Exhibiting at trade shows offers a wonderful opportunity to exhibitors to promote their brand and products/services; and harness unique business opportunities that come along during and after the trade show.
Here’s a quick guide that’ll help you.
1. Plan Ahead
- Set Clear Objectives: Identify your primary goals e.g. lead generation, brand awareness, determine secondary goals e.g. networking, sales and set measurable targets e.g. number of leads, sales targets, social media interactions.
- Budget Planning: List all potential expenses like rental costs, transportation, marketing materials and allocate a contingency fund for unexpected costs. Track spending against the budget regularly to stay on track.
- Timeline Creation: Establish key milestones leading up to the event, set deadlines for each task to ensure timely completion.
2. Choose the Right Exhibit Rental Company
- Research: Read customer reviews on multiple platforms or ask for references from previous clients, check for industry certifications or awards.
- Services Offered: Verify if they provide design consultation and ensure they offer complete setup and breakdown services. Confirm they can handle custom design requests.
- Support: Ensure they offer 24/7 customer service during the event and look for companies that provide on-site technical support, ask about the availability of backup equipment or parts.
3. Design an Attractive Booth
- Lighting: Use ambient lighting to create a welcoming atmosphere.
- Interactive Elements: Install touchscreens with interactive product catalogs or offer virtual reality (VR) experiences to immerse visitors, including live product demonstrations to attract and engage attendees.
- Comfortable Layout: Design the booth to allow easy flow of foot traffic, including comfortable seating areas for in-depth conversations. Provide storage areas to keep the booth tidy.
4. Train Your Staff
- Knowledgeable Team: Ensure staff is well-versed in all product details. Conduct role-playing sessions to prepare for common questions. Provide a comprehensive FAQ guide for quick reference.
- Engagement Training: Teach staff how to greet and engage visitors effectively and train them to qualify leads quickly and efficiently, emphasizing the importance of active listening.
- Sales Techniques: Equip staff with closing techniques to secure leads and on upselling and cross-selling strategies. Provide tips on handling objections smoothly.
- Professionalism: Ensure staff maintain a professional appearance and emphasize the importance of punctuality and reliability, teach them to stay positive and energetic throughout the event.
5. Leverage Technology
- Lead Retrieval Systems: Use digital scanners to capture visitor information quickly, integrate with your CRM for seamless follow-up and track interactions to measure booth effectiveness.
- Social Media Integration: Encourage visitors to share their experiences online or use event-specific hashtags to increase visibility, post live updates and interact with followers during the event.
6. Create a Memorable Experience
- Live Demonstrations: Schedule live product demos throughout the event. Use skilled presenters to highlight key features and benefits and engage the audience with Q&A sessions.
7. Follow Up After the Event
- Data Analysis: Analyze lead data to assess the event’s success to identify which marketing strategies were most effective. Use insights to improve future events.
- Feedback Collection: Gather feedback from staff about their experience and send surveys to visitors to get their input, use feedback to make adjustments for future events.
8. Evaluate and Improve
- Team Debrief: Hold a debrief meeting with your team to discuss experiences, gather insights and suggestions from all team members. Recognize and celebrate successes.
9. Monitor Competitors
- Observe Competitor Booths: Note their booth design and layout to identify any innovative elements they use, also analyze their engagement techniques and visitor interactions.
- Gather Market Intelligence: Collect information on new products and services offered by competitors to observe how they present and position their brand, use insights to refine your own strategies.
10. Utilize Analytics Tools
- Track Booth Traffic: Use sensors or cameras to monitor visitor flow, analyze peak times and visitor behavior and adjust your staffing and activities accordingly.
- Measure Engagement: Use analytics to track interactions at interactive displays. Monitor social media mentions and interactions during the event and evaluate the effectiveness of different engagement strategies.
11. Enhance Visual Appeal
- Professional Signage: Invest in eye-catching signage to ensure everything is clear, concise, and brand-aligned. Use digital signage for dynamic content updates.
12. Incorporate Feedback Loops
- Real-Time Feedback: Use tablets or kiosks to gather visitor feedback during the event and implement quick surveys or polls to gauge visitor satisfaction, adjust your booth or activities based on immediate feedback.
- Post-Event Analysis: Review all feedback to identify trends and areas for improvement, use feedback to refine future exhibit strategies. Share key findings with your team for continuous improvement.
13. Build a strong message
- Storytelling: Develop a positive story that highlights your brand’s journey, use visuals and multimedia to enhance your narrative, you can engage visitors by connecting the story to their needs and interests.
- Consistent Messaging: Ensure all staff communicate the same key messages and use consistent branding across all materials and interactions, reinforce your narrative through follow-up communications.
14. Maximize Networking Opportunities
- Host Private Events: Organize exclusive gatherings for key clients and prospects and use these events to build deeper relationships and discuss collaborations.
15. Maintain Post-Event Momentum
- Continuous Engagement: Keep the conversation going with leads and clients. Share fun parts of the event and success stories through different media channels. Plan post-event campaigns to maintain interest and engagement.
Maximizing Exhibit Rental Success
The success of your exhibit rentals does not come on a platter. Rather it has been achieved after a lot of hard work. Your focus now should be to consolidate and maximize the success of your exhibit rentals.
Here are some modern age tools which will help you with the same:
1. Lead tracking
Modern Technology offers sophisticated lead tracking tools. The lead tracking tools include scanning devices, mobile apps, and digital forms, all of which can be integrated with your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.
The lead tracking tools allow you to analyze event traffic based on date and time of day. This will help to highlight peak lead capture performance hours.
2. Data analytics
Exhibitors today have the benefit of sophisticated Data Analytics suites. They can track their exhibit rental traffic and engagement levels with location analytics tools; and collect real-time metrics like visitor traffic flow and patterns, visitor behavior, peak visitor traffic times, and most-used spaces within the booth.
The inputs gathered as a result of this can be used by them to make informed data-driven decisions, maximize the success of their exhibit rental booth, and stay better prepared for future trade shows.
The inputs can also be used to connect with those visitors most likely to be interested in your products/services.
3. ROI measurement
Before thinking about ROI, exhibitors first need to identify their goals and objectives that they wish to accomplish at the trade show.
Whatever be your goal – garner qualified leads; or achieve a certain level or brand exposure; or achieve certain sales or business figures; they can be used as a yardstick to calculate the data figures and arrive at an amount that will give an indication whether their exhibit rental has been a success or not.
Overall, only a true measurement and report about leads generated and beneficial leads garnered; level of brand awareness raised; and networking achieved, will give you a clear picture on ROI.
Additionally, your marketing team will need to follow-up with the leads, with an effective plan in place beforehand. The plan should have a method to effectively pursue and track leads at the trade show; and how they should be followed-up after the show is over. Some common ways of following-up leads include email; direct mail; phone call; and social media. This should be done effectively within 24 to 72 hours of the trade show. They will help to keep the connection made at the trade show fresh in the attendee’s minds.
