One of the 2 standard periods in the calendar year where lots of venues across GB are hosting lots of different expos full of lots of different exhibitors trying their best to sell to attendees without coming across as selling.
Why should businesses pay to exhibit at a relevant expo? Well, it’s one of the many ways of advertising a business to what should logically be relevant people who have some sort of existing interest. Pick the right event (within your budget of course) and you could easily have the opportunity to advertise to, and engage with, hundreds of prospective customers in a short space of time.
If you’ve never been to the event before (either as an exhibitor or visitor), I recommend going as a visitor 1st to see for yourself whether it’s busy enough, who typically exhibits, what the speakers are like and, ultimately, how engaged visitors are with those on the stand who are selling without coming across as selling. Before you part with a sizeable amount of money, don’t just take someone else’s word that it’s a great event to be at, go see for yourself.
As is always the way with trade shows, the big players with the big marketing budgets have the flashiest stands which, because we are basic in so many ways, attract people like flies. Attracting people to the stand is the most immediate challenge for all exhibitors so, especially if you don’t have a champagne budget, you’ve got to be creative and, over the years, I’ve seen numerous very creative gimmicks which haven’t meant selling a kidney and have worked perfectly at stopping people at stands.
But relying on a gimmick to stop people is unlikely to be the best strategy for you to make a success of being at the expo. You’re going to need some proactive people who can engage strangers, hold conversations and follow a typical sales process that works for them.
Like all sales processes (because we are selling even though we’re pretending to not 😉), the next stage is crucial…the actual engagement with those whose attention you’ve got. They may have been attracted to the gimmick, they may have just caught your eye and they may have not even been considering stopping at all but you saw their badge and stopped them (if this is you BTW, kudos…you are in the absolute minority of people on stands at shows)…whichever it was, you have a very brief window to capture more of their attention. Get it wrong and off they go maybe never to be seen again but get it right and you should be able to scan them to follow up with after the show.
Let’s assume it’s been a positive experience for you as an exhibitor and you’ve accessed the list of scans you’ve taken during the event. Can you easily tell from that list who’s a priority to get in touch with over the other scans? Is it definitely a list of genuine potentials or did someone get trigger happy and scan anyone and everyone who came into their line of sight? What are you going to do with this data? Whatever you do decide to do, you need to move quickly as, especially during the typical ‘seasons’ for trade shows (March-May and then Sept-Nov), there’s a strong chance the people you’ve scanned will be at other events soon and, unless they’re contacted by you very quickly and with a very compelling message, forget you which, when you do get around to it, will make your follow up more difficult.
Events/trade shows/expos can be a lot of fun as long as they’re organised correctly and the plans are in place and agreed on for what happens before, during and after the event. As long as you give yourself enough time to plan, you should be able to get overnight accommodation which isn’t far away, has onsite parking, is close to places to eat and doesn’t destroy your budget. For those on the stand, for them to be effective in helping you get the best ROI from exhibiting, they need to feel proud of the stand, comfortable with where they’re staying & clear on the expectations of them.
Although a lot of my content is around sales development, tips and improving techniques…this post isn’t so feel free to contact me if you need to discuss best ways of stopping people, starting conversations, fact-finding, recording scans and then the follow ups.
