Trade show marketing is a unique and interesting aspect of marketing that can help take your business to new levels. However, many people don’t quite understand how it works or how it may benefit their brand and business.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at marketing through trade shows. We’ll discuss the benefits, how it works, and how you can plan your own debut at a trade show,
What is trade show marketing?
The term trade show marketing refers to a strategic approach where businesses and brands promote their products and services at events.
What are trade shows?
Trade shows, sometimes called exhibitions, trade fairs, or expos, are events that bring together companies, potential customers, and industry professionals. In many instances, trade shows revolve around a particular niche.
For instance, a mining exhibition will bring together vendors, professionals, and potential customers, within the mining industry. This allows different groups, exhibitors, and customers to get into contact with people and brands that have potential solutions for their problems and pain points.
It’s worth noting that sometimes trade shows are less specific and cover industry or development as a whole. In many cases, these kinds of events will become a bit of a catch-all for different companies looking to show off their products and services. SInce many people are aware of this, it makes them an ideal place to practise promotion and find new customers.
Trade show marketing: key goals
We’ll discuss some of the many benefits of this type of marketing in just a minute. For now, let’s take a look at why companies and brands practise marketing at trade shows. There are several common goals, including the following:
- Gaining exposure for their brands: One of the main reasons why brands and companies visit trade shows is to gain brand exposure and build a reputation within their respective industries. It’s a great way to start building a reputation.
- Generating new leads: In many cases, brands use trade shows as a way to get the contact details and information of people who would be interested in their products and services. It’s a great way to build a sales pipeline even if it doesn’t result in immediate sales.
- General networking: In many cases, B2B connections can be just as meaningful as B2C connections. Trade expos and fairs are a useful way to build connections with industry influencers and companies that would make valuable partners.
- Conducting market research: There’s practically no better place to do research about the current state of the market than a trade show. You get to see most of the newest and greatest inventions in the industry while it also gives you an opportunity to gauge market sentiment.
- Gaining immediate sales: While it often isn’t the immediate focus of marketing at these kinds of fairs, they can result in a fair number of sales and registrations.
Benefits of trade show marketing
When it comes to benefits, there are many unique and wonderful opportunities offered by trade shows. Below, we’ll discuss just a few of the key benefits. As you may have guessed, there’s a fair bit of overlap between the overall goals, and the benefits.
Brand exposure and awareness
One of the biggest benefits of this type of event is that it creates a platform for building brand awareness.
When you have a trade show booth, it provides a physical presence in your target market. As a result, people start becoming more aware of your brand. It becomes less distant and ethereal, and more a physical presence that can be interacted with.
It also allows you to show off your products and services, leading to an increase in credibility, and allowing people to recognize which products and services are associated with your specific brand.
Lead generation and sales
Possibly the most obvious benefit of this kind of event is that it allows you to connect with customers directly, making it a great way to meet potential customers and build relationships.
This, in turn, helps you to generate leads within your industry. In some cases, you may be able to close sales immediately. In others, you’ll be able to close leads when you follow up later.
Market research and feedback
In addition to the sales-related benefits of meeting your customers directly, it also creates an opportunity for you to garner feedback about your products, services, or marketing efforts.
It’s also a unique opportunity to analyse what your competitors are doing, including their strategies, services, and products. FInally, it gives you the opportunity to get an overall snapshot of the latest industry developments, helping to ensure that you stay current within your market.
Networking opportunities
Trade shows offer you the opportunity to enlarge your network and build many beneficial relationships. Whether that means meeting other professionals in your field, exploring potential collaborations or joint ventures, or learning from experts and sharing your own insights.
Product launches and demonstrations
Trade shows give you an exciting, and unique opportunity to launch new products or demonstrate their capabilities, to an audience that’s already well-versed in your particular industry.
Not only does this increase the visibility given to new products and services, but it allows you to gather feedback from industry professionals, all while allowing you to engage potential customers directly.
Content creation
Trade shows also offer a tremendous opportunity for you to create content. WIth the information, photos, videos, and behind-the-scenes content you get at the show you can do blog posts writing about your experiences and insights, case studies highlighting successful customer interactions, and even social media promotions.
Team building
One unexpected benefit of marketing at this kind of event is that it allows you to build closer relationships between your team members. Through collaboration, it fosters teamwork among different team members.
It can also be a motivational experience, boosting morale and creating a sense of achievement. It’s also a great way to provide opportunities for team members to learn and grow.
