Shopping carts that offer recipe suggestions as you travel the grocery store aisles. Taxi cab signs with dynamic messages that change to display advertisements carefully targeted to the neighborhood the cab’s driving through. Technology is changing the way marketing is done — and that includes the tradeshow world.
Tradeshow attendees come to the show looking for the new, the innovative, the exciting, and the inspiring. While much of this attention is obviously focused on your products and services, a certain critical aspect of the impression you make has to do with the way you present yourself as an exhibitor.
Attendees want to do business with companies who are progressive, forward thinking, and responsive to the dynamic environment around them. In other words, they want to deal with companies that ‘get it’.
Whether you ‘get it’ has little, if anything, to do with the products and services you offer. You might be selling the most classic merchandise possible, invested with a long proud tradition that’s part of your caché – -but the way you present yourself must be up to the moment.
Fail to ‘get it’, fall too far behind the exhibiting times, and you run into danger. You’ll have an exhibit that’s clearly dated. This demonstrates a basic lack of understanding: not understanding what appeals to or attracts the attention of attendees who are fed a daily diet of dynamic, customized marketing messages, renders you irrelevant.
That’s not a position any organization wants to be in. How can you remain relevant? Here are 3 practical and easy-to-use tools you can immediately implement:
1. Do Your Research
The first thing to do is develop an awareness of marketing trends, both within the tradeshow arena and in general. You want to focus on what’s new, what’s emerging, and what appears to be both powerful and effective.
We’re all surrounded by marketing, but how much attention do we pay to it? On a very real level, many marketing efforts are simply background noise in our busy lives. Train your consciousness to tune into that background noise, and pay attention to what’s being said and done. You’ll encounter these messages in your personal and professional life.
Look at what the giants in consumer marketing are doing, for example, Proctor & Gamble, Starbucks, Nike, etc. Consider them critically. What works? What doesn’t? What haven’t you seen before? What marketing trend emerged, only to have a brief moment in the sun and then fade away? There’s no telling where this information could originate: the next great idea could come from any industry. Keep your eyes open! Ask yourself, what could you adapt that would fit your environment and your marketing objectives!
Research requires more than observation. Trend reports, industry show reports, and other publications can offer insight into what other exhibitors are doing — and doing well! Chat with colleagues and friends who attend shows regularly, and you’ll hear what doesn’t work: ask someone what the worst booth they saw at a show was, and you’ll get an earful of information!
2. Form an Advisory Council
Expand the power of your research and observations by forming an advisory council. This council can be formed of your employees, or you could have a network of colleagues, peers, and like-minded business owners to compare notes with.
The main thing you want from your advisory council is strong observational and analysis skills, combined with a wide range of ages, experiences and perspectives. Age may be the most critical of these factors: marketing efforts that may fall flat — or be wholly invisible to — forty year olds, for example, may be incredibly effective with the twenty-somethings on your staff.
Consider creating an advisory council of your best customers: these may be vendors, re-sellers, or distributors. If they can commit to a regular phone meeting or chat session once a quarter, you’d have a great front line resource that is also invested in having your products and services succeed!
3. Be Willing to Experiment
Change is the scariest thing in the universe. This is especially true for exhibitors, who time and time again wave off any suggestions with a “We’ve always done it this way!” If you want to make the most of your exhibit, and position yourself as the relevant, “go-to” company for your attendees, you’ll need to be willing to stick your neck out a little bit and try some new things.
This doesn’t have to be an all or nothing strategy! Remember, you can incorporate new elements into your exhibits over time — in fact, it may be better to adopt one strategy and implement it well rather than try to load yourself down with bells and whistles you don’t know how to deploy effectively.
If you’re exhibiting at a number of shows, consider trying your new strategies at the smaller shows first. That way, if you’re using high tech demonstration models or new displays, you’ll have had a practice run before you get to the national show. If that’s not an option for you, make absolutely sure to do a dry run in your facility or home office before setting up at a show! You want your staffers to be comfortable and at ease with the display: leave the novelty aspect of it for the attendees!
If you are interested in publishing/reprinting any article, you need to have the following byline: Written by Susan A. Friedmann, CSP, The Tradeshow Coach, Lake Placid, NY, internationally recognized expert working with companies to increase their profitability at tradeshows.
Author: “Riches in Niches: How to Make it BIG in a small Market” and “Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies.” www.thetradeshowcoach.com & www.richesinniches.com
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