Best Practices for Marketing Your Trade Shows

 If you’re considering using vendor booths as part of your lead gen strategy, then make sure you take notes on these trade show marketing tips. 

I’ve had many clients over the years tell me that trade shows don’t work. But the problem is, they are doing the trade show without a strong strategy. They are hoping that by paying the fee, showing up, and having a cute looking booth, they’ll get a ton of sales.

It doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to have a strong strategy in place or you’ll end up with sore feet and empty pockets. 

So many times when I’ve shared these trade show marketing tips with my clients, they go from hating vendor booths to loving them within a single show. 

I have one client that used these strategies, and now his vendor booths generate over 100K in sales consistently for each trade show. 

So here are my 4 trade show marketing tips.

You have to select the right show.

• Check the attendee demographic. If it’s not your crowd, it’s a waste of time and money. Ask the show organizer a lot of questions about who is attending.
• Find out last year’s numbers. I’ve been on the show promoter side, and I get it. We are always optimistic. But sometimes we are overly optimistic and we tell people our goal of how many attendees we hope to have instead of how many we actually had last time. Find out last year’s numbers.
• Figure out the cost per attendee. Sometimes a $5000 trade show booth actually costs less per attendee than a $300 booth. (Want more info on this, watch the video for this week.)
• Definitely ask for the Vendor to attendee ratio. This is one of my top trade show marketing tips. I’ve been to shows before that have more vendors than guests. And the show organizer has actually counted the vendors in the attendee count.
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2. Determine your sales strategy:

• Shopping: Do you have a product that shows well like purses, jewelry, hats, clothing? If so, you can plan for great sales at the event. If you don’t you’ll need to follow one of these other two. 
• Strategy Sessions: When I mentioned I have a client that closes over 100K consistently at his trade shows, he is doing a mixture of strategy sessions and post event sales. At the vendor booth, he has a schedule where people can schedule a one on one strategy session. He has an event special package he offers. And he closes some deals on site. Probably on average 20-30K. 
• Post event sales: This is truly where the magic happens. After the event follow up with everyone and close as many deals as possible! 

3. Lead Collection Strategy: You’ve got to have a great lead collection strategy. In my youtube video this week, I give several ideas. So make sure you watch the video, but here are the components. This is one of the most important trade show marketing tips! Don’t skip over this one.

• Attention grab: You need something that will capture the attendees attention and get them to come over to your booth.
• Interactive experience: Having a plan to get the guest to stay long enough to create an impression is extremely helpful.
• Giveaway: The giveaway is how you get the attendee to give you their contact info. Examples of good ones are included in the video.
• Get the right information: Make sure you are actually walking away with the info you need! 

4.Follow up Strategy: No matter what sales strategy you used, you are going to follow up with all of the guests. EVERY SINGLE ONE! Without follow up, you are leaving money on the table. Without follow up, it truthfully isn’t even worth doing the trade show in the first place. So get committed to having amazing follow up. 

Would you do me a favor?

I’m in my 7th year of weekly business articles. I love creating content for you. And I appreciate you plugging in and reading each week. This year I also started creating weekly content for Youtube and let me tell you these are some really good training topics. Would you please subscribe to the channel, and share it with one other entrepreneur that you think could benefit from the weekly trainings? Thank you in advance, you are awesome!

Now you have my 4 step trade show marketing tips! Go schedule your next booth and rock out!