5 Keys to Thriving at a Trade Show
Attending a trade show as a vendor provides you the chance to
meet and great a month’s worth or prospects in just a day. With so many eyes
falling on your booth and seeing what your company has to offer, trade conventions
provide you with the opportunity to add a large number of new customers.
Success at a trade show doesn’t happen by accident, however. If you’re looking
to do better than just getting by at your next trade show, these tips will
position you to land clients like you never have before.
Find the Right Show
The best presentation in the world won’t do you any good if
you’re giving it at the wrong convention. While it can be tempting to opt for a
highly focused trade show, and such events have their benefits, if you are
being forced to choose between a small, niche show or a larger event with
significantly more traffic, the latter is often the better option. More eyes
means more potential customers, and you’ll get the chance to meet with
potential clients who may never have thought they needed a company like yours
until they met you and as such would have skipped the niche show.
Set a Budget
It can be easy for the costs of your trade show experience to
spiral out of control if you aren’t careful. If the show is not local your
starting costs will be high just for transportation and lodging, so you should
be sure that there is no wasteful spending occurring on top of the essentials.
Create estimates for the new business you expect to garner from the show and
make sure that your budget is set at a number which can be justified by those
new clients.
Order Your Supplies
On a busy showroom floor, it can be a challenge just getting customers to stop by and hear what you have to say. An eye-catching booth layout is essential, so plan out your booth in advance and acquire everything you need for it with enough lead time to account for delays. If you are going to have promotional items, which is recommended, make sure that you order enough for the entire event. Finally, make sure that you order heavy duty shipping cases to transport your gear safely to the venue and avoid the nightmare of finding that key elements of your set-up were damaged in transit.
Practice Before You Go
Time is of the essence at a trade show. Your potential clients will be stopping by many booths each day and so time wasted at your booth will hang in their mind negatively as time they could have spent seeing other potential products and companies. This is why it is essential to practice your pitch until it feels as natural as can be. With each run, you’ll identify strong and weak elements of the pitch until you finally find your way to a streamlined version which gets your information across as quickly and as easily understood as possible.
Promote in the Run-Up
The best way to make sure that you have a steady stream of
visitors is to get attendees looking forward to your booth before the event
even begins. The easiest way to drive interest is to promote your
appearance across social media in the days and weeks before the event, as
well as while it is underway. Make use of location tagging and
industry-relevant hashtags to get the right users looking at your posts.
A successful trade show
provides a platform for your company to take off to another level. If you land
several long term clients the costs of the trade show will be paid back many
times over. If you follow these tips you can attend your next show knowing that
you’ve done everything you can to maximize your chances of having that level of
success.
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