Industry Trade Shows: Pot of Gold or Money Pit?

Are you stuck in the tradeshow rut, spending most of your time chatting to your neighboring exhibitor, catching up on your voicemails and wondering if there are potential leads wandering past your booth? Do you find yourself doubting if all of the time and expense you put in to exhibiting at trade shows is worth it? Is the only reason you are there because you want to support your local sales rep or because you fear your ‘noticed absence’ will hurt your reputation? I want to let you in on something – trade shows are an extremely valuable opportunity to strengthen existing customer relationships and to bring in quality new leads – but you only get out of a tradeshow what you put in!

Fishin’ without bait…

If you think all you need to do is turn up to the show with your booth and literature and the leads will flow in, you’re dreamin’…. This is like fishing without bait. You may be extremely lucky and hook an unsuspecting fish passing by but… more than likely you will have plenty of time to get to know your neighboring booth buddies and keep on top of your emails. And you are not the only one in the boat. At most regional water industry shows that I go to, I hear the same complaint from my fellow exhibitors …the show was dead… the organizers didn’t do enough to get people into the hall…there were too many competing events….we had a horrible spot in the hall...” So you think all you have to do is pay for your booth space and you should be guaranteed a flood of quality visitors to your booth?” If that is the case, save your money and don’t bother exhibiting!

In contrast, my booth neighbors will say to me “Wow you sure had a lot of traffic at your booth…you’ve hardly had time to blink!” These neighbors have also made the aforementioned complaints when I have been located in the same dead spot in the hall! So how did I get that much traffic when all the booths around me were dead? There are a number of reasons, including having an eye-catching display and planning activities during the show to direct people to my booth, but by far the biggest factor in generating traffic to your booth is pre-show marketing! I cannot emphasize enough the importance of putting in some effort before the show to draw people to your booth. If you don’t have time to do this don’t go! Here are a few suggestions for pre-show marketing that can really help you get a return on your tradeshow investment:

Pre-Conference Mailer

A pre-conference mailer can be a relatively inexpensive marketing tool for regional trade shows. Prior to the national trade shows you can be bombarded with incentives to visit booths but very rarely do attendees receive this type of marketing leading up to the regional shows – so here is an opportunity to get noticed. Most conferences offer pre-show registration lists to exhibitors at no cost. Take advantage of this list and mail a booth invitation directly to attendees. Personalize the letter as much as possible and it helps if you add an incentive to visit the booth such as a business card drawing for a prize if you are doing a mass mailing or a direct exchange of the letter for a gift for a very targeted mailing. One of my most successful pre-show marketing efforts was for a show in South Carolina several years ago. At the time I was selling a water treatment process that removed a particular contaminant. I went through the EPA register and compiled a list of every city in the state in violation of the relevant regulation and sent them an invitation to the booth to find out about our process. Almost 50% of the invited cities visited the booth!

Pre-Arranged Meetings

Don’t expect to turn up at the conference and be able track down attendees to arrange meetings. The consultant you want to see is probably being pursued by other manufacturers while she is also trying to meet with water utilities who are her customers. Let’s face it, in the water industry we manufacturers are at the bottom of the importance food chain, even though we provide the technology. So we need to be very organized in planning our meetings. Make appointments prior to the show before your target customer has a full dance card. If you have the pre-show registration list, use it to help set up some meetings in advance, or at the very least, get people to meet you for a short while at your booth.

Pre-Show Advertising

Pre-Show advertising is not cheap (you can do a lot of direct mail for the price or one ad) but if you have the budget, many trade journals have pre-show issues where if you advertise you can get a free product spotlight. On your ad you will also have your booth number advertised. At a previous company, prior to our first national trade show as part of our launch into the U.S. market, I developed a preshow marketing campaign using an eye catching jumping goldfish in direct mail and in preshow trade journal advertising. Even though we had a small booth at the back of the hall, we almost always had a queue of people in front of the booth wanting to find out about ‘that company with the cute goldfish’.

Got the Message?

Don’t waste your time and just show up to the next trade show. American Water Works Association (AWWA) surveys show that over 80% of people visiting their annual water industry show participate in purchasing decisions and over 30% intend to purchase equipment from exhibitors in the next 12 months. Pre-show marketing can help you find those people who are looking for your product and let you get a step ahead of your competitors. Try it once and your time invested will be repaid many times over!