Getting the Most out of Your Trade Show Exhibition
Have you ever wondered why it is that if your company, brand, or business is invited to exhibit at a trade show, prior to everyone setting everything up the venue looks a bit dodgy? It looks like some warehouse where some stolen vehicle chopping could have gone on! It’s by total design though. By the time attendees walk through the doors and spill onto the floor, what might have looked like a dodgy chop-shop is unrecognisable.
Something of a grey colour lingers in the background and this is so that the stage will be set for you to take ownership of the space you’ve been allocated to set up your display.
While any kind of decent branding will naturally then stand out against the dull, grey hues characterising the venue of a trade show exhibition, there will probably be a lot of other exhibitors in attendance who are all competing with each other and with you to win the attention of the attendees, so it’s not enough to just rely on the fact that pretty much any set of colours will stand out against the bland grey. You need to make the most out of the trade show exhibitions you attend and most of the job resides in your weapons of war – the set of items that make up your display unit.
We’ll get back to the actual display booths in a bit though because it takes more than getting it right with the booth itself to get the most out of your trade show exhibition.
Stock up on a full supply of marketing and branding material
The need to have a full supply of business cards, customized die cut stickers, flyers, branded freebie stationery, etc., perhaps goes without saying, so make sure all is in order as far as that goes.
This is also the best opportunity to try out things like product packaging, company logos, and other marketing effects that you might be working on. Perhaps create a gift hamper full of the branding material you’ve created, and put it neatly into Custom Boxes that showcase your company in the way you want it. This way you’d be able to get valuable feedback and then you can act upon it accordingly.
Assemble a dynamic team of brand representatives
Simply kit the team out in t-shirts and have some of them walk around. This can help them network and bring prospects back to the booth.
Magnetic trade booths that pull prospects in
Finally, at a trade show exhibition, you’re invisible if you haven’t assembled yours among many of the other trade show booths which will naturally be on display, but that’s just the starting point. Yours needs to stand out in a way that pulls prospects in, but fortunately getting it right is merely a matter of collaborating with the right specialist exhibition designer. However, if you don’t have much time to collaborate with a designer, you can consult your friends and family for suggestions that can help your booth stand out. You can include unique shelving and rental exhibits in your booth (probably from a trade show rental company) that can pull the attention of visitors toward your counter. With that in place, you can focus on the core business of discussing the way forward with the prospects that come forth. All budgets can be worked with, and you’ll be surprised at just what can be achieved.
Prepare to close on-the-spot sales
If a prospect is particularly hot and they’re willing to complete the purchase right there and then, they should be able to do so without hassle. So you might perhaps have a POS (Point of Sale) set up to process payments or maybe you could even just have a tablet PC connected to the internet through which the order can be recorded.
