7 Powerful Tips to Promote Your Brand Successfully at Events and Trade Shows

A company’s success depends on its consumers’ knowledge. If a business is unknown to its prospective customers, it cannot thrive in the market. There won’t be any potential customers seeking out your products or services. They will gravitate toward those that are familiar, visible, and available to them.

Therefore, a business must get out there in the crowd and make it known and relatable! Apart from the internet-based marketing techniques, traditional marketing and promotions are still relevant and play a major role in the success of any business. There are numerous ways in which you can promote and market your company, brand its items, increase sales, and finally earn more revenue. One of the major ways is to participate in industry-relevant events, trade shows which are effective methods of promoting your business.

When a company participates in an exhibition show, it presents a bundle of opportunities to promote their business, products, and services. These events are great places to interact and engage with current and potential customers in person. Attendees of trade shows usually have a genuine interest in the products and services on display. Many big, medium and even small scale businesses use this opportunity to gain valuable sales leads by effectively positioning their products at trade shows.

7 Actionable Tips to Promote Your Business and Its Products Effectively at Events and Trade Shows:

Do Detailed Research: It is important to determine which trade shows are appropriate for your business. Carefully evaluate the details of each trade show including the number of businesses who exhibit, the average number of attendees (potential customers), attendee demographics by job function, and so on. If possible, interview businesses who have exhibited in past years, and ask for their feedback and opinions about the event. Exhibiting at trade shows can be costly. You need to research all details and gauge which trade shows will yield the highest return on investment.

Act Promptly and Go for a Quick Registration: Once you have decided which trade shows to participate in, register as early as possible. Many trade show organizers allow easy registration online and some offer early-bird discounts, saving your company hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars.

Define the Objectives Beforehand: Create a list of objectives in accordance with each level of importance. The management should discuss methods of achieving those objectives and help everyone to focus on reaching the most important ones. Examples of objectives could be; collect “X” number of sales leads with leads qualification survey; arrange “X” number of sales demonstrations, or gather data insights on competitors’ brands.

Focus on Pre-Launch Publicity: Advertise your attendance at the trade show through direct mail to invite confirmed attendees (or a targeted list drawn from the list of confirmed attendees). You should additionally announce it on your website, on your blog, through social media sites, through email campaigns, in newsletters, and even in your email signatures.

Create Attention: Attract attendees to your booth through creative banner designs, exhibition stand designs, giveaways, contests or lucky draw. Interactive elements such as touch screens to gather customers’ information, demonstrate a product or conduct a survey work like a charm. Choose an interesting theme for your event booth, which matches your brand and its vision, and make it attractive, exciting, and engaging.

Arrange Jaw-Dropping Contests: Organizing a contest or a giveaway is a great way to attract people to your booth. When marketing your participation at the trade show, ask attendees to visit your booth and complete a lead qualification survey to be entered into the contest directly. Select a prize in advance that matches your business, its products, and services; or go with the one that has really good demand among your current and potential customers. For example: if you sell survey software or survey research services, the prize could be a device to administer surveys such as an iPad or a tablet PC to conduct mobile surveys; or the prize could be a copy of the survey software so the winner can create and administer their own surveys. This is a great way to gain prospective customers. Follow up with all contacts shortly after the trade show.

Be Prepared: Be sure to bring a good amount of supplies to the trade show so that you do not run out of brochures, business cards, and giveaways. Review your research to know the number of attendees. Realistically, not every attendee will visit your booth. So, calculate a percentage of them who may visit your booth and bring that number of materials. Additionally, instill enthusiasm in all of your staff members who will be representing your company at your booth. Make sure they are knowledgeable about the brand, aware of the current and new products and services, market trends, and competitors. This way they can carry on an intelligent conversation with prospective customers. Encourage them to interact and engage with attendees, gather contact information of them, and even visit competitors’ booths.