Organizing a trade show doesn’t begin just a month or two in advance. In reality, it requires anywhere from six months to a full year of preparation to execute it properly. This extended timeline is crucial because trade show marketing is a highly strategic endeavor that demands meticulous planning and coordination. You need to develop your strategy and messaging, ensuring everything aligns with your business objectives. This involves a comprehensive approach that encompasses all your online and offline promotions, any handouts, and even the giveaways you provide. Each element must be carefully crafted to reinforce your brand’s message and attract the right audience. It’s a complex task, requiring attention to detail and adaptability, as no two trade shows are identical.
This guide can assist you in taking it step by step to achieve a successful inbound trade show with a high return on investment (ROI). Most importantly, once you determine how the trade show can fulfill your business goals, assess whether the cost is justified. Consider the potential benefits: Will the investment in trade shows be recouped through new customers and increased revenue? Evaluate the ROI of sending your team to the trade show. Could they be engaged in other activities that are more cost-effective and efficient in generating leads? Weigh these factors carefully. If a trade show still aligns with your needs despite the expense, continue reading to explore how you can maximize your presence and impact.
Setting Goals & Creating Calls-To-Action
Your marketing campaigns should help your business achieve specific goals and metrics. Trade shows are no different. Trade shows present an opportunity to get quality leads, spread brand awareness and meet other objectives. The goals of trade show marketing can include:
» An increase in new leads and sales
» An increase in organic and direct traffic
» An increase in social media following
» An increase in email and/or blog subscribers
As you set your goals, make sure you have access to metrics that will enable you to track progress. Ensure that your marketing system can measure these channels and provide evidence to management about the performance of your event.
Identify the Call-to-Action
Once you set your goal and decide what metrics you will use to track progress, you will need to figure out how to get there. What will be the means of achieving your goal?
While you are creating your strategy, make sure you are thinking about what your call-to-action (CTA) will be. Your CTA should be integrated into every aspect of your strategy because, ultimately, it will be the key to reaching your goal. Consider the CTA’s role in everything, including your signs, landing page, booth, goals and metrics.
As a reminder, a call-to-action (CTA) is an image or text that prompts visitors to take action, such as subscribe to a newsletter, view a webinar or request a product demo. CTAs should direct people to landing pages, where you can collect visitors’ contact information in exchange for a valuable marketing offer. In that sense, an effective CTA results in more leads and conversions.
In trade shows, as in all other marketing campaigns, the call-to-action remains the key element connecting your marketing goal with the means of achieving it.
Pull in people from different areas of your company to brainstorm on what your message will be. Your marketing goals are important, but you may be surprised to see the extent to which other parts of your company can benefit from a trade show. Simply including them in the process to figure out your strategy can really improve your presence at the trade show.
After you figure out your main attraction and messaging, your overall strategy can come together. Everything from the signs, handouts, giveaways and activities will relay back to your messaging and goals.
Create a Custom Landing Page
As we have already established, the most successful usage of calls-to-action is when they link to a landing page that is tightly connected to the overall campaign. Your landing page could offer a free material, such as an ebook or whitepaper, relating to the messaging of the trade show. That is why you need to ensure that you can easily customize the language on your landing page.
Sending trade show attendees to a landing page on your website will also provide you with an opportunity to gather information about them. Monitor the conversion rate of that landing page and if that is lower than your average, consider ways to optimize the page and make it even more appealing, e.g. by shortening the form or including a video and testimonials.
You want to be able to keep tabs on who is interested in your company and how you can follow up with them, especially after they speak with potentially hundreds of companies at the trade show. So your landing page form can include trade show-specific questions that will make it easy for your sales team to follow up with the most engaged leads.
Your CTA should have a lasting impact. When people attend trade shows, they may get caught up in the moment and seem excited about your company. However, when they leave, that excitement may falter. If your CTA brings them back to your company’s website after the trade show, you are more likely to convert them from a lead into a customer.
Your CTAs should be everywhere. They should be on your signs, handouts and giveaways. They should be mentioned in conversations when people visit your booth. Everything you say and do at a trade show should bring you back to your CTA. So before you continue with planning your trade show marketing, you need to be fully aware of what your CTA is and what it’s prompting visitors to do. Knowing this will bring your whole campaign together.
