What a Trade Show is Supposed to Accomplish

by admin Posted on June 21, 2011

What a Trade Show is Supposed to Accomplish

There is a lot of back-and-forth about whether or not it is valuable for a company to attend or display at trade shows. So much, in fact, that it is helpful to get back to the basics to remember what a trade show is meant to accomplish for your business. When you put the trade show booth graphics and promotional giveaways aside, what are the bare bones of why you should exhibit at a trade show?

One of the biggest reasons people have given for exhibiting at trade shows is lead generation. You put yourself and your product out there, people walk around, they see you have something to offer, and all of the sudden you have a contact and a sales lead you didn’t have before you set up that booth at the trade show. That is why so many marketing professionals talk about the potential ROI of a trade show—you may have to spend money to be there, but the potential sales you rack up will more than make up for the money you spent. Right? Maybe not, but there are other reasons for doing it.

One big reason is that you see what the competition is up to. A big downside to that is that they also see what you’ve got going on with your company. If you are rolling out a new product, you can bet that a trade show is great place to display it to potential buyers, but it is also a great place for a competitor to sneak a peak, and what is to stop them from mimicking your product and even your product campaign? For some companies, this is a calculated risk that has positive results that outweigh the negative.

As with any business tactic or marketing strategy, you have to look at it personally, and decide if it is good for your company. Most of the time, if you have a strong brand and a good legal team, the positives outweigh the negatives by quite a lot, and a trade show is a great marketing tool for you.

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Motivating Your Trade Show Team

by admin Posted on May 12, 2011

Motivating Your Trade Show Team

Trade shows are long and testing, both mentally and physically. Your people need to work together well and to exercise initiative and determination throughout the planning, show and post-show periods. There is a huge need for excellent managerial coordination across all the elements of the trade show team, but even with a poor plan or poor show, if you have well motivated people, you can achieve anything.

In order to motivate your people, you need to establish what your goals are. Being specific and producing well-thought out objectives will leave no room for doubt as to what the overall targets are and just what team and individual member’s responsibilities are.

If your team knows exactly what is required of it, they have something to shoot for. An amorphous goal is simple aiming to shoot a cloud and is ineffective. In addition, if you have a clear objective strategy which has the support of senior management and demonstrates positive benefit to the company, then it simpler and easier to gain the support and enthusiasm of people who are not directly connected to the project.

You also should recognize that your team is not simply the booth staff who will be on the trade show floor. Your team will include all of the support staff who are handling planning, support, administration, marketing, logistics and post show follow up.

Assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of each team member so you obtain the right balance for the trade show itself. A booth staff team will comprise sales staff for obvious reasons, however you should also look to include support and service people too. The reasoning behind this is that they are a demonstration to your commitment to customers, and in addition they are able to field technical conversations which sales people usually fluster.

Your post-show follow up team is vital to the overall success of the campaign. If the follow up is being handled by the booth staffers, then you must ensure that they stay on top of things after the show frenzy os over. It is all too easy to down tools and relax for a day or two after the show, however this is the time to calling contacts made, following up with emails and mail and arranging sales meetings to take the sales process to completion.

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Creating and Maintaining Trade Show Focus

by admin Posted on May 6, 2011

Creating and Maintaining Trade Show Focus

Trade show effectiveness and success depends on achieving a focus on your strategies and executing them. There is a natural tendency for trade show exhibitors to either attempt to do far too much, or they fail to do enough. What you really need is to understand what is going to happen on the day well in advance of the event itself. The issue is how do you know what is going to happen in the first instance?

We know we cannot predict the future, but by carefully planning and preparing we can gain an increased understanding of the possible opportunities or pitfalls. In order to establish focus we should first determine what goals and objectives you are looking to achieve. You need to be specific when setting your targets because this will help you when it comes to measuring how well you are succeeding in meeting them. Being specific will also help you when you are working with your trade show team and allocating responsibility to individual members; a specific target is undeniable and unarguable.
Thinking through your goals will help you to create a strategy which is creative and able to identify problems and choke points in your plans. Specific goal setting will also help you in motivating your team, both in the planning phase and on the day of the show. You will also find that establishing goals in “hard terms” will also help you with budgeting and deciding on what is an absolute priority and what is an optional extra that can be dispensed with if budgetary considerations require.

The first step to creating focus is to create a short list of your objectives. Once you have half a dozen or so, then you should proceed to ascertain which of them will generate the greatest ROI. It is these objectives which should dominate your resources, investment, time and energy.

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