At the exhibition is great to have great graphics or the most spectacular stand ever seen, but what makes you really successful is the famous king: content. You will need to think, innovate, reject some of the ideas, think again, plan, train, plan again, and so on. Face-to-face marketing is incredibly powerful way to collect leads and make your leads convert into sales, but you need to know what are you doing, and most importantly: why. So, better to be well prepared!
There are four key ingredients for a successful exhibition participation:
1 – UNDERSTAND YOUR OBJECTIVES
It’s not just setting goals and objectives – the most important thing is to understand the WHY.
Why are you attending? What are you trying to archive? What are you looking for?
2 – PROMOTE
Over 80% of the visitors use show previews to help them plan their visit.
So promote your presence – tell your audience why they should come to see you. You can do this for example by advertising in industry publications or taking advantage of the social media platforms. Or both and more.
3 – PREPARE WELL
You only have 5 seconds to make a positive impression with the visitors, and negative impression takes at least 30 minutes to correct. Train your stand staff, and help them to understand how they are expected to interact with the visitors, and what they are trying to archieve. You can also set personal goals for every staff member.
Remember to treat everyone coming into your stand as a potential new customer, and never ever despise anyone! According to some studies, sometimes even 85% of the visitors have “buying power”, which means they either make their company’s purchases or directly influence the purchasing decisions.
4 – EVALUATE AND MEASURE
Measuring your performance will enable you to evaluate how successful you were or weren’t, identify areas of improvement, think what to do differently next time and most importantly: prove your return on investment.