Participating in exhibitions is one of the effective tools to support the marketing of enterprises. Susan Friedmann – an expert in the field of marketing through events and meetings – offers the following 10 tips to help enterprises achieve high marketing efficiency when participating in an exhibition.
1. Have an exhibition marketing plan that fits into your business's overall marketing strategy.
Before participating in a trade show, a business needs to have a long-term overall marketing strategy and a tactical (short-term) trade show marketing plan. For trade shows to be an effective tool to support marketing efforts, the trade show marketing plan must be consistent with the business's overall marketing strategy. It is necessary to clearly define the objective of participating in the exhibition: to increase market share from current customers, to introduce new products (or services) to current or new customers, or to introduce new products to new markets?
2. Build a promotional program that matches your goals
Promotional activities are an important part of marketing and must be carried out before, during and after the exhibition. Most exhibitors do not coordinate promotional activities smoothly in all three stages. Budget is another issue that businesses should consider in order to use appropriate promotional forms. The theme or message of the promotional programs must be consistent with the business's marketing goals and strategies when participating in the exhibition. Businesses need to clearly identify their target customers and how to reach them (direct mail, advertising, PR, sponsorship, or via the Internet).
3. Use direct mail effectively
Direct mail remains one of the most popular promotional tools used by exhibitors. Visitors to exhibitions often receive invitations from various exhibitors. To attract visitors to your exhibition booth, you should send invitations to your current and potential customers from a pre-existing list. The invitations should be designed to emphasize the benefits of visiting your booth. If you use email, you should remind your customers once or twice a few weeks before the exhibition.
4. Create a reason to encourage customers to visit your booth
Regardless of the medium you use to promote your business, it is important that you give customers a reason to visit your booth. Customers often want to know something new and will be eager to learn about the latest apps or anything that will save them time and money. If you don’t have a new product or service to introduce to your customers, think about new aspects of your current product that will help customers achieve this goal.
5. Make meaningful gifts
The gift is also an incentive, encouraging customers to visit the company's booth. The gift must be designed to make customers remember the company more and increase their recognition of the company's products or services. The gift does not have to be a physical product, but can be a special report on topics that customers are interested in.
6. Use PR activities effectively
PR is one of the most cost-effective and efficient promotional tools. Before the exhibition, review the list of media agencies to see which agencies will publish the exhibition's theme, then send valuable articles and press releases to them. Articles should revolve around content about industry trends, statistics, information related to new products and services.
7. Differentiate your product or service
Do not use the same marketing tactics as your competitors when participating in an exhibition. Therefore, businesses should research their competitors' marketing tactics before participating in an exhibition. The difference will create an unforgettable impression of the business for customers and is a reason for them to think about buying the business's products. Every aspect of the business's marketing plan at the exhibition, from the way it promotes, how it decorates the booth, how it arranges the staff on duty at the booth, must aim to create an impression and arouse curiosity from customers.
8. Use the booth as a marketing tool
At the exhibition, the way a business organizes its booth represents many things that the business wants to send to customers. In addition to creating an open, friendly space for its booth, choosing a convenient location and decorating it to convey a message of benefits to customers are factors that determine the success of a booth. A beautiful picture can replace "a thousand words". The presentation is equally important. Create a space that customers can experience with as many senses as possible, only then will they remember the business.
9. Booth staff are marketing ambassadors.
They are the ones who represent the business to many customers, so they need to be carefully selected. Before the exhibition, the booth staff must be informed about the content, purpose of participating in the exhibition and the requirements placed on them. The main role of these staff is to understand the needs of customers and introduce the business's products or services. Exhibition staff need to be assigned specific and clear tasks and working hours.
10. Contact the customer again
The best time to contact customers is before the exhibition to know whether customers will attend the exhibition or not, from which appropriate reception preparations can be made. After the exhibition, businesses must continue to contact customers to find out their feedback or respond to specific requests that customers have made during the exhibition. To do this well, businesses need to have a scientific method and a serious work schedule.
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