5-Steps to Creating a Successful Trade Show Strategy

Developing a trade show strategy takes time and cross-channel involvement; however, once your strategy is complete, the creation, development, and measurement of your trade show program are instrumentally easier.

Our team outlined 5-steps to take you through developing a strong and impactful trade show program strategy.

1.      Analyze last year’s program

It’s important to take time to look back and reflect on your previous trade show. Was your organization pleased with the success or is there more room for improvement? As you analyze, be sure to evaluate your previous objectives and if you achieved them. For example, did you receive the qualified leads that you were looking for? Did your company close the business leads that you captured on the show floor? Did your brand experience offer a positive perception change or increased brand awareness? These reflections should guide your next trade show to optimize the performance and business impact.

2.      Conduct a competitive audit

Often, brands can get caught up in their own projects (understandable) that they forget to monitor what their competitors are up to. This is a very important step in the strategy development phase. When you assess your competition, you’re able to define further and refine your program to help you stand out from the crowd. We recommend annual competitive audits at a bare minimum. An easy way to conduct this is to follow a simple S.W.O.T. analysis.

3.      Assess your position

Once you’ve completed steps one and two, it’s important to determine how those two can influence your current positioning with modifications so your brand, products, and services are strong and set-apart in the market. You might need to bring in your company’s larger marketing team to develop campaigns that help to differentiate your company with unique selling propositions and strategic messages – and that’s okay and good. Significant revelation can take place at trade shows because you’re often physically very close to your competitors and can compare a vast set of brands against yours to improve your presence. In addition, we often see competing companies using the same language – you definitely want to steer clear from this common issue.

4.      Engage internal teams

Step three might require new brand positioning, messaging, and marketing campaigns, and step four is bringing everyone together to align on your new trade show program with supporting, cross-channel engagement. Trade shows shouldn’t operate in a silo, but as a cohesive marketing program supported throughout the organization. You will want to engage and align your teams including customer service, product teams, marketing, and sales. Marketing is often a big one to tackle. Trade shows should be promoted through digital marketing including email, website, social media (both paid and organic), and more. And if lead generation is a priority for your organization, you’ll want to bring in your sales department; they often have the best ideas to showcase products and services. In step four, you’ll engage, align, and activate teams to make your next trade show your best trade show.

5.      Write a solid brief and enlist a stellar brand experience company

The last step in your strategy is to write a solid brief that can be given to your brand experience company to make your strategy come to life on the show floor. We recommend starting with S.M.A.R.T goals and building from there. Ideally, it’s best to send out an RFP 6-12 months before a show, but we understand that this timeline doesn’t work for every brand and show, and so expedited RFP processes do take place.

We wish you the best in your strategic development and if you have any questions or would like to engage our team for help, you know how to find us!

Increase Your Lead Generation

Leads, it’s what 95% of exhibitors want and it’s our privilege to help our clients increase their lead generation through smart technology.

To get the most qualified prospects, it requires a strategic plan as well as the technology to make it happen.

Eighty-one percent of trade show attendees are individuals who have authority at their organization to make purchases; therefore, most attendees are key decision makers. If your organization wants more leads and you have a trade show program, we highly encourage you to consider sales enablement and lead generation.

To help attendees through the sales funnel and provide them with the relevant content they need, we have a technology integration called Capture and Sales Enablement. The program provides sales teams on the show floor with a fully customizable app that enables them to:

• Capture leads

• Upload them to CRM

• Instantly share compelling content

• Close more leads

The app allows sales teams to create, manage, and track interactive sales content to help potential customers through the sales journey with the right content at the right time.

Sales teams on the show floor are equipped to generate and organize leads in one intuitive platform by the simple act of scanning a badge or business card on their mobile device. Then they can immediately be added to your CRM or marketing automation for further nurturing.

The tool is efficient, effective, and easy to learn and use, even for non-technical users.

If you haven’t thought about a lead generation tool for your trade show program, we’d love to further discuss with you. Countless clients of ours have raving reviews of how Capture and Sales Enablement has helped them achieve their trade show goals and increase their revenue.

Technology Should Advance Brand Experiences

Technology is everywhere. But often, it lacks strategic integrations.

Strong technology solutions should foster three things for your business. It should educate, equip, and inspire your audience with the right content. It should lead your end user to start a conversation with an individual at your company. And it should have a strategic role within your sales program.

Educate, Equip, & Inspire

We all know technology is amazing. It’s a tool that our team integrates into almost every brand experience. Technology should educate, equip, and inspire your audience with the relevant information they need to move along in their customer journey. We’ve helped clients use dozens and dozens of technology integrations to communicate their message in a way that makes sense for the environment and the individual. Both the environment and end user are extremely important considerations to think through when choosing which technology to implement. Each solution is valuable but there’s always one that is better for the brand experience. Two great examples of educating, equipping, and inspiring are General Mill’s iPad Survey with Live Streaming Results and MegaFood’s Digital Product Kiosk.

Lead to Conversations

Technology should almost always lead the end user to begin or continue a conversation with a representative from your company. Whether we implement augmented reality, virtual reality, RFID, flip disk walls, gamification, or iPads and screens they should always be part of the program to facilitate conversations. Technology should never be siloed but it should be paired with human interactions. At the end of the day, business is about building relationships and helping people, and technology should be a tool to do both. Two examples of excellent technology that led to qualified conversations are Agosto’s Flip Disc Technology and Kobelco’s Gamification Matching Game.

Integrate with Sales

Sales, it’s what most companies want. Technology should funnel through to your company’s sales objectives as a tool and methodology to support growth. We help our clients integrate with our technology solutions to drive lead generation and sales enablement. We recently implemented our lead generation and sales enablement tool to help a client increase their qualified lead generation goal by 150%.

An example of a strong technology and sales integration is 3M’s Retail Pop-Up.

Technology helps brand experiences to be more educational, conversational, and integrated into larger business objectives. As you evaluate your technology integrations, be sure it advances your brand experiences.

For more technology inspiration, head to our YouTube channel to see a variety of integrations for brand experiences.