Trade Show Booth Staff Training Expert, Susan Friedmann, CSP, The Tradeshow Coach

In this episode of the Tradeshow Minute, Susan Friedmann, CSP, The Tradeshow Coach, walks you through the five keys to tradeshow success.

Watch this short Tradeshow Minute video to learn the five key planning principles every exhibitor needs to know to help prepare for their next trade show. These exhibiting principles make up the foundation on which to build your exhibit marketing plan.

Ask these questions before each event you participate in:

• Where do trade shows fit into your marketing strategy?
• Why is your company exhibiting?
• What does your company want to exhibit?
• Who is your target market?
• What is your exhibiting budget?

For a more in-depth look at exhibiting successfully at trade shows, buy a copy of Susan Friedmann’s book, Meeting & Event Planning for Dummies.

Every company on the tradeshow floor has a few things in common. They all want to capture attendee interest, and lure them into the booth with the new, the exciting, the irresistible. They’re all facing similar challenges: short attention spans, myriad shows, and increased competition from every corner of the globe.


However, there’s one extra special way that savvy exhibitors can differentiate themselves from their competitors. The company that has the best understanding of their target audience — their wants, needs, problems, and challenges — has the ultimate advantage in the exhibiting forum. It is these companies that take the time to learn about their customers — and more importantly, their customer’s customers — that succeed on the show floor and beyond.

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Why do your customers buy from you? Why do attendees stop at your booth, and not your competitors? Or, if we’re going to consider things from the opposite view, what is happening at your competitor’s booth that draws the crowds — the same crowds that pass you by?

It may seem as if there’s no rhyme or reason behind attendee behavior. It’s an inexplicably mystery why one company attracts throngs of attention while another — perhaps with an equally attractive display, a skilled booth staff, and compelling incentives — stimulates hardly any interest. Analyzing the difference between the two exhibits can be frustrating: there may be no quantifiable, logical reason why attendees prefer one to the other.

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Tradeshow exhibitors have something in common with the rest of humanity: We’ll do what is easy, but avoid what those things we find to be or perceive as difficult. It doesn’t really matter what sphere we’re talking about: human nature dictates that more often than not, we seek out the smoother path, the gentler grade, the easier climb.

So in order to appeal to human nature and improve your tradeshow performance, I offer you this: Eight Effortless Exercises you can do with your team. Nothing here is particularly difficult, yet all are devastatingly effective. If your team can implement what they learn during these exercises on the tradeshow floor, I can guarantee that you’ll be very pleased with the result.

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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.

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