Focus on an Inbound Approach
Everyone has a cookie-cutter booth. You put your logo on a table skirt or banner, place your handouts on the table and have your TV show images of your product or service. If you look at the booth next to yours, you see the same thing. The only difference may be that your neighbor is handing out branded magnets and you are handing out branded pens. The key to making your trade show marketing successful is to do something that makes your stand out.
Start with the booth design. How can you design a creative exhibit in your space that really makes you stand out, while staying within your budget? Maybe you can have a lounge or activity area that enhances the booth but achieves the same goals that you have set for the trade show. It may cost extra to have something “different,” but the price is worth it if it attracts passersby. You can then create a more memorable experience and lasting impression so people are talking about you way after the trade show is over.
Next think wardrobe. The majority of people there will be in business suits. Integrate your wardrobe into your messaging. You may be concerned that it is not as professional and will not be accepted, but really it will fit into your strategy even more. Anyone walking by the booth area may ask you why you are dressed differently: another excuse to talk about your theme and message.
Decide on what type of graphics you may have. The biggest trade show sponsors will have large banners hanging from the ceiling. Other sponsors may have a sign near the aisle, so people will see it as they pass by. But what can make your booth really stand out? It may be the message that gets the attention of people as they pass by. Or you may not even hang your logo from the ceiling but something else that will attract people to your area. Be creative. Think outside the box. Do something extraordinary.
Make Your Handouts Online Friendly
Though handouts bring the risk of getting lost amongst all of the other papers that companies hand out at trade shows, some people request them. Often, someone will go up to your booth, ask for information in the form of a handout, and leave if you do not have it. So to be safe instead of sorry, it is best to have handouts handy but not rely on them as part of your core strategy.
How will your handout stand out? Think outside the box. Get creative and make something appealing to your audience - not just a one page flyer. Create a hashtag to include on the handout to encourage others to give you feedback while they are at the trade show about what they want to see and hear. Take that feedback and incorporate it on the go into your strategy. Above all, make it electronic!
Encourage Internal Communication
It is important to ask others in your company for their input on the trade show. You will most likely hear ideas that the marketing department may not have previously considered and find new ways to incorporate your business initiatives into the strategy.
As you are planning these discussions across the company, encourage people from different departments to attend. Every team can bring in a new perspective and enrich the trade show planning experience. Before you leave for the trade show, have a dry run and go through everything that could go wrong. This may sound pessimistic, but it can actually be very valuable. Generally, only a few people are completely dedicated to preparing for the trade show. Getting an outsider’s view can help to think of other angles that may not have been taken into consideration.
Finally, make sure everyone at your company knows why you are going to the trade show and why it is important. Companies spend a lot of money on trade shows, and it is helpful for employee morale to explain why it is an important business initiative.
Promote the Event on Social Media
After you have decided on a call-to-action and mapped out your messaging around the trade show campaign, you can focus on promotions. As you start that process, don’t lose sight of your main goal.
If you decided to have your CTA lead to a landing page, create the landing page. Come up with an offer that you don’t think trade show attendees will be able to resist. For instance, the offer can include remarkable (and free) content, a chance to participate in a contest or win a giveaway. Whatever you pick, make sure it is valuable enough for visitors to fill out a form to access it. That is the transactional step which will enable you to gather data about your trade show audience.
It is important to keep your over arching goal in mind every step of the way. This includes the offer itself. Whether you decide to offer a webinar, ebook, whitepaper or something else, you need to make sure that the information you are providing helps you achieve your goals. It should further expand on the message you are trying to convey at the trade show.
Start Social Promo Early
After you have nailed down your call-to-action and prepared your offer and landing page, you need to start getting the word out. This process cannot start early enough.
Thankfully, social media provides a great platform for this early promotion to take place. Channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ will enable you to complement your other promotional efforts, such as email blasts and press releases. In fact, social media can be easily incorporated in all exiting initiatives and give them an extra boost.
For instance, you should remember to add social media sharing links on your trade show registration page. Make sure you include social buttons that include counts to build social proof.
Consider Launching a Contest
If you are launching a contest or a giveaway, you should also bring a social element to it. Encourage people to start spreading news around your event and brainstorm some ideas to reward them for their evangelism.
There is nothing like a little competition to get people excited. Creating a contest to attract attendees to your booth area is a great way for people to learn about your brand in advance and be more excited before they walk into your space.
