You’ve heard the phrase “think outside the box.” But in the
tradeshow world, sometimes it makes more sense to think inside the box.
In many cases, it does make sense to think outside the box. Which means, generally,
to do things you don’t normally do. Turn it upside down. Work backwards. Do
something random.
But tradeshows have so much riding on them that the more you
have a plan and the better you stick to it – with minor deviations as warranted
– that it pays to stay inside the box.
Make the plan. Execute the plan. Stay inside the box.
While you’re making the plan, many weeks or even months
before the tradeshow, that might be the time to think outside the box. What can
you do that’s different? What your competitors aren’t doing? What might be an
activity in your booth that attracts people? What kind of different ways you
can think of to promote your appearance?
During the brainstorming and planning phase, come up with as
many different and unusual approaches you can think of that might help you
stand out. But vet them. Test them. Make sure they are practical and can be
executed as flawlessly as possible. Then, once you have something in place, iron
out the rough spots and prepare it for the show.
And once the show starts, don’t stray from the script unless
there’s agreement among the principals that it’s a good move. Otherwise, work
the plan, take notes on how it went, and make adjustments for the next show.
Thinking outside the box isn’t a bad idea, in fact in many cases it’s a great idea. Just know when and where to do it. The tradeshow floor where thousands of visitors are passing by, where competitors are putting up their best, is not the place to wing it.
What’s it like to compete with bigger companies in the tradeshow marketing world? It might not be exactly what you think. In this week’s podcast-slash-vlog, I take a look at what has worked and what hasn’t for this small company over the past few years:
This week’s ONE GOOD THING: Prime Video’s Goliath, starring Billy Bob Thornton.
The digital world has enveloped tradeshows as much as it has any other part of the marketing world. And who better to discuss that than author and marketing expert Francis Friedman, who gets into his recent book, The Modern Digital Tradeshow. Check out the show here:
Looking to save money on a tradeshow exhibit? Of course you are! And chances are, throughout the course of the next year, you’ll have a want or need for something that shows up on our regularly updated pages on our Exhibit Design Search. Whether it’s an Exhibit Special or a Lightning Deal, it might be just what you’re looking for.
These are no “close-out” specials that are collecting dust in the warehouse. Nope, these are regular items – either custom or “off the shelf” – that typically sell for full retail price. But on occasion, we grab some of the items and put them into one or of the categories and drop the price.
For example, you might see a custom hybrid 10×20 exhibit that sells for around $30,000. But if it lands in the Lightning Deal, the price might drop ten percent to around $27,000. A $3,000 savings to your bottom line, just like that. Lightning Deals generally last a couple of weeks, so if you see something that is a great fit, grab it fast!
The Exhibit Specials, on the other hand, are more general savings that span a category, such as a specific style (Gravitee or Segue), or a type (light boxes or EcoSmart inlines). On occasion there might be discounts on discontinued models as well.
Saying all of this, it behooves you to visit these categories and return. That means returning to the Lightning Deals every couple of weeks, and visiting the Exhibit Specials every month or so. Even if you’re not currently looking for a new exhibit, you might find great deals on accessories such as lights, counters, shipping cases and so on.
This is a guest article by Halle Summers of Fastenation.
If you are planning on attending or setting up a booth at a tradeshow for the first time, you probably already know how valuable these events are for growing a business. They offer numerous opportunities for increasing awareness of your brand, making sales, and networking with prospective customers and clients. While business is increasingly being conducted online, trade shows provide an opportunity for business owners and consumers to meet face to face, forge relationships, and learn about new products.
If you have ever attended a tradeshow, it should come as no surprise that exhibiting at one requires a lot of work and careful planning. It’s often necessary to start planning several months in advance to ensure that you have everything you need by the time the event makes its way into town. There is a massive amount of competition at these events, and, if you just show up and hope for the best, your booth will likely get lost and be overlooked by most attendees. If you are gearing up to be an exhibitor for the first time, here are a few essential tools and tips to ensure the success of your first trade show event.
Make Assembling an Eye-Catching Display
Your Top Priority
The human attention span tends to be pretty short. When
people are surrounded by all sorts of exciting things to see and do, it can be
even shorter. This means that you only have a few seconds to capture the
attention of event attendees and draw them into your booth. If your display
isn’t eye-catching, a lot of people will likely pass by your booth without even
stopping.
