Five Tips for Maximizing ROI at a Trade Show

Trade shows provide a lot of great ways to gain new customers and strengthen relationships with existing customers. How do you get maximum conversion from trade shows like this? Here are five essential tips: 

1. Be unique and promote creatively

You want to stand out from the hundred other booths so draw people in with special speakers, competitions, mini-events or even a phone charging station. Create an energy and atmosphere around your booth that passers-by cannot resist. Once you have their attention make sure to interact with them and get the all import badge scan or business card. (If the trade show doesn’t have badge scanning, make sure to have a SHORT contact form, of just four or five fields, for new leads). Another great way to an attendee’s heart is through their stomach. Offer food or drinks, but be sure the packaging comes with your branding or at least a business card attached so attendees remember where they got it from.

2. Use social media

You should have a social media marketing plan in place long before the event. Start telling and reminding followers weeks in advance where and what you’ll be exhibiting. Give followers an irresistible reason to drop by your stand by offering a special offer or giveaway only available at the show. Even better yet, incentivize people to post something about your stand or have them photograph themselves with your logo. Many more new potential attendees will now be seeing your product or logo via someone else’s network, plus online mentions or posts are a great way to measure which social media channels generate the most buzz for you. 

3. Promotional products

The staple of trade shows, branded promotional products are often what attendees remember a business by. Choose something that is unique, purposeful and stands out from the crowd. Come up with something fun that will make attendees think “I want one too”. You could create a specific product just for trade-shows, like a seat cushion for all the seated sessions or branded slippers for all the sore feet from standing all day. Again make sure you are getting the attendees details in exchange, keep your goodies out of arms reach so you get the chance to interact with the attendees first. If your product is on the higher cost side, you may want to substantiate the value of each contact and only give these out to hot leads.

4. Create a specific offer for the trade show

Have an offer that only attendees from the trade show have access to. Make sure this is posted clearly and specifies that it is only available for purchase at the trade show. You will need to do a bit of preparation around this one, in regards to how you will process these purchases; normal account sign-up process is often too long for trade-shows so streamline your usual process and have a special landing page created for people to sign-up through.

5. Follow up and track your new leads

Trade show marketing can result in high ROI if done with some dedicated planning and creativity. Make sure to take advantage of any momentum and follow up with your new contacts. When considering the success of your trade show initiatives bear in mind that there can be many types of wins. Obviously sales and contact gains are the ultimate ROI so when these are entered into your CRM make sure you have created a naming convention for these leads. This will make it easy to compare your ROI from the show against your other marketing drives. But remember to also measure the number of new followers you gained on social media platforms and how many tags in conversations you received. 

While there are many more ideas that will make you stand out, the important things are to be well-prepared and to commit to whatever approaches you decide to use. If your trade show visit was deemed a success, start thinking about what you can improve on for the next time and what other organizations were doing. If you didn’t see what your competitors were up to, hopefully this means your own stand was inundated with sales and new clients.