Remember to have the contest relate to your overall strategy. If you have a product sample you can give out, reward people with that. If you provide a service, give people a chance to try it out. If possible, try giving out something unique that other companies cannot or don’t offer. For instance, you can create a book bundle that has been customized for the taste of your target audience and handpicked by your CEO. Another easy-to-accomplish reward idea is to design your own T-shirts with a witty or entertaining message that people would love to show off. Now let’s explore how exactly you can use the five big social media channels out there to spread the word about your upcoming trade show presence.
7 Tips to Execute on Event Site
After all your hard planning work is over, you can begin to worry about the trade show itself. Be prepared for long hours spent on site, exhaustion and a lot of detailed questions from people who have been bombarded by companies all day.
#1 - Collect leads in an inbound way
When you get to the trade show, you will be given a lead retrieval scanner. Even though they are effective and a lot of people expect to be scanned (and will even ask to be scanned if they are interested in your company), scanners are not inbound. Try to find a different way to find contact information for a person. For example, create an interactive contest in your space, in which you can find out information about the attendee while giving them a glimpse at your company.
#2 - Connect with your booth visitors
Get to know the people who come up to your booth area. Ask them what challenges they face at their jobs and figure out how your company can make their lives easier. Connect with them in a personal way so that you become more memorable to them.
Don’t forget to take notes on some of the topics you have talked about with people who come to your booth. That information will be vital when you follow up with them in the future. In addition, you can use your notes for potential blog articles or other marketing content.
#3 - Make Your Booth Welcoming
Make your area alluring, but not just physically. Sure, paying more for awesome signs and decorations is a great first step, but it might not help you stand out from the crowd the way you want. Your booth space should exude welcoming vibes and make people want to meet you and not necessarily because of what you are going to give them.
#4 - Expect Something to Go Wrong
Something is going to go wrong. It is just how events go. But you can react differently when things go wrong to ensure that your presence at the trade show is still successful. Part of your planning phase was figuring out how to react in situations if something went wrong.
Stay calm, and put that plan into action. Many times you will be the only person to notice that something went wrong. Continue executing your plan professionally and with poise, and you have nothing to worry about.
#5 - Don’t Be Afraid to Make Changes
The trade show attendees may react positively to parts of your strategy and negatively or neutral to other parts. Don’t be afraid to focus your efforts on what seems to be working and cutting the other parts. You ultimately want to maximize your ROI, and if that means cutting something that took a lot of time and money, you need to do that.
#6 - Monitor Social Media
Make sure you have someone monitoring your social media accounts. Many times, a person’s first instinct when they have a question for you is to get in touch with you via social media. Have someone monitoring your Twitter account and hashtag for the trade show. Make sure you are consistently checking for people’s comments on your blog posts promoting the trade show, Facebook and Google+ posts and even YouTube.
Someone may be interested in coming to your booth but have trouble finding it. Of course, there are maps at trade shows, but it is very handy to be able to immediately give people information about your location.
#7 - Keep Your Staff Energized
With the long hours and few to no breaks, you need to make sure your staff is energized throughout the whole event. Have an emergency bag on hand with water, granola bars, sugar, tissues, breath mints and other items you think your staff might need on short notice. You will be surprised how big of a difference having these on hand will make.
Trade Show Post-Event Checklist
Just because the event is over doesn’t mean your work is over. In addition to figuring out your ROI for the event, you have to figure out whether or not your presence was successful. You want to follow up with the people you spoke to. ROI is not dependent on just the events at the trade show, but on many events that happen afterwards.
Collect Feedback
First, see what people said about your presence. Did they tweet using the hashtag? Did they check in to your Foursquare location or post about you on Facebook? Most importantly, were their comments positive or negative? Collect constructive insights by emailing a survey or launching a Facebook poll question.
Get in touch with the people who wrote about you, and thank them for being part of your trade show experience. Keep in touch with these people even if they are not leads. They are helping you generate brand awareness and exposure and will continue to do so if they are treated well.
Follow Up With Your Leads
Next, follow up with your leads. Having the face-to-face contact from the trade show is so helpful to get your foot in the door to sell to them. Look over some of the notes you took at the trade show, and make initial contact soon after the trade show. You may have a long list of people you need to contact, but you or your sales team should get in touch with them in the first two weeks after the event. The leads you get from trade shows will be highly qualified, and it is important to make them a priority.
