Tips on National Trade Shows and Events

Tips on National Trade Shows and Events

Get the best tips about national trade show and event marketing from small business owners and marketing professionals, agencies and freelancers with expertise in trade show marketing.

Tips about National Trade Shows from SuperCollar owner Jane Angelich

"As a startup business, supercollar®, the world's only dog collar with a built-in leash, hit the trade show circuit at the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City.

Having little to no idea on how to begin planning and preparing for the show (and a very small budget!), I sought out all the advice I could get off of the internet and got a lot of great advice from MarketingZone.  The results ended up being phenomenal!  

We are a pet product and our booth sat in a sea of 800 fancy booths of outdoor products like kayaks, camping equipment and hiking gear...but we won one of six Best in Show Products awarded by 3M. We also were picked up by numerous "brick and mortar" retailers, catalogs and online retailers.  Let me tell you candidly that our booth was the barebones 10x10 variety and here are five tips that we followed to hit it out of the park:

1.  Created a "home grown" video with a "punch" that we played continuously throughout the show.  Our product is shown pulling a 2700 pound car, so it drew people in and kept them busy while we talked to other people.  We brought our own laptop, didn't pay to rent one, and did pay for electricity for our booth.

• Here's a link to see the video they created
  

2.  We talked to everyone we could.  Standing in your booth and watching people walk by is what we witnessed in other booths.  We stood in the front of our booth and demo'd our product while greeting everyone with "have you seen the supercollar®?"

3.  We rented the basics for the booth.  No padding under the rented carpet, no waste baskets, one chair (you have got to sit down every once in a while) and a two tables, one tall one for the computer and  a 6' foot one for our printed materials.  We brought along two banners and collateral material to "pretty it up" and tell our story.

4.  We teamed up with a dog rescue organization and made T-shirts for the dogs that said "Visit us in Booth xxxx."  Volunteers walked the show for three days with different dogs wearing our product and distributing handouts about the supercollar®.  Some of the dogs got adopted, and we got lots of traffic in the booth.

5.  We offered a show special on pricing based upon quantity."

Tips and insights after attending the Auto Show that you can apply to your national trade shows and events

 

1.  Little things matter like extra padding in the carpeting.  It makes you feel the company makes a higher quality product when you walk to an area on the show floor with plush padding. 

2.  If you want people to stay awhile, provide chairs or stools. 

3.  Have some paper and pens available that trade show booth visitors can use to write down pricing and key information.  At the auto show, most of the exhibits had brochures of the cars were available if you asked someone but there wasn't space on the brochure to write down the key information the sales people shared. 

Better to make a small, nice looking flyer on card stock and leave the back blank for people to use for their notes.  Less expensive and more effective.

4.  Add laptops or kiosks where people can enter their contact information and permission for you to contact them after the show through email.  Great way to build your email list.  Give people an incentive to share their contact information by promoting a contest. 

Hyundai had six kiosks set up in their booth where people could type in their name, email address and phone number to enter a drawing for several give-aways of $500 for Apple products and a chance to win a Hyundai car. 

As I was leaving the show I got this email from them on my phone...thought I'd won something...no, it was just a marketing email but I opened it and looked at it.  Good way for them to instantly reinforce their brand messaging.

They also offered a special deal for show attendees in the email.  I think they were the only company at the auto show that asked for contact information this way.  What I didn't like was having to answer several screens of questions.  Think the customer experience would have been better if they'd just asked the minimal information and then over time asked more questions to enhance their customer profile on me.

• How-to Guide:  How to Collect and Save Customer Information
  

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