The Ultimate Trade Show Success Series

Introduction

When done properly, a trade show can be an amazing investment in your company’s success. When done wrong, something that I see too often, a trade show can be a complete waste of both time and money.

While reading through this series, I recommend that you take notes. Write down everything that applies to you and your trade show situation. Then, go through the list with your team to decide which ideas to incorporate and which ones to save for another time.

Know Your Audience

A LOOK INSIDE THE ATTENDEE’S MIND

Trade shows are a hectic environment. They are filled with thousands of people scavenging from booth to booth hoping to collect a giant bag full of giveaways. It is like Trick-or-Treat for adults.

Hidden amongst those thousands of people is your target audience. Your goal is to sift through the masses and connect with the maximum number of qualified leads. Before we can do that though, we need to understand what’s going on in the minds of the trade show masses.

Attendees Are Selfish

This is not an attack on the character of trade show attendees. It’s simple human nature that affects all of us. People attending a trade show will not care what your company has to offer until they are shown how your company’s product or service can make their life easier.

It all comes back to WIIFM, or “What’s In It For Me.” WIIFM is the ONLY thing that attendees care about. Knowing this fact of human nature can help you shape your trade show marketing strategy for maximum results.

Focus on the Benefits

I see far too many companies focusing on the features of their product or service. Attendees do not care about features. They only care about benefits. If your trade show presentation includes features, they MUST be followed up with the BENEFITS of those features!

When planning each stage of your trade show action plan, more on that later, you must constantly be asking yourself, “What’s in it for my clients?” How can your potential clients benefit from what your company has to offer?

Be the Shiny Object

Trade shows have so much going on that it can lead to sensory overload for the attendees. You must find a way to stand out from the sea of booths. You must be the shiny object. We will delve more into the logistics of ‘standing out’ later in the series, but for now I want you to realize why it is so important.

We need to give the attendees a reason to stop at your booth instead of at your competitor’s booth. If your booth looks just like every other exhibit on the floor, the attendees won’t have a reason to stop. You will have been lost in the crowd. That must be avoided at all costs.

Give Them What They Want

Let’s get back to WIIFM. One of your goals when attracting people to your booth should be to provide the attendees with a positive experience while avoiding negative experiences. Let’s take a look at what a positive experience might include:

• Getting something for free

• Being entertained

• Doing something fun

• Trying something new

• Seeing something amazing

• Meeting interesting people

• Did I mention getting something for free?

Now let’s take a look at what a negative experience might include:

Sitting through a boring presentation

• Not being greeted with a smile

• Being hard sold to

• Being ignored while visiting your booth

• Being confused (Not understanding how you can benefit them)
  

We need to look at every aspect of our trade show strategy to make sure we are generating as many positive experiences as possible while avoiding the negatives.

Crowd Predictability

Have you ever noticed that some restaurants are easy to get into while others have a line outside of the door? When given a choice, which restaurant would most people, who have never eaten at either, say is probably better? They would choose the busy one of course.

The reason for this is that we as humans are attracted to crowds. When I am presenting at a trade show booth, I see this every time. First, I will stop 2 or 3 people. As soon as this happens, people from nearby wonder what is going on and join the crowd. Eventually the crowd grows into an enormous amount of people. A crowd will always attract a crowd.

If you want to see this in action for yourself, get two or three of your friends together. Go to a public place, like a shopping mall. Stand in the middle of the mall and have your entire group stare at the ceiling. Before you know it, you will have an entire crowd of people stopping and staring at the ceiling for no apparent reason.

Why do I tell you this? Here is why: By having this knowledge in your pocket, you can use it to attract the maximum amount of traffic to your booth. If you can find a way, like hiring a trade show magician like me for example, to consistently attract a people to your booth and create a crowd, that crowd will continue to grow.

But What if the Crowd isn’t Entirely Made Up of Our Ideal Clients?

That is a great question, but the answer is that it simply does not matter.

While it might initially seem as though you are wasting your presentation on people who are not your ideal clients, there is actually something bigger happening.

As a crowd begins to form around your booth, your ideal clients (who are also human with the same crowd instincts) will equally be attracted and want to see what all the excitement is about.

By utilizing this technique, you will attract far more of your ideal clients to your booth than if they had simply been wondering around on their own.

Ask yourself this question: If it was you walking the trade show floor, would you not move towards the crowd? Would you be as compelled to walk towards an empty, boring booth?

Chesmark, Chad. The Ultimate Trade Show Success Guide: How to Guarantee Maximum ROI From Your Exhibit . UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition.