This is a guest post from Tim Patterson
Do I really want your tradeshow experience to suck? Of course not. But if it does, it might be because you’re doing some of these things.
- Exhibit without creating a thorough plan. I know, sounds dumb, right? But the next time you walk a tradeshow floor, try to figure out which exhibitors have a good plan and those that are just winging it. One good clue is the fishbowl with a bunch of business cards with your chance to win an iPad or other generic prize. The opposite of this: create a thorough plan that begins several months prior to the show and includes pre-show marketing, staff training (or some sort of preparation), lead generation goals, product or service demo goals and post-show follow up.
- Don’t train the staff. Look around the show at booth staffers. If they’re sitting in the back of the booth fiddling with their phones or eating a sandwich, or if they don’t have a ready greeting for booth visitors, it’s pretty certain that no attention was paid to this item. The opposite of this: make sure your booth staffers know how to greet, engage and disengage all visitors quickly and efficiently with the goal of gathering information and specific follow up actions.
- Forget all about pre-show marketing. If you forget to let people know you’re at the show, you’re depending on random visitors. That means you’re leaving too much to chance! What to do? Work the phones, send out emails, postcards, contact media, do PR, and more, you’re increasing the chances that people will make their way to your booth, no matter where it is.
- Keep your staffers in the dark about the big picture. This is somewhat different than booth staff training, but falls under the same umbrella. If you don’t make sure your staff knows everything you can tell them about the products, service and specific show goals, they won’t fully grasp the reason(s) you’re at the show. What to do? Make your staff has full knowledge of show goals, products, services, company hierarchy and other pertinent information. With this approach, you’ll come a lot closer to being able to let visitors know as much about the products and services you offer as possible.
- Use a generic booth. Now, this is a tough one, because many so-called kit or generic booths can actually do a good job of branding you in the right situation. The challenge is that many companies take one of those kit or modular booths and do nothing creatively with it. A booth is a statement. It’s a physical representation of your brand. Visitors should be able to see your booth and instantly get a feel for your company that accurately reflects your products, attitude and mission.Creative graphics, unique counters or furniture can go a long way towards making that unique powerful statement.
- Don’t make a specific plan for capturing and storing leads. Think of it: you have a limited time at the show to capture information from potential clients or customers. If the show is a three day show and the floor is open just 7 hours a day, that’s 21 hours. If there are 30,000 visitors, that’s a potential of 1,428 visitors per hour IF they all walked by each booth once. We know that won’t happen, but if you get 100 visitors an hour and 20% of those visitors are ‘hot’ leads, what’s your method of capturing a lead’s specific contact information, along with follow up details? If you haven’t figured this out before the show – and your show goal is to capture as many good warm leads as possible – this will pretty much guarantee that your tradeshow exhibiting experience will suck.
- Don’t have a good follow up system in place. If you’ve gotten this far – planned a show, trained your staffers, have a good brand-representative booth and captured a plethora of leads – it will all be for naught if you don’t follow up properly. Still – in 2014! – surveys and statistics show that nearly 4 out of 5 tradeshow leads don’t get a follow up call or email. Eighty percent! Really! Do your job and make sure that all leads are tracked from the point of collection to the various touches over the next few weeks and month that lead to a sale. Because once you’ve made a sale, that’s when the fun begins and you’ve got a new client. And it all came from your tradeshow appearance.But not if you suck at any of these seven items.
Tim Patterson is a trade show strategist, blogger and founder of TradeshowGuy Exhibits. He just released a new book titled “Tradeshow Success: 14 Proven Steps to Take Your Tradeshow to the Next Level,” and he invites you to download a free digital copy at http://TradeshowSuccessBook.com. Tim is happy to talk about trade shows all day if you let him. Give him a call at 503-507-4110, or read his blog at http://TradeshowGuyBlog.com. You can also find him at Twitter @TradeshowGuy.
