How to Successfully Promote Your Business at a Trade Show

Are you planning to attend your first trade show with your business?

If this is the first time you have represented your company at an industry event, you may be wondering how to ensure you portray your business in the best way and attract attention for all the right reasons. After spending so long building up your company and putting so much effort into making it a success, being able to take it a step further and promote your business at an event such as a trade show can feel both exciting and nerve-wracking. Being in the position even to attend a trade show is an impressive feat. So, using this as an opportunity to help your business shine is essential. 

Trade shows provide an excellent opportunity for you to showcase your business to an audience of your contemporaries and potential customers. This can sound a little scary, but it provides a host of exciting opportunities that could benefit your company in the short and longer-term.

Attending trade shows enables you to boost your company’s presence in the industry and foster recognition for your brand. You will also be able to make new connections and increase your contacts by networking at the event. In addition, attending a trade show is an excellent way to stay on top of the latest trends in your industry and to monitor what your competitors are working on. So, as well as being the perfect chance for you to attract new clients, attending a trade show and exhibiting your business is an ideal way to ensure that you stay a step ahead of the competition. 

Participating in a trade show can undoubtedly deliver a range of benefits, but it also takes significant time, effort, and cash to attend. So, ensuring your business maximises the potential benefits of attending the show is vital to making it worthwhile. Here are some of the ways to ensure that you successfully promote your business when attending trade shows and make the most of the opportunities that it provides: 

Plan Your Stand in advance

Planning your stand in advance will help you to maximise the space and figure out the exact setup you want to create and the message you want to portray.

Have an idea of the products and marketing that is important to your business.

From the table to posters, also consider other items such as a customised trade show table runner for businesses taking part in tradeshows.

Your exhibitor space will likely have fixed powerpoints, so planning the space around these may be necessary and will impact where you can position the furniture. You will also need to decide where you will display your marketing materials to ensure that your company name is prominent and guaranteed to get noticed.

Planning the appearance of your stand and getting the layout just right is essential. The better your stand looks and the more professional it seems, the better the impression it will make on potential customers

Reserve Your Space Quickly

Your first step towards attending a trade show and representing your business is to apply to become an exhibitor. Some trade shows have limited positions available for exhibitors of each type, so if your competitors are planning to attend, you may find that you are up against the competition to even receive a place in the lineup. For this reason, it is usually helpful to apply for a space as an exhibitor as soon as bookings open.

Applying for your space early should prevent you from missing out on securing a spot, but it can also offer financial benefits. Many event organisers offer an early bird discount, so getting your application in as soon as you can could help you not only secure a spot as an exhibitor but also to reduce the cost of attending the event in the first place.

Choose the Best Position

Once you have had your stand number and position confirmed, it is a wise idea to start examining the floor plan of the space and working out how you can best use it.

Selecting the best position is crucial when exhibiting your business. After putting time and money into attending, you need to be sure that your business is going to get noticed. You should receive a floor plan of the setup of the event and the positions of the different exhibitor stands that are available. Examining these and identifying the best spot for your company is crucial.

To make an informed decision on the best position for your business, you will need to consider which stands will receive the most footfall and which are in locations that may be overlooked by attendees. Stands that are on the main walkway through the exhibition and en route to the bar of the coffee shop are often popular choices. However, the cost of choosing the more favourable positions is likely to be more, so weighing up the potential benefits against the increased cost is essential to help you decide if the additional expense is worth it.  

Decide on Your Focus

Once you have chosen the best position for your business at the event, it is helpful to begin thinking about your focus for attending. Having a focus and a goal in mind that you hope to achieve by attending the event is an excellent way to ensure that the cost and time involved in attending the trade show are worth it. Your focus for attending the event and what you hope to get out of it can vary depending on your business goals and your company’s current performance.

Maybe you are hoping to use attendance at the trade show as an opportunity to promote a new service that your business offers? Or, perhaps you would like to make new contacts in the industry and build relationships with new suppliers. Selecting your focus for the event and using this as a goal to help you gain the most benefit from attending is a great way to ensure being at the event is worthwhile. 

Once you have decided on what you plan to focus on at the event and what you hope to achieve, you can start planning your stand and your marketing materials to reflect this.          

Order Marketing Materials

Ordering your marketing materials as soon as possible is essential to ensure that you are not caught out by any potential delays.

Contacting a Banner Printing Company and getting their expert opinion on the type of banner that will work best in the space is a wise idea. This will help you gain a clear picture of how your stand setup will look when you bring together all the different elements. 

While still waiting for your marketing materials to be delivered can cause a lot of stress, so getting organised ahead of time is a better solution and will avoid any last-minute panic.

Having your marketing materials delivered to you as soon as possible ensures that you are prepared for the trade show and will help to make the event as stress-free as possible. Having the event date looming

Don’t Forget to Network

While you may have a clear focus for attending the event and a firm idea of what you hope to achieve, it is also crucial not to overlook other potential benefits of attending. Networking and making new contacts are not always easy, but a trade show presents the perfect opportunity to do both. Having a range of different businesses and industry professionals all together under the same roof provides you with a unique opportunity to make beneficial connections and to raise the profile of your business amongst other business leaders in the industry. The contacts and connections you make from networking will benefit you long after the event has finished and could help you to establish some beneficial working relationships that last for many years to come. Once you have made connections at the event, it is essential to ensure that you maintain contact and don’t let your networking efforts go to waste.

De-Brief

Once the event comes to an end, you have packed up your stand and you and your team are back in the office, it is a good idea to carry out a de-brief of the trade show while the event is still fresh in your mind. Assessing what you think went well and which aspects you would repeat again at future events is a great way to ensure your business always does well when attending trade shows.    

As part of your debriefing session, you may want to calculate the return on investment (ROI) that you have gained by attending the trade show. As with every marketing activity that your business undertakes, it is essential to ensure that attending trade shows is worthwhile and that the cost and effort involved are justified. 

Representing your business at its first trade show will always be a learning experience, but acknowledging this and figuring out how you can make every future event better than the last will help you make attending a beneficial experience. There is so much to gain from promoting your business directly alongside your competitors in an industry-specific environment, so making the most of the opportunities this presents and ensuring that you build on these is crucial.