Are you struggling to get enough traffic to your tradeshow booth? Are you collecting hundreds of leads that never lead to sales? Whatever your goals at your next tradeshow may be, following these five steps will help you achieve them!
Market Yourself Before The Show
Use social media and email campaigns to inform local distributors that you’ll be at the show and invite them to visit your booth. SAGE Mobile Enhanced Listing or Featured Supplier in the distributor show walk list is also a great avenue to promote yourself at the show. Offer an incentive or promotion ahead of time to drive attendees to your booth.
Select The Right Booth And The Right Staff To Work It
Choose the right size booth to strategically reflect your company and your products. Decide what you want to communicate the most effectively. You have just a few seconds for a distributor to get interested in your products or stop into your booth. Playing a video or doing a demonstration are good ideas to help get your message out and educate distributors on your products. Make sure to have plenty of business cards and literature as well.
Choosing the right staff to work your booth is also essential to getting the most from a tradeshow. It’s important for staff to be friendly and engaging in the booth. Approachability is key. Sitting in a chair on your smartphone is not going to attract distributors to your booth!
Become A Sponsor
Becoming a sponsor will increase on site exposure. There are many different avenues for suppliers to choose from to market themselves at the show. Preshow sponsorships, registration sponsors and show-day avenues will help you in driving traffic to your booth.
Establish A Plan For Collecting Leads
SAGE ShowLink is the lead retrieval solution made for the promotional products industry. This will help you keep track of each distributor and conversation you have at the show. Best of all, you can rank your leads on those that are most important and set reminders to follow up with people. Remember, always make sure your lead retrieval is ready and working before the show opens so you don’t miss a single lead!
Follow Up!
The faster the follow-up, the better. Distributors meet dozens of suppliers at tradeshows, and while they may seem really interested in what you have to offer, that interest diminishes with every passing day as they forget who you are and are contacted by other suppliers. So make sure you’re among the first to reach out to them following a show. The Tradeshow Bureau says that the majority of sales takes place within 11 months after the show. To follow up most effectively, consider creating a post-show email to send to everyone you scanned and offer them an incentive for placing an order within a certain timeframe.
For other ideas and tips to get the most from a tradeshow, contact your SAGE account executive.
