Whether you’re exhibiting at your very first trade show or you’re years into an extensive trade show exhibition program, it’s important to market your trade show booth presence to increase the amount of traffic through your virtual front door. This seems like a basic premise, but many exhibitors don’t take advantage of various tools to increase traffic flow through their trade show booth. Large corporations with sophisticated marketing teams can pull out all the bells and whistles, but with just a little guidance, so too can the mom and pop businesses seeking to compete. Consider the following tools you can use:
Work The Show’s Attendee List
The easiest way to market to the people who are going to a trade show is to purchase a copy of the attendees list. Often, this is available a couple of months in advance of the trade show. At that time, exhibitors can start a comprehensive email and phone call campaign to invite attendees to their trade show booth. This is effective when combining calls and emails because people start to recognize the exhibitor’s name. If it takes approximately 8 to 11 touches to turn a prospect into a sale, making multiple touches in advance of the trade show is a great method for attracting people to your trade show booth.
Advertising Your Trade Show Booth on Social Media
We all are addicted to social media. It’s become so ingrained in everyday life that every show has their own custom hashtag now, and sometimes multiple hashtags. With just a little bit of photoshop (or a similar photo editing program) you can create a nice flyer or a pic of the team. On this picture you too can use the show’s hashtag to say join us in trade show booth number 123 to learn more about our products. The key is to consistently make use of a variety of social media platforms to advertise your trade show booth. Your customers may be on multiple social media platforms- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Every business or consumer has a preferred social media hangout. By advertising your trade show booth on all of these platforms, it’s far more likely you’ll reach these customers.
Geo-Fencing Around the Convention Center
Geo-fencing sounds like a complicated marketing tool. The truth is you can use a third party to manage this process for your brand. Essentially, to advertise your trade show booth, a message would be sent to any person entering the vicinity of the convention center. This would be sent on platforms like Facebook where visitors would view ads directing them to your trade show booth. This is a highly effective method of trade show display marketing. Imagine the ability to attract more visitors to your trade show booth than your largest competitor with this technology. Because of the nature of geofencing, many brands that don’t have large or sophisticated marketing teams often are unaware of the ROI they can achieve. Yet it’s simple enough for a mom and pop shop to outsource this function and reap larger rewards in marketing their trade show booth.
Invite Your Customers to Your Trade Show Booth
Want to pack your trade show booth with people? Invite the people who should be your strongest advocates- your customers. This works to attract more people and also presents a happy front to prospects who might wonder what becoming a client would be like. It’s important to make invitations early to unveil a new product or service, or to thank them for their dedication by inviting them to a small “family” night with the team. This good will can amplify throughout the trade show hall.
Trade show marketing can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. It doesn’t have to cost extra money to market your brand at the show but you can also manageably spend your marketing dollars to increase traffic and ROI. For more advice, ask your Account Executive working with you to design your trade show exhibit.
