Many of you will have visited a trade fair in your life. But there are reasons why you should consider being more than just a visitor and setting up your own stand. Below you can find six of them.
1 – Raise your profile and stand out
Exhibiting at trade fairs is an excellent way to make your company noticed and remembered. The environment at trade fairs is ideal in the sense that you are surrounded by people who are interested in the subject matter (judging from the fact that they chose to arrive at the fair). In other words, your approximate target group has been filtered for you automatically. Seeing that the people strolling the exhibition halls are those relevant for your business, it is important to stand out.
2 – Expand your contact database and gather leads
In the best case, the contact details you obtain at a trade fair can become leads that result in sales. And at the very least you can increase people’s awareness of your company by sending out a newsletter to all of your new contacts. Remember, also, to send LinkedIn contact requests to the most potential new contacts!
3 – Meet face to face with customers
A good-looking stand and its well-planned contents entice people to come closer and see what it is all about. This provides you an excellent chance to get in face-to-face contact with potential new customers. The next time the person needs your product or service, you are likely to be the first provider that comes to their mind.
4 – Network and establish partnerships
One important part of professional trade fairs are meetings aimed at establishing partnership agreements. International fairs tend to attract the important influencers of the industry worldwide to the same time zone – therefore, it is a good idea to set up as many meetings beforehand as possible, to ensure your time at the fair is well spent!
5 – Launch a new product
Trade fairs are traditionally a good place for launching new products. Visitors have easy access to the products and can familiarise themselves with their functions. In other words, the product gets the chance to win over the customer and sell itself.
6 – Do some benchmarking
It is important to keep up to date with what your competitors are up to. Benchmarking your company against your competitors might reveal some essential development points which may have been overlooked otherwise. At international fairs, you have the additional benefit of observing what companies operating in other market areas do differently from you.
This post has been originally posted in Finnish 5.11.2014.