The Exhibitor's Resource – Trade Show Marketing Blog

When preparing yourself or your booth staff for an upcoming trade show, it is important to consider what questions you should be asking visitors when they enter your space. Here are some tips to help you prepare:

• Come up with several direct, but open-ended questions to ask of booth visitors that will first qualify them, and then engage them if they’re your target.
• Encourage qualified visitors to tell you what’s on their minds and ask them what business problems they have that your offering could address.
• Stay away from opening questions like “May I help you?” “How is the show treating you?” and “What do you do?”
• Ask good follow-up or probing questions to find out more.
• Make sure your answers to attendee questions intrigue and feed the conversation. A conversation is about getting information as well as giving information.
• Rehearse your booth presence with some role playing with your colleagues, you’ll be surprised how much better-prepared you’ll be after a dry run.

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A very popular feature within trade show display spaces is the product demo. Depending on the product being demonstrated, this could be computer-based or a hands-on demo with the actual product that the exhibitor is introducing to show attendees. Either way, booth staff will benefit from rehearsing their presentation. Even seasoned veteran sales staff who know the product inside and out need to put the time into demonstrating its features and functions in front of an audience to ensure that everything goes smoothly at the show. A test audience can also give feedback about how clear the demo was, suggest changes to help comprehension, and give feedback about what details might benefit from call-outs on supplemental graphics or handouts. Does putting the product in the hands of the audience to pass around help, or is it a distraction? Should audience members be invited to “drive” the computer-based demo? If AV is involved, will it be visible to all of the expected crowd? Run-throughs will help staff answer these questions ahead of the show, and help them get comfortable with their time “on stage.”

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Plan early to avoid overnight shipments and the accompanying drayage costs for each individual shipment. Consolidate your shipments as much as possible and avoid the high costs of minimum material handling fees, typically set at 200lbs. Get all of that literature on a single pallet and pay just one fee.

Try to ship to the advance warehouse rather than direct to the show. You’ll avoid the hidden costs of your truck waiting in the marshaling yard (charging you by the hour), your labor waiting on the display in your booth space, and the worst nightmare, your shipment getting delayed en route.

Reduce weight. Obviously, the more your exhibit properties weigh, the higher the cost to ship and receive them. Work with your exhibit design agency to investigate how you can leverage emerging trends in lightweight, fabric-based graphics and architecture, modular aluminum structural systems, and other design techniques to reduce the weight of your display.

Palletize when appropriate. If your shipping situation enables you to palletize some of your properties, do so by pad-wrapping items and working with your transit company to ensure safe delivery. Again, palletize that literature, those giveaways, and your demo products and avoid the high costs of several individual shipments.

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While there are a lot of variables to consider when selecting a trade show booth space, a basic thing to realize is that all trade show booth spaces are not created equal. Here are some ideas on how to select the best trade show space you can.

One factor to consider is trade show space proximity to compatible brands or products, and this is particularly important at larger trade shows, where one expo attracts a wide range of attendees looking for a wide range of products. If, for instance, a software developer exhibits at an electronics show, they might want to position themselves either near the hardware that their software runs on. Each situation is different and may require an alternative strategy, but understanding what “neighborhood” a given space is in is crucial.

Spaces that don’t work as well include some that would initially seem to be prime real estate, but research has proven to be less desirable. An example would be those spaces in the “decompression zone” up front near the entrance. Retail store planners have for some time designed store layouts to place lower-margin merchandise in this dead zone. Just like a shopper, a trade show attendee tends to miss the displays front and center and is ready to absorb more of what they see a little further into their journey on the trade show floor.

And that journey most often starts to the right of the entrance, which is why exhibit planners talk about “left side lethargy” – by the time exhibitors make it to that far left side, they are often starting to tire, and at the minimum, exhibitors with spaces on that side might want to consider a seating or lounge area to ensure they do everything they can to capture this traffic.

Exhibitors should look for spaces away from columns, corner spaces for inline displays, and any space that offers a way to stand out. Although spaces against the convention hall walls might not have as high traffic as others, once advantage is the potential for an exhibitor to make an inline display taller. Depending on the particular trade show’s rules and regulations, an exhibitor might be able to go as high as 14′ or higher and stand up and above the typical 8′ display height for most inline trade show displays.

Another area to potentially avoid would be spaces near restrooms and other facilities. Sure, there will be a lot of traffic moving past those booth spaces, but attendees might have a more urgent task on their mind and won’t necessarily be interested in slowing down to speak with your booth staff. Some trade show displays might do well near food court seating, but a good plan needs to be put into place for how to draw attention for those taking a snack break. Particularly for smaller booth spaces, being close to tables and chairs means that they might be able to move a conversation to a more private location without the expense of an in-booth seating area or lounge.

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Exhibitors benefit in many ways from the shows that they exhibit at, but their post-show process can really be a factor in success, now and for future events.