The good news is that assembling an eye-catching tradeshow display doesn’t have to be difficult. Use attention-grabbing images instead of words. Make use of bright (but appealing) colors. Have products on display. Make your booth feel welcoming. There are all sorts of things that you can do to put together an amazing display. When you’re packing up to head to the event, make sure you have the right tools and supplies for setting up your display. Things like gaffers tape and VELCRO® brand hook and loop tape are lifesavers when it comes to hanging banners, putting up signs, and assembling the various parts of trade show booths. Table skirting clips are great for trade shows, too, as are cable hangers. Trust us; few things are worse than showing up at a tradeshow with an awesome display but lacking the tools and supplies needed to set it up!
Prepare Your “A” Team
The people you have working at your booth can have a
huge impact on how well the trade show goes for your business. There are a few
different options when it comes to staffing. You can bring your own employees,
or you can work with an event staffing agency. The downside to working with an
agency, though, is that you will need to put a lot of effort into training your
team and ensuring that they know all of the ins and outs of your business. When
you have your own employees working the booth, they already have a lot of
knowledge about your products and services.
Make sure that the team you assemble is made of people
who are friendly, motivated, professional, and outgoing. You don’t want someone
who is going to sulk behind the table and make zero effort to engage with
attendees! Choose team members who work well together and complement each
other’s knowledge and skills. Ensure that everyone is prepared to handle
questions. Trade show attendees tend to have a lot of questions about
businesses and their products and services. Every single person who is working
the booth and acting as a representative of your company needs to be an expert
on your product and business, and they need to be able to handle inquiries with
confidence and ease.
If your business sells a product, your team needs to be prepared to give product demos, too. Tradeshow attendees want to be able to experience products for themselves before committing to buy, so doing product demos and allowing potential customers to try out your merchandise is a great way to build relationships and make sales. If your company provides a service, you should figure out a way to demonstrate that, too. Show event attendees what you do. Don’t just tell them about it.
Give Stuff Away When you set up a booth at a tradeshow, making money is probably one of your ultimate goals. That doesn’t mean, though, that you shouldn’t give away some freebies. For event attendees, free swag is one of the best parts about going to a trade show. People love free stuff, and they expect to get a lot of it at tradeshows. Promotional items, such as branded notebooks, pens, hats, tote bags, or water bottles, are always big hits. Any type of freebie works, though. You can draw a pretty big crowd by simply handing out some tasty fresh-baked cookies. Get creative and be generous. Doing so gets people talking about your booth and entices attendees to stop by.
Conclusion
Setting up a booth at a tradeshow offers numerous benefits for business owners. If you want to make the most of the event, though, you need to be prepared. Start planning several months in advance to ensure that you have time to order banners, tools, and other supplies, assemble your event team, and provide adequate training. The more you put into planning for your first trade show, the more you will likely get out of it.
When the big day arrives, stick to your game plan, and have fun! Exhibiting at a tradeshow requires a lot of hard work, but there is no reason why it can’t be enjoyable, too.
Halle Summers is a Marketing Coordinator for FASTENation Inc., a premier global manufacturer, technical converter, distributor, and designer of adhesive based fasteners and tapes. Halle enjoys sharing her unique perspective and knowledge through her blog writing. When she isn’t writing articles, she enjoys spending time in downtown Charleston, South Carolina and all the amazing food her hometown has to offer.
Sometimes it makes sense to visualize everything you are planning to do in your next tradeshow appearance. I thought it might fun to put the mindmapping to video and see how it went:
No doubt there are moments in your life where something happened that lead to something else quite unexpected. Taking a look back can you see how you might now be able to connect the dots?
TradeshowGuy Tim Patterson connects several dots in this episode of TradeshowGuy Monday Morning Coffee:
The first time you step into a booth space as an exhibitor
can be a bit daunting. You may be part of a big team. You may be side-kicking
it with just one other person. Or, I suppose, you could be doing it all on your
own as a solopreneur.
Whatever the case, the trepidation is palpable. What if
people think the exhibit is ugly? What if they ask a question I can’t answer?
What if I don’t make any connections or sell anything and it’s a complete bust?
The first time I stood in a booth as an exhibitor after
getting into the industry was in November 2003. I’d been in the industry for
less than two years and was tasked with driving the rental truck with the 10×20
custom booth we’d made at Interpretive Exhibits to Reno and setting up the
exhibit at the National Association for Interpretation annual conference.
It was scary and fun at the same time. I’d never navigated the unloading of a truck like that with all of the exhibit pieces, but with some advice from the shop guys who built it, I managed to get it unloaded and into the hall and get it set up.
