Business trade shows are a great way of finding new business opportunities and networking and for exhibitors a useful way of marketing your business. Being well into 2009 most of the major New Zealand wide trade shows are happening within the next few months including the popular Business Expo, Food Show and Craft Show. This article aims to help NZ businesses new to exhibiting at trade shows and how to make the most of the opportunity. We will use the Bizzone Business Expo as a NZ case study example.
Trade Show Planning
1. Choose a trade show that fits your target market
Exhibiting at a trade show is a common marketing method used across many industries. It gives you a chance to talk directly face-to-face to your customers and get instance feedback on your products and services. The first thing to think about when considering exhibiting at a trade show is finding one that is attended by visitors in your target market. You can obtain this information by looking for statistics on the trade show website, contacting the organisers, asking previous attendees, or the best of all attending yourself first.
2. Have a purpose and objectives
Whether its brand awareness, sales, or product testing make sure you clearly identify what your objectives are for exhibiting at the trade show. For instance, if your main objective is sales then a high priority will be to have well trained sales staff. When looking at your purpose also look at the metrics e.g. number of visitors and time frame of show. As most trade shows are only over several days at the most then you need to be realistic in what you can achieve in that timeframe.
3. Prepare a budget
Exhibiting at a trade show is a costly exercise and many of the expenses may not seem obvious from the beginning. Aside from the base exhibition space cost and rental furniture, there is staff, marketing material (business cards, posters, banners), incentives (special prize), internet connection. So it’s important to make sure you have a clear budget and list out all the associated costs. Also factor in slack for emergency during the show e.g. you need extra staff or more brochures printed.
4. Project manage your exhibition
A trade show is much like any project it requires planning to make sure all bases are covered. So you need to draw out a project plan. Make sure you arrange rental furniture well in advance (the longer you wait, your desired furniture may run out or be more costly)
Business Expo Case Study
‘The Kiwi Story’ was officially launched at the Auckland Small Business Expo in 2008 (now Bizzone Business Expo). We chose this particular trade show since it closely matched our target market as SME business owners are the target visitors and furthermore the exhibitors were also potential customers. We had two main objectives to launch the website i.e. introduce the website to all our visitors and secondly to sell our special expo package listing.
5 Key Lessons Learnt
1. Pre-show marketing
The Business Expo is very generous with the amount of entry tickets each exhibitor receives. Although we distributed these to key customers and business contacts at the last minute we realised potential customers were the best group to target. By offering potential customers free tickets they will at the very least appreciate your gesture and you’ll enter their radar or if they attend you know your stand will be a priority visit. Remember to include a map of where to find your stand and highlight you have a special trade show only offer.
2. How to attract people to your stand
In any trade show visitors are more hesitant visiting a stand when no one else is visiting it which suggests there really isn’t anything going on with the stand. So we first made sure we were proactive and introduced ourselves and invited visitors into our stand to demonstrate our website. What worked particularly well were 3 large wall posters we had which presented a clear overview of the website. Once we had a few people in our stand more followed and when we had around 3 groups of people was the most common time we made a sale. During quiet times we played our video which drew good crowds and distributed flyers in key spots to bring people to us instead of waiting for people to arrive. Even getting fellow exhibitors to our stand was highly valuable. The Business Expo had a very supportive exhibitor atmosphere. Don’t be shy to talk to other exhibitors since everyone is in the same boat and you might find they become valuable networks.
3. Be realistic about returns
If you do the math to make a return or profit at a trade show is difficult. The primary reason is most visitors will not make purchasing decisions on the spot as many will want to go away and review your material. This is largely due to the share volume of information they receive and they may even have several of your competitor brochures in their show bags. So if sales are your main motivation then you’ll need to tune your exhibit to either low cost volume or high ticket items (custom deal e.g. legal services) and having great staff to close the big ticket items. When projecting returns metrics is very important, of the 7000 people that attended the expo we recorded approx 500 people visiting our stand that at least walked away with a brochure or understanding of what we do.
4. Follow up
The best way of achieving lesson 1 is the follow up stage which means contacting all your potential leads after the trade show. So make sure you fully commit to the follow up phase which in our case was more crucial to the actual trade show. During the trade show note down which are your most promising leads. We found a 3-tiered grouping system worked well e.g. highly interested, interested and courtesy contact.
If your trade show ends on Friday you should aim to contact your most promising leads on the following Tuesday morning. A big tip is to make these personal since the chances are 10 other exhibitors are following them up too so make sure you re-jig their memory and recap something they told you when you met them e.g. a fact about their business or a problem they were facing. Hence you’ll want to note these details during the show as well.
5. Differentiate yourself
The biggest challenge at a trade show is differentiating yourself, just like in a shopping mall every stand has sales, big LCD displays, sharp sales staff and glossy brochures. So it’s important to think of your stand in the context of the whole show. A good way to do this is focus on something unique but focus on your strengths and point of difference as a business. A data recovery company had a clever stand at the Auckland business expo in 2008 where they had a computer which appeared to be going up in smoke. This was a great fit with their business and was an excellent way of grabbing a visitors attention.
Summary
Exhibiting at a trade show can be good marketing option provided you choose a trade show that fits your target market and have clear objectives. It is however a costly marketing exercise thus you should evaluate it against other marketing options you are considering. A crucial part of the trade show is the follow up as most visitors delay making purchasing decisions until after the trade show. Finally make sure you differentiate yourself to avoid being drowned out at the trade show and highlight what sets your business apart from the rest.
