Trade shows are remarkable opportunities for businesses and communities to showcase their brand and products to a well-researched target audience. They are notably meaningful for small businesses as they seek to make a lasting impression and compete at higher levels.
However, with hundreds of businesses trying to sell themselves to thousands of visitors, it is important that you stand out from the crowd. You need to have a foolproof strategy implemented that gets visitors to talk about your brand – even after the show has ended.
Get Creative and Unique
It should come as no surprise that the best way to entice customers towards your booth is by making sure that it stands out from the crowd. Many find it surprising that a booth you design yourself is no more challenging than a custom trade show booth provided at the event. In fact, it’s worth every second if you get creative enough.
Start with stretch table covers. Design them with your logo and the event in mind. Plain white tables become colorful reminders of your brand and its importance at the event. You can include messaging, slogans – the sky’s the limit.
Use Decent Promotional Items
One of the best ways to capture visitor attention is by giving out freebies. The promotional items you decide to give away will significantly impact how visitors perceive your presence at the trade show.
Putting your logo on everyday use items like pens and coffee cups is a tremendous way to integrate yourself into customers’ daily lives. Unique items or premium-quality products that resonate with the products or services you have to offer. For instance, you can give away portable chargers or personalized commodities such as nameplates, custom flags, and banner stands.
And the Winner Is…
Organize a contest. If the attendees feel that they might win something and the reward is enticing enough, you will witness an ever-increasing amount of foot traffic at your booth. Prizes with your logo custom printed on them like wireless radios, speakers, power banks, and other high end electronics are sure to get customers competing in your contest.
Provide Product Demonstration
Visitors and passersby of your booth are looking for something unique or amusing enough to capture their attention. You want their business, so get creative in what your booth will do.
The quickest way to get passersby engrossed in your product is by demonstrating its value. Create unique selling points and highlight them in your pitch to establish dominance over the competition.
A physically-interactable product, such as a tablet, works best for customer interaction. However, if your business offers intangible products or services, showcase adequate product information using display items such as pop-up displays.
Establish Insightful Customer Interaction
One of the best ways to ensure that customers remember you after the trade show is by establishing insightful interaction with your customers. Rather than imposing your elaborately drawn-out sales pitch on passersby, strike up a conversation and let them take the lead by inquiring them about their needs. Listen to your customers’ pain points, take into account their questions, and offer solutions your product provides.
If your visitor is already packed with information and freebies from other booths, offer them an information package or brochure and follow up at a later date with additional information and possibly an incentive to enhance your odds of standing out and not getting brushed off after the trade show.
Establish Social Media Presence
Pair your in-person trade show presence with social media to enjoy marketing success. Social media platforms provide remarkable outlets to counter the lack of media and audience coverage. With social media, you can conveniently demonstrate your presence at the event and the functionalities of your product by shooting video clips and posting pictures of your booth.
Be sure to remain active on social media immediately after the trade show event is over since interested visitors will look you up. Follow up with all of your contacts and clients and build business relationships with any new contacts you acquired in the trade show.
Organize Fun Events like Games or Quizzes
While other booths would be handing out brochures, you could host a fun event in your booth that is relevant to the industry to keep visitors engaged and gain maximum foot traffic.
Besides hosting games, surveys and quizzes are also a great option since you can use them to test the industry knowledge of visitors. This is also a great gimmick for handing out those promo items and rewards mentioned earlier with each correct answer.
Survey Said!
Have a concise and targeted survey available in your booth. Surveys help gather customer feedback, which gives the feeling of their voice being heard amidst the crowd. They’re also great for farming email addresses. You might even gain customer loyalty by exhibiting the qualities of being a good listener.
Monitor Adjacent Booths and Markets
In a trade show, many attendees are either targeting or getting targeted by various market segments. It is your job to identify what market sections you may not have thought of that might show an interest in your product.
This approach can help you use these other markets as an opportunity to create even more customers than anticipated. It lets you reach out to audiences that were never on your target list but would be interested in your product.
Vendors as Customers
Those ancillary markets you hadn’t thought of? Make sure to keep an eye out on the vendors in those spaces as well. Partnerships in your core markets don’t have to make up 100% of your trade show success. Open dialogues with these other vendors and nurture those relationships as well. You never know what may come of it.