Here are some of the post-show activities that should be planned to maximize the effectiveness of the show:

• Has a daily debriefing meeting among booth staff been planned?
• How will show leads be processed and followed-up on?
• Has a system been put into place to handle the fulfillment of visitor requests for literature, samples and other follow-up materials?
• How will conversions and sales resulting from the show be tracked?

• Did the show expenses stay within the budget?
• Does the budget need to be adjusted for the remaining show calendar, or for the same show next year?
• Based on the show results, what other shows should you consider exhibiting at?
• What recognition will the booth staff receive for meeting show goals?
• How will the success of each show be determined?

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A significant and potentially hidden expense of exhibiting at trade shows may not seem like a big deal until you run the numbers after a show. That’s right, I’m talking about the costs associated with producing, shipping and dealing with promotional literature, whether it’s company brochures, product catalogs, or white papers. In the planning stages, little thought may be paid to this traditionally mandatory element of exhibiting at trade shows. However, that lack of planning early on might double, triple or quadruple your costs for this increasingly altogether unnecessary expense. Last minute copy or design changes to literature can delay getting your files to the printer, and force you to pay rushed printing fees, and then rush shipping and handling fees to get the literature to your booth before the show starts. Depending on how much literature you’re bringing in, you may be subject to convention hall drayage fees, and “late surcharges” to boot.

These literature-related costs make you wonder where where all of it ends up. Some estimates say that over half of printed literature handed out at trade shows never even makes it back to the attendee’s office.

So what are some strategies for minimizing this expense?
Exhibitors could bring some literature with them on the plane, but smaller pieces that just hit the highlights but still give the visitor something to remind them of them later. Or exhibitors could bring individual sell sheets so that booth staff can provide info on the specific thing that the visitor was interested in, rather than providing an entire catalog.

Exhibitors could bring a small supply of literature, and replenish only what they start running out of with a quick electronic order via a national quick-print chain (you know some popular options). You can even leave your home city while the final tweaks to the design of the new brochure are being made, and have the digital files electronically sent over to the print center in the city your show is in and have them fulfill small batch orders from there.

Or you can be a savvy exhibitor and bring none, but be set up to print on-demand inside your exhibit on the show floor. On-demand printing gives you an extra advantage because it allows for custom-tailored information to be added to the documents being printed. Not only can you provide information specific to the products or services that the prospect is interested in, but you can even include their name for a personalized touch, and the name of their regional representative or local dealer office.

But you could be a real maverick and not just send no literature, but offer digital-only versions of everything. Depending on your industry and how your company does business, this might not be as out-there as it might have once seemed. The literature you once thought to be a requirement might actually be a burden that your contact doesn’t want to carry around the show the rest of the day or weigh their luggage down with. And what better way to follow up with your prospect or client after a show than to email them the product catalog they requested and you promised? Even mailing out select pieces of literature can be a smarter move than providing it on the trade show floor.

Need another good reason to consider alternative lit printing strategies? Here’s one: reduction of your company’s carbon footprint. The less literature you print and ship (especially air ship), the better for the environment it is. Reduce the number of trees required to produce the paper. Reduce the amount of fossil fuels it takes to not only ship bulk literature out to the show, but to ship the left overs back to your home city.

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The best investment an exhibitor can make in addition to exhibiting at a trade show, is to get the word out ahead of the trade show that they will be there. There are several effective ways for exhibitors to do this. One is to send out a pre-show mailer or email campaign. A postcard or blast announcing that your company will be exhibiting at an upcoming show, complete with your trade show booth number is a start, but you can further entice prospects to visit with a special offer such as a giveaway. Many exhibitors have found that they have success with promoting special in-booth presentations or new product introductions during the expo. In addition to mass-marketing efforts like those, you should also mention your show presence to each prospect AND client you speak with in the months or weeks leading up to a show. It can even be a good reason to place another call to that prospect you haven’t heard back from. Sales staff can personally call and schedule in-booth visits with key prospects and existing accounts. Even if it’s just a mention of when that sales person plans to be in the booth, such personal invitations are highly effective.

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What’s the best way to get prospects to visit you at your office? Set up shop on the trade show floor! Many sales professionals would jump through a lot of hoops to have hundreds of qualified prospects visit their office in just a few days. Yet some sales people are less enthusiastic about staffing their company’s trade show display. Are expo days long? Yes, they are! Are your feet tired by the end? If you’re not gelling, they may be. But look at what you get out of it: lots and lots of leads, many introductions, several good starter conversations, a few really promising business relationships, and a handful of sales or pending sales. Is it worth it? Absolutely! You just need to think of your trade show display as your office away from office. Or showroom away from showroom. Would you show up for your work day without appointments on the calendar? Of course not! Be sure to set appointments at your show just as you would at the office. You need to get on your prospect’s dance card. You need to make time for existing clients. Reach out, be a good host, and make the most of your satellite office!

Office Away from Office

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