Trade shows remain a huge opportunity for businesses to steer their business growth. This is perhaps the reason why every sagacious entrepreneur includes trade shows or exhibitions in the long term holistic marketing strategies. To be very honest, it might not even be possible for every business out there to fund such events right at their initial days in the industry. However, that definitely should not be reason enough for you to rule out trade show/exhibitions,
completely from your scheme of things.
If you are financially ready to conduct the exhibition of your products or services, then make sure you are going through the following tips to make your first trade show a huge success.
Make sure your efforts are backed by a great team
Start off by having a stellar team on board. When are you planning the exhibition in the first place? Make sure you’re reaching out to the staff with prior information. You should have at least a good two to four months time to decide everything – starting right from the creation of the team to of course the way you would want to end your exhibition.
Set up a team which will mostly be involved with the exhibition planning. Do not commit the mistake of hiring everyone in your office for planning and execution. Select a team – primarily from the senior level. You can keep aside some errands for the relative freshers though.
Your planing phase should include everything including:
Theme of the exhibition
The products that you want to display (whether there is any specific product or service that you would want to highlight or not—whether you would be able to highlight all your offerings within the prefixed time period or not etc)
Display stands (make sure your graphic designers have ample time to deliberate on, execute and revise the designs)
Venue
Food
Budget
How important is the venue?
Do ensure that you are selecting a venue which has everything going for it – starting from connectivity to overall feel of the place to décor and other amenities such as space decoration etc.
Kindly do not choose a location which is not easily reachable. In that case you would end up losing most of your attendees.
What about the team that’s accompanying you at the event?
Make sure you are bringing your A-team to the stall. In this case you can either bring your in-house team or get in touch with a staffing agency with considerable experience. Look out for individuals who are professional yet friendly, motivated and commands due specialization required for the job.
What else should you remember while conducting trade shows?
Train your staff as well. Make sure that even if you’re contacting a staffing agency you are training at least some of your in-house members for the trade show or exhibition. Encourage them to interact with visitors and to willingly answer the questions of the attendees. This goes a long way in forging mutually beneficial relationship.
