Expo Excellence: Getting The Most of Your Day at a Trade Show

If you’re looking to an exciting new way to market your business, then a trade show is a great way to go about it. You get to speak to potential customers and clients face to face, explain and demonstrate your products or services and can get some crucial feedback by seeing how well it’s received. Business expos bring together hundreds of businesses with clients and decision makers who are actively looking for companies like yours, and a day of work here could mean many new leads for future business. But what can you do to ensure you’re getting the absolute most out of your time? Here are a few ideas.
The Appearance of Your Stall
The first thing to get right is your stall- since customers won’t have time to look around everyone they will make decisions based on what looks interesting and exciting. Use a company like Open Exhibitions who can create you something vibrant and innovative and increase your chances of grabbing people’s interest. Instead of dull talks and presentations, get interactive. Offer games, giveaways and other competitions- spend some time before the event coming up with ideas that are fun while still linking to what you do. If you can get people laughing, chatting and in a good mood, you put yourself in the best position of appealing to them. You could bring samples of your product, or even give away marketing merch with your logo and company information on. Mugs, hats, tshirts and pens will all remind people of your business even after the trade show is over. Be sure to hand out business cards and flyers too, you want people to remember you!
Location, Location, Location
When it comes to trade shows, location is key since there will be so many stalls. You want to be in a position to get the most foot traffic, ends of aisles are good or anywhere close to food and drinks areas. The most expensive stalls tend to be near the entrance because you can grab people early on, they’re feeling fresh at this point and haven’t spent hours traipsing round the expo
Follow Up
The aim of the game when it comes to expose is to generate new leads. Get people interested in your business, so you can eventually work with them and gain new long term contracts and improve your profits. But all of your effort will have been for nothing if you don’t follow up on leads. While some clients and companies may contact you, with others you might need to do the chasing. Be sure to take down email addresses and other contact details of anyone that shows interest, that way you can get in touch a week or so after the event and see if they’d like to proceed.