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Somewhere amid the ugliness that is “mud season” and the beauty of Vermont summer is a business season you know well: It’s trade show season! For some businesses it’s the Vermont Business and Industry Expo, for others it’s county fairs and home shows. Trade show exhibiting offers a unique opportunity to strengthen relationships with existing customers, inform the public about what you do or sell, and ultimately gain more business. Promotional products and their educated use in conjunction with exhibitions can mean the difference between “trick or treating for adults” and an extremely cost effective marketing tool.
According to Edward Chapman in Exhibit Marketing, there are more than 4,000 good sized trade shows (300+ booths) annually in the United States and Canada. A study by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) reported in Exhibitor Times indicates that on average, 14 percent of all marketing budgets (across industries) are spent on trade shows, second only to direct/ field sales. A typical trade show lead costs 61 percent less to close than a comparable field sales call. According to CEIR, 86 percent of trade show attendees have some buying influence and 59 percent plan to buy over the next year as a direct result of their show attendance.
If you’ve done trade shows and done them well, you know it is very demanding work. It can also be some of the best time and money you ever spend as a business person. To gain the maximum benefits from exhibiting, it’s important to remember that trade shows start long before the doors open and last well into the next business cycle.
Pre-show
You need to start with goals for exhibiting. Your goals should be quantifiable, realistic, and difficult to achieve in order to maximize your efforts. According to marketing author Meg Wittemore, only about 20 percent of companies exhibiting at trade shows set objectives and communicate those objectives to their staff. Booth staff will respond to how their efforts are measured, therefore a good match between your goals and your chosen measure(s) of success is critical. Common measures for trade show effectiveness include number of targeted individuals who visit the booth, dollar volume of sales attributable to the show, number of attendees who stop at your booth, number of appointments set, number of catalogs given or information requested, and many others – like increasing awareness of brand, general goodwill.
Ideally you should attend any show the year before you plan to exhibit. Observe the traffic flow and other exhibitors. Pay special attention to the number of attendees. Talk to exhibitors about whether their expectations are being met. When you have a choice of booth spaces, remember that most people move through an exhibition in an inverted pyramid. People tend to enter an exhibit hall and turn to their right, then proceed to the far right corner of the hall. Next they tend to go all the way across the back of the hall to the far left corner, then back to the front and out the exit. Each show has a unique traffic pattern that you need to know (and use) as you vie for attention.
Pre-show promotion
Statistics tell us that the average trade show attendee will visit 35 booths during a visit to a business or industry related trade show. If the show you are exhibiting in has 210 booths, there is a 16.67 percent (35/210) chance that any attendee will randomly stop at your booth. If we add reality to the picture and realize that at best, one fourth of the people who attend the show are viable prospects for your business, there is a 4.17 percent chance that the right people will randomly stop at your booth. Clearly you need to take control and increase the percentage of appropriate people who stop at your booth. You want to be sure you contact the right people before the show and get them to choose your booth as one of the 35 they will visit.
Advertising in appropriate media and direct marketing are two of the most effective ways of reaching your target audience before they arrive at the exhibition. Targeted pre-show mailings are a form of direct marketing and you’re probably familiar with direct mail response rates of 2-3 percent. You can do much better than that. Carefully planned and executed direct mail campaigns to attract show attendees that have double digit return rates are common and rates of 30 percent or more are very achievable. A recent study published by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research found that a pre-exhibit promotional gift can increase exhibit traffic almost three times greater than a pre-exhibition invitation mailing without a gift. If a “companion gift” is used (one item is mailed with an invitation to stop by the booth to pick up a companion piece) exhibit traffic is enhanced.
At the show
What people see and how they are treated when they come to your booth is your business in the mind’s eye of the visitors. Have you seen this at a show before? The bold banner reads, “We’ll give your business the same attention we give our own.” The sign is falling off the wall and the booth attendant is eating … and flirting with the exhibitor five booths down! Granted, the example is a bit extreme, but consider what kind of negative messages exhibitors send all the time. The 5 p.m. booth visitor who finds an empty booth because the staff left at 4:30 p.m. Or how about the well targeted visitors who go to a booth they were invited to, and are ignored as unimportant because it was a “casual dress day” for them? Stereotyping booth visitors and lack of staff planning make powerful statements the public will not soon forget.
If you’ve done your homework right, there will be plenty of visitors to your booth. We can fairly categorize the majority of trade show attendees into three groups: browsers, potential prospects, and targets. The “browsers” are the 14 percent who have no buying influence. The “potential prospects” influence decision-makers and may themselves be decision-makers in the future. The targets go without saying: These are the people you exhibited at the show to see. They are decision-makers for your product or service and/or they have substantial influence regarding purchase decisions for your offerings. You will see attendees from all three groups at your booth so it is appropriate to plan accordingly. Proper management of your organizational materials, promotional give-aways and staff time, are critical to efficient booth operation and results maximization.
One benefit of doing a pre-show mailing to a targeted audience is that when people present your mailing (or mentions it) to receive their promised gift, you know they are someone you want/need to talk to. Another way to pre-qualify attendees at your booth is through the use of prize drawings. A pre-printed drawing form is preferable, but be prepared with stickers that fit on the back of a business card that ask the key questions for you. These key questions are typically, does your organization use our “stuff?”’ And, “Who is the decision-maker for buying our stuff?” If you freely offer a drawing and have visitors give entry forms to booth staff it will encourage interaction and information exchange.
Your use of promotional products should reflect your knowledge of the various types of show attendees. Consider having three levels of promotional products, each representing the investment you are willing to make. “Browsers” need to be able to pick something up of yours that has logo permanence or at least gets you an additional logo impression with people after they walk away from your booth. You never know what drawer or hands your inexpensive item may end up in down the road that benefits you greatly
The promotional products you choose for the “potential prospects” should be kept off the surface and out of plain site to the “browsers.” Attendees must “earn” your mid-range give-away by interacting with booth staff and demonstrating at least minimal interest in what you do.
By the same token, be good to your “targets.” A special “thank-you” is appropriate for those who respond to your pre-show promotion or demonstrate during their visit to your booth that they are indeed part of your target audience.
Of course the “bottom line” is that you want to turn booth attendees into future customers (or more, larger customers). To do that, you must know who the visitors to your booth are and you must follow up with them.