The beginner's roadmap
Now that we’ve discussed trade shows, and their potential benefits, let’s take a closer look at the process, step-by-step. Below, we’ll discuss everything you need to know to successfully plan marketing at a trade show.
Define your objectives
The first thing you need to do when planning to market at a trade show is to establish clear goals for your trade show participation. A couple of examples of this include the following:
- Increasing your brand awareness by a certain percentage: Quantify the desired increase to measure your success. For example, "Increase brand awareness among target audience by 20% within three months of the trade show."
- Generating a certain number of qualified leads: Define a specific number of leads that you aim to acquire. For instance, "Generate at least 50 qualified leads."
- Securing a certain number of new customer deals: Determine the target number of new customers you want to acquire. For instance, "Close at least 3 new customer deals valued at $100,000 each."
When you set clear objectives, it allows you to align your marketing efforts with your intended goals. It also makes it considerably easier to set KPIs and measure your success after the event.
Craft your timeline
The next thing you need to do is develop a well-defined timeline. This step is key to a successful trade show marketing strategy. Generally,you can break this road map to success down into three individual phases or stages. Below, we’ll discuss each of these in detail, mentioning exactly what you need to do to successfully complete each phase.
Pre-event marketing (6 months - 1 week before)
While it may be difficult to comprehend how important it is, your promotion for a trade show actually starts months in advance. During the pre-marketing phase, you start building anticipation and letting people know that you will be participating in an event. This ensures that you’ll have at least a certain amount of interest at the trade itself.
The key aspect of this phase is to create a buzz around your attendance at the event. Email marketing, social media, industry publications, and even print media (to a degree) are all useful ways to help get people interested and informed.
During this time, it’s also important to highlight the key offerings that you plan on showing at the event. Use it as an opportunity to showcase any new products, services, or special promotions, as this will help to attract attendees.
You can also build anticipation by using teaser campaigns and countdown timers to generate a sense of excitement.
When you’re planning this part of the process, try to create a detailed schedule of which promotions you plan on running and when. This will help to ensure that the process is as painless as possible. You can even schedule things like emails and social media posts in advance.
At-event marketing (during the trade show)
The next part of the timeline happens at the event itself. During this part of the process, your main goal should be to engage with as many people as possible.
Some ways that you can accomplish this include the creation of interactive activities, offering product demonstrations, and conducting informative presentations. Try to plan the different demonstrations and activities in advance so you know exactly what you’re going to do on each day, and can make the process as smooth as possible.
Use the trade show as a way to help you distribute targeted marketing materials like brochures, flyers, and catalogues with clear messaging and contact information. Doing so is a useful way of attracting people to your booth where you can then use lead capture forms or QR codes to gather attendee information.
Post-event marketing (after the show)
Both fortunately and unfortunately, your work doesn’t end when the trade show does. In a way, this phase contains more work than the previous two.
Now that you’ve done all the planning, been to the show, and captured leads, it’s time to start doing follow-ups. You can send personalised emails, make phone calls, and use other marketing techniques to reach out and nurture relationships that may convert leads into customers.
You also need to optimise your strategies for future events by analysing the results to evaluate the effectiveness of your trade show marketing efforts. Since you set goals earlier, it will be easier for you to track metrics like leads generated, sales made, and brand awareness, and compare them to your goals to see how you performed. Later, use the insights you’ve gained to improve your future trade show marketing efforts.
Know your audience
Where trade shows are concerned, people often overlook the fact that understanding your target audience is crucial for crafting effective marketing messages. As with any other type of marketing, you need to develop a buyer persona for your target audience.
It can also be highly effective to divide your audience into several different categories. Here's how to segment your audience effectively:
Existing customers
Existing customers are incredibly valuable in this process as they give you a group of people to analyse and sell to.
Try to leverage the relationship you already have with them by acknowledging their existing loyalty and highlighting how your new offerings can benefit them. It’s also a good idea to offer exclusive benefits to your existing clients. These may include providing exclusive discounts, early access to new products, or personalised recommendations. All of these tools may be used to help strengthen their loyalty, and keep them coming back for more
As mentioned, these existing clients can also be a useful source of information. Try to gather feedback by conducting surveys or interviews to help you understand the needs and preferences of your clients better.
Potential customers
When it comes to potential customers, in any part of the sales funnel, the approach needs to differ somewhat. Not only are they not yet intimately acquainted with your brand, product, and services, but they may not even know you exist.