The exhibit was a Tiki lounge-inspired exhibit, complete with a big Tiki god with glowing eyeballs, flaming mouth and vapors out of the top, like a volcano. It was designed to show potential clients the creativity our designers and builders could conjure up, and it went over well.
The Tiki Lounge-inspired exhibit from Interpretive Exhibits
One of our designers flew down and joined me for the two
days of the show.
When it came to actually be interacting with visitors, not
much sticks out. I was still quite a way from figuring out what to do in the
booth, so I tried to smile, answer questions and be a help as much as possible.
Beyond that, not much comes to mind!
But it was my initiation into the world of tradeshow marketing. After I joined the company I’d sold a custom exhibits to local businesses, including Kettle Foods and Nancy’s Yogurt, but still had almost no clue as to what to say to people when I was actually in the booth.
Even with my lack of knowledge of what to do, I did know a
few things. I knew why we were there, and I knew what we wanted to get out of
it. We were exhibiting to connect with government organizations and non-profits
that might eventually be looking for someone to design and build interpretive
exhibits.
Our investment was minimal, and over time we might have
actually gotten some business out of it. Frankly, I don’t remember because it
wasn’t on my radar to track anything like that.
As the years went by and I participated in more shows, and
helped clients do the same, it became clear that even if it’s your first show,
there are a handful of things to keep in mind.
Know why you’re there. What is the goal? Is it to sell
products or services? Is it to generate leads so a sales crew can follow up?
Are you launching a new product?
Why are you there?
Know how to capture data and what data you need. When generating leads, know exactly what information you need. Obviously, you need an individual’s name, company and contact info. Beyond that, what’s important about the follow up: is it a phone meeting, or in person? Do they need you to send information prior to the meeting? When is the meeting and is it scheduled on their calendar?
What’s your role? Every person at a tradeshow is there for a reason. Why are you there? Know your role, whether it’s to assist with other people, hand out samples, or coordinate logistics. A first-timer may not be tasked with a ton of things, but obviously that can change from business to business.
How does the tradeshow fit into the company’s overall marketing strategy? While this may not be critical in the big picture, if the front-line staffers on the show floor have a good understanding of the overall company marketing scheme, knowing how the tradeshow fits in that scheme will help.
You’ll only have one first tradeshow as an exhibitor, no
matter your role. After that, you’re no longer a newbie. But if your first one has
yet to come, go into it knowing that you’ll survive. Heck, you might even learn
a few things and have fun. Once it’s over, take a quick little assessment.
Speak to your manager and ask what they thought. Debrief a little. Take the
feedback and apply it to your next show and voila’, you’re on your way!
Alice Heiman and Dianna Geairn of Tradeshow Makeover recently invited me to join them on their podcast to talk about, what a surprise, tradeshow marketing! Great fun, engaging conversation. Take a look and check out Tradeshow Makeover, too!
The ‘modern business plan’ was hatched on a blog post by Seth Godin. I was a recent enrollee in Godin’s The Marketing Seminar, where at one point we were referred to the post which breaks down the five elements of what he feels are the important parts of a modern business plan: truth, assertions, alternatives, people and money.
It’s also possible to apply that thinking to how you
approach tradeshow marketing.
The truth of tradeshow marketing would be the facts
and figures of the specific show(s) that you plan to participate in. How many
people attend? What percentage of decision-makers and influencers are among the
attendees? Who are the competitors/exhibitors?
Assertions might include your thoughts on what you believe you know that is not necessarily supported by data. What new products are you launching that might be similar to new products from competitors? What types of marketing tactics and strategies are those competitors using? This is where you state what you believe to be true, although you might not be able to prove it.
Alternatives: This is where you play the “what if”
game. What if things go wrong? What is your plan B? What if you get lucky by
meeting the exact prospect that you didn’t anticipate? What if your top
salesperson is poached by a competitor? Hey, anything can happen. At least
opening your mind to some of those possibilities gives you a chance to chew
them over.
People: who are your best people and how can you best
use them? Where are your weak spots and how can you improve with them? Do you
need to acquire people to get your tradeshow department to run like a clock and
not like a Rube Goldberg machine?
Finally, money: Budgeting, logistical costs,
personnel costs. Return on investment, cost of samples. You know the drill. But
are your numbers accurate? And did you run the calculations a year later after
the show so that you actually know what your return on investment really is?
There are any number of ways of looking at your business or
marketing plan, but taking this approach helps to clarify several issues at once.
Give it a try!