Archive Resources & Create New Content
As you continue to see what people are saying about the event and follow up with your leads, generate your own content about the trade show experience. What do you think was successful, and what do you think needs help for the future? What advice can you give to people who are just starting out at trade shows? Take the opportunity to show off your knowledge on the subject.
Accumulate SEO Powers
After the event is over, you should also make sure you update your registration page. Include links to some of the articles that were written about the trade show that just took place or perhaps change the wording to reflect information about a future event you are hosting. Make sure that the articles link back to your website for additional inbound links. It is important to keep the same website with updated information to build SEO authority.
Maintain the Buzz
And finally, continue the conversation on social media. Monitor the hashtag. See if people are looking for answers to questions about your company. Months later, there could be more valuable content that comes up on social media. You put in a lot of time and effort to make your trade show successful, and you should continue to get as much out of it as you possibly can.
How to Measure Your Trade Show Marketing
Part of determining whether or not your trade show presence was successful is measuring your results. You should walk away with not only contact information but specific data that can help you figure out what worked and what didn’t work. What is more, you’ll need to know whether you are getting a good return on the investment and efforts you spent for the trade show.
In this section of the ebook we will look at specific metrics you should monitor in order to track progress.
New Customers
Did your trade show marketing result in any new customers? You can tell that by looking at the life cycle of event registrants. You need to implement closedloop marketing in order to look back and track the evolution of registrants into customers. You should be able to look at the trade show registration page, with all its submissions, and dive into the number of new sales that resulted from them.
The top goal of almost every trade show exhibitor is to make more money for his or her company and sign on more customers. By using closed-loop marketing, you will be able to convert visitors to leads and customers. After the next sales cycle ends, take a look at how many of the trade show attendees became customers. Figuring out the ROI this way can help you convince your boss that the trade show was worth it and you should do it again inthe future. Keep in mind that your initial investment may be a lot, but the long-term results may be beneficial for your company. Be patient and wait a reasonable amount of time to see whether or not the trade show was worth it.
New Leads
If the goal of your trade show marketing efforts was to expand your database of leads who you can then nurture and push down the sales cycle, make sure you are measuring that number of new leads generated. Again, if you are using sophisticated marketing software, you should be able to tell what portion of your submissions are totally new to your system.
Direct Traffic & Organic Search
Part of having a successful trade show presence is making sure your company gets a lot of brand awareness. One way to measure this metric is to look at your direct and organic traffic that is coming to your website. Just as your CTAs should be everywhere, your brand should be everywhere.
By direct traffic we mean, people directly typing in your company’s URL in a web browser. By branded organic traffic we mean visitors who arrive on your site by searching for your company in search engines. A trade show should impact both categories. As more people encounter your brand and CTAs, you should see an increase in direct traffic and organic search to your website.
Social Media Reach
Did the trade show help you meet your social media goals? Have you noticed an increase in the number of followers you have on different social networks? After the trade show, take a look at what channels were the most successful. See if there was a noticeable spike in Twitter fans, Facebook followers and members of your LinkedIn page.
Identifying which channels were more successful can be helpful as you figure out what to spend the most time on. Checking analytics and testing certain channels over others while at the trade show is a great way to get the most out of your time and become better at prioritizing effort at the next event.
Naturally, you have access to other social media analytics that can also prove helpful. You can learn a lot about what worked and didn’t work from social media. People will also always tell you what they really think about your campaign online. For instance, you can check:
» How often was your Twitter hashtag mentioned?
» Were certain parts of the day more popular than others?
» What are people saying on your blog posts?
» Are your links being shared on personal social media accounts?
» How popular were your YouTube videos?
Conclusion
In this whitepaper, we walked you through the process of planning, executing and measuring a trade show. We placed the most emphasis on the importance of setting the right goals, keeping them in mind while the event unfolds, and then following up on these goals by tracking their metrics.
Through this structure we wanted to prompt you to ask some questions that are key to trade show marketing success. Was your time well spent? Did you meet your goals and objectives? Did you get any new customers in a normal sales cycle? What was your ROI?
Continue to assess the impact of your trade show a few months after it is over. As you answer the questions above, figure out whether or not trade shows are the best option for your business. Often trade shows seem alluring because of the number of people who attend, but they don’t always help your business. With careful monitoring, you can figure out whether or not trade shows are the right business move for your company and plan accordingly for future events.
