to consider when determining the fiscal viability of investing in a trade show exhibit and actively participating in a trade show.
 
1. Cost effective. Trade shows offer the opportunity for hundreds, if not thousands, of potential buyers to view your products during a single event which reduces the cost per acquired sale.

2. Time saving. For the same reason, trade shows save time and the cost associated with individual sales calls and the travel involved presenting products one buyer at a time.

3. Building customer relationships. For many businesses, the only time they are able to meet with customers face-to-face is through a trade show. The opportunity to connect in person with customers and potential customers helps to solidify the relationship and leads to additional sales opportunities.

4. Hands on experience. The best traditional and new media marketing in the world can't take the place of the opportunity to actually see, feel, taste, touch and experience your products. Trade show displays allow buyers to try your products "on for size" and see the potential solutions you offer.

5. Industry trends research. Participating and attending trade shows not only allow you to display and present your products but also afford your sales executives the opportunity to see firsthand what the other businesses in your industry are presenting. Learn and listen to peers, vendors, suppliers and customers to hear what the latest trends are for your industry.

For the first time trade show participant, the most effective and efficient way to plan and prepare for your experience is to partner with a company who offers vast knowledge and expertise. The Exhibit Source offers a menu of trade show services: Event Management Tools, consulting, designing and building custom trade show displays, and a comprehensive knowledge of trade show graphics customized for your individual trade show display. Contact us.

Market Watch

We just started the final quarter of the calendar year and many marketing professionals are looking to spend their quarterly marketing budget before they lose it.  There are many different avenues one can take when deciding what is the best fit for your organization.  Depending on your goals, each option provides a different impact on you sales pipeline.  However, trade show marketing is a lucrative way to bring leads into your sales funnel.

Trade Shows/Conferences:  Trade shows are making a big return for many marketing departments; the problem is deciding which one you will invest in to provide the biggest return.
 
On any given week there are at least one or two conferences or shows worth attending, but which makes the most sense for your organization?  Gauging the ROI on a trade show booth investment can be difficult because most people don’t close business during a booth stop.  Trade show booths are great at creating word of mouth buzz (as long as they are done right) and providing prospects for your inside sales team to follow up with.  

For information on creating the right trade show exhibit, contact The Exhibit Source.

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With the right planning, B2B marketers can use trade shows to speed up the sales cycle, reduce the cost of sales, and reach customers and prospects.

Many feel that exhibit marketing is the most cost-effective means of reaching customers and prospects; it reduces the buying cycle; it allows you to reach hidden buyers.  Most important, though, is that it can reduce the cost of a sale by as much as 75%.

However, to attain those kinds of results, planning is essential.  And that’s where many trade show exhibitors fall short.

71% of all exhibitors have no measurable goals or objectives or even a written marketing plan.

Here is a 12-step planning process that can be very helpful for B2B companies who are actively marketing or considering marketing at trade shows.

1. Define the Situation – Who is your company? What is your product and its real benefit? Who are your competitors?
2. Identify Your Target Audience – This needs to go beyond just the procurement people. Think about the end users and those who influences the buying decision.  You probably have multiple, distinct audiences.
3. Pre-show Research – Not all trade shows are a good investment of your time and money.  
4. Set Goals and Measurable Objectives – Sales goals are not a realistic metric given the long sales cycles for most B2B sales, but other goals should be set and measured such as contact and qualified leads.
5. Have Management Support and Input – To be effective, management needs to perceive trade show marketing as a cost rather than an investment.  Don’t exhibit if you can’t get management support and input.
6. Strategies and Tactics – This contains the specifics of how to achieve the goals and objectives from #4 above.  Unfortunately, many exhibitors skip #’s 1-5 and start here.
7. Include Current Advertising and Corporate Communications – Your trade show message needs to be consistent with all other corporate brand touch points.
8. Pre-Show/At-Show Promotion – After you’ve determined who you really need to see at the show, develop a promotion beforehand targeting that group to drive them to you.
9. Design a trade show Exhibit to Support Steps 1-8 – Take the perspective of the visitor whose mindset is “what’s in it for me?”
10. Plan the Follow-Up Plan – According to some experts, 80% of exhibitors don’t follow up on leads. By developing a follow-up program beforehand, this problem can be eliminated.
11. Involve and Train Your Staff – One of the biggest challenges is getting staff to listen to visitors before jumping into a presentation.
12. Measure Results and Make Money – This involves getting back to management, comparing results to objectives and determining if a return to that show is in order.

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It’s time to change the conversation about trade shows. Stop thinking about monetary ROI from trade shows and move on to more urgent and practical matters.

What do you want to get from trade show spend?

There is a simple answer: Leads and sales.

Exhibit marketing isn’t like the other popular B2B marketing tactics. B2B marketing needs personal selling.

Websites, Webinars, SEO, paid search, e-mail, PR, print advertising, direct mail and social media are all one or more steps removed from personal selling.

Executives demand need evidence of ROI in the above, because they can readily suck up time and money without clearly driving sales.

But exhibit marketing is different.

It’s so closely tied to personal selling that you shouldn’t demand elaborate proof of ROI in it. You can’t demand that sales people prove their ROI with charts and graphs of phone calls, travel, hospitality and gifts.

Judge a trade show, like a salesperson is judged.

In assessing trade show performance, this is what executives want to know:

• Does the show help our company communicate effectively?
• Does it help us establish industry leadership?
• Does it let us identify promising accounts?
• Does it help us educate and develop buyers?
• Does it create valuable relationships?
• And does it, when all’s said and done, produce sales?

To accomplish the above, send the right people and have the right trade show display. For a captivating trade show exhibit, contact The Exhibit Source.
 
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