4 Tips To Improve Your Next Trade Show

1. Make your booth stand out

At any one trade show, there could be hundreds of stalls with eager businesses looking to attract the attention of investors. You are in a sea of competition, and you must make sure that your business stands out from the rest.

How can you do this? You need to think about your trade show booth design. The first tip we recommend is opting for a custom design job. You can not afford to arrive there on the day and find that other people have chosen the same stall style as you. A custom stand will be more expensive, but it ensures that your booth is one of a kind during the show.

There are plenty of business owners that are going to opt for the minimalistic design for their booth. The idea is that the design doesn’t need to be over-stylised because they can let the product do the talking. This is a mistake, and you should instead, use your design to sell your business USP.

You can shape it around something unique that your company has to offer. For instance, if you are promoting a tech product, your booth should be technologically advanced. There should be UHD screens, holographic displays, and plenty of lighting.

As a matter of fact, it is always worth considering using the latest tech at a trade show appearance. A major idea that has seen a surge in popularity lately is augmented reality. There are lots of ways to use this at a trade show. For instance, if you’re selling clothing, augmented reality can help investors see what they’d look like wearing it.

2. Blow up your social media

Your social media should be blowing up during the trade show and in the days following the event. If this isn’t happening, you are not using social profiles to their full potential during the trade show. It is crucial that you have a fantastic, well thought out social media campaign. After the trade show ends, investors will be searching for your business online. They will only easily find your company if your social media accounts are on fire. There are plenty of ways to ensure this happens.

You can create live feeds on Twitter or Facebook. These can be video feeds of the event or staff keeping people updated with the latest occurrences. By doing this, your feeds become a source of information for the trade show attendees. As such, you will have their complete attention, and you can use this to market your company.

You should also be looking at ways to attract interaction on social media. One possibility is to offer prizes and giveaways to people attending the show through your accounts. Attendees will enter and again you are drawing attention to your business without directly promoting it.

3. Choose the right staff

You must remember that the staff at your trade show will be seen as part of your business brand. As such, they need to be impressive, ready to dazzle the investors that they meet and greet. If you didn’t find much success at your last trade show, it’s possible that the problem was your team.

Be aware that some business owners hire professional marketers rather than using company staff. Professional marketers will know exactly what they need to say and do to win an investor over. Your business employees may not have this knowledge, but you also want people there who fully understand the product. Due to this, you may want a mixture of pro marketers and members of staff. There should be no green members of staff at the trade show. If there are, they should be paired with people who have been before and know how to work the crowd.

Before the trade show, you should be presenting a plan of marketing to all the staff members who will be present. They need to be on the same page when thinking about how to market to the crowd. By having a full marketing strategy, you can ensure your team works like a well-oiled machine.

4. Start marketing before the show

Finally, it is not enough to have a killer marketing strategy during the trade show event. You need to start promoting your trade show booth months beforehand to attendees and key business individuals. You should be initiating a targeted marketing approach to do this.

As is often the case, content is king here. You need to focus on releasing different forms of content such as infographics, videos, and Facebook ads. We promise you, your competition will always start a similar strategy a few months before the trade show. If you want to beat them at their own game, make sure your online marketing campaign is carefully and meticulously planned.

While completing this marketing campaign, you should also be researching the trade show. You need to know who is attending, who your main competition is as well as the best ways to market. Think about things like the nearest transport links to the trade show location. A lot of attendees will be attending the trade show by air or rail. As such, you may want to consider buying billboard space around the airport and station. By doing this, you can catch the attention of attendees before they have even entered the exhibition hall. They will be primed to spot and notice your trade show booth and the product that you are selling.

Using this advice, you can build on your last trade show appearance. You should always be looking to test new ideas and improve to maximise your level of success.