Trade Show Marketing: How to Increase Sales and Improve Brand Awareness

Making a good ROI from participating in a trade show is not easy, but there are some things you can do to make your experience pay off: 

1. Your Display Booth Must Make a Great First Impression

An eye-catching creatively designed trade show booth can make that all-important great first impression, which gives you a distinct edge at any industry show or exhibition. In designing your booth you need to determine how your brand’s image should be presented to create the best possible impression among your target audience. 

For your booth to be as effective as possible, you must decide how best to utilise your space with regard to the following elements: 

•       How can you create an eye-catching display that promotes your brand?
•       Would your products look their best set up on tables or within display cases?
•       How will your brochures be displayed?
•        Do you have a video of your products being used that can be shown on a TV screen?
•        Will you be playing music to entice your audience?
•        Do you need to set up a crowd management system?

Most companies are on a limited budget as to what they can spend on designing a booth for a trade show exhibition. However, the design of your exhibit should be very carefully thought out and executed, never thrown together in a rush. Slimline Warehouse can help you do that with great looking displays at reasonable prices.

2. Get a Crowd to Attract Consumers

When consumers walk by and see crowds engaging with a particular brand, they want to join in on the excitement. How can you get crowds to come and gather around your booth?

•       Get company employees dressed like the public to gather around your booth.
•       Invite partners, sponsors and suppliers to the trade show to specifically attend a meeting at your booth.

·         By creating an interactive experience for your product, crowds will naturally gather around. You can do this with a touch screen catalogue or other information, video or actual in-person product demonstrations and/or guest speakers.

3. Use Giveaways to Expand Your Reach

Giving away promotional items always attracts a crowd because people love getting things for free. Doing this throughout the trade show is a great way to expand your reach.

Give out trinkets, key rings, calendars, wearables, stickers, pens, notepads and other useful items to attract people walking by. When the recipients later use these giveaways others will be curious about where they got them. To get visitors to come back to your booth, give the ones wearing your promotional items an opportunity to win some sort of prize. You can even set up a large raffledrum to attract attention.

4. Focus on Connecting, Not Selling

The primary purpose of setting up a booth in any trade show is to meet others and connect, not to sell your products. For you to gather leads, you need to offer people a good reason to give you their contact information.

Promoting an offer using an iPad has a way of encouraging more people to participate by signing up, which gives you their contact information. We recommend that you wait until after the show ends before following up with your prospects. Give them one day to get back to the office.

Innovative ideas and exhibition displays attract the most attention and buzz during a trade show, but the brand must harmonise with the design as well as the industry. The companies that enjoy the most success from trade show participation arrive at the show with a well thought out marketing campaign and a display to match.