To reach these people, you need to approach them as individuals who may have an interest in your product, but not much specific knowledge.
The first step here is to identify their pain points. Take the time to research their challenges and address them in the messaging related to your marketing.
Next, highlight any unique value propositions. These should clearly articulate how your products or services can help solve their problems or improve their lives. Try to leverage their pain points to your advantage and use it as an angle to make sales.
Finally, leverage your existing network, and expand your network to connect with industry influencers or partners to reach potential customers who may not be aware of your brand.
Develop compelling content
No matter where you are in the process, a modern audience requires compelling content if you want to draw attention. You need to create engaging content that draws prospective buyers in. This should happen across various channels throughout your timeline.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is one of the most popular, and effective, means of marketing today. It doesn’t have to deal with many of the problems and issues that print media faces, and it is immediately available to anyone who cares to read it the minute you publish.
When preparing for a trade show there are three main portals that can be incredibly useful in this regard. Let’s take a closer look.
Email Marketing can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. The ideal approach is to craft personalised email campaigns that incorporate targeted messaging (based on your audience research) and compelling calls to action like “Visit our booth at the trade market for all your marketing needs.”
Social media campaigns are another excellent way to reach potential clients. Ensure that you develop content that’s been tailored to the unique audience and algorithm of each platform. Remember to use visuals, videos, and interactive elements to capture attention, and draw people to the trade market.
Another excellent way to practise digital marketing, both during the lead-up to the event, and during the event itself, is to collaborate with influencers in your industry to reach a wider audience and build credibility. It’s also a great way of encouraging people to come and visit your booth to see the products and services you have to offer.
Traditional Marketing
When it comes to live, in-person events like trade markets, digital marketing can only fill a certain part of the requirements. It’s also necessary to practise more traditional styles of marketing and promotion.
These will include on-site interactions with the attendees. Which, in turn, means that you need to train your employees in effective engagement so that they can answer questions, get people’s attention, and provide product demonstrations.
With this kind of event you also want your booth to be as bold and noticeable as possible (without compromising on visual appeal). Ensure that you design visually appealing booth materials with clear messaging, contact information, and a strong call to action. Consider incorporating QR codes for easy lead capture.
Finally, you need to be on your A-game visually. Use high-quality visuals, graphics, and displays to make your booth stand out from the crowd. Consider incorporating interactive elements to engage attendees. Always stick to your brand identity, and use imagery that suits your brand persona.
By combining digital and traditional marketing, you can create a comprehensive strategy that reaches your target audience effectively and drives results.
The power of follow-up
The final, and arguably most important part of the process is following up on all the leads you’ve generated.
The most important part of lead engagement is to follow up within 24-48 hours to show your interest and maintain momentum. This also helps to convey that you are professional and prioritise your clients.
Personalisation is another essential part of the process, and you need to tailor your messages to address their specific needs and interests. As part of the process, try to offer as much additional value as possible. Provide leads with relevant resources, answer their questions, and consider offering exclusive discounts to encourage purchases and subscriptions.
After the trade show, you can also create a sense of urgency by offering limited-time discounts or promotions to incentivize immediate action. It's important to clearly highlight the benefits and value proposition of your offer and how it can benefit the customer.
Finally, with post-trade-show offers, be sure to set a deadline. By creating a sense of scarcity (through setting a deadline for the offer) you can effectively encourage leads to make quick decisions.
Content creation from your booth
It’s important to remember that you can also create content from your booth, which can help entice leads to become conversions.
As part of your post-trade-show marketing, it’s essential to leverage visual content by using photos and videos from your booth to showcase your products, services, and interactions with attendees. Not only does it help to improve your credibility, but it helps to create a fear of missing out that encourages people to purchase.
You may also want to share testimonials that highlight positive feedback from customers or attendees to build credibility and trust. Creating blog posts and articles containing informative content based on your booth experiences, industry insights, or product demonstrations is also effective.
By following up with leads and creating engaging content, you can extend the impact of your trade show participation and generate long-term benefits for your business.
Conclusion
As you have undoubtedly seen, there are a great many reasons why you may wish to market at a trade show. And the process itself isn’t as daunting as you might imagine, as long as you embrace solid planning and good marketing practices.
If you’re preparing for a trade show, and you’d like to ensure that you use only the best marketing, feel free to reach out to us. Our range of marketing services are sure to meet your needs and help make your trade show marketing the best it can be.
