Trade shows offer a lot of opportunities for those looking to get face to face with their prospects. Events provide a personalized way to advertise and connect with an audience, while at the same time allowing media companies to grow their relationships with advertisers and widen their portfolio. The beauty of a trade show is that you can share your product or service with a pre-selected audience while investigating the competition and building relationships with new customers.
There are trade show companies available to help with everything from booth design to shipping. Here we list why events remain a major part of the marketing budget and why your business should host a tradeshow.
1. Reach your goals.
What are the goals you'd like to accomplish at a trade show? Is it to meet people, to close some sales, or to simply get names and email addresses on your mailing list? What product or service are you planning to promote? Determining what your goals are will help you decide what trade show will give you the most return for your investment.
2. Network
One of the other reasons why trade shows are important for businesses is that it gives them networking opportunities. Even if you get nothing else out of the show, you can spend time with others in your industry and share experiences and expertise.
3. Build more business
As single events go, a trade show has few rivals for getting maximum return on investment (ROI). Trade shows offer endless methods for measuring your ROI, from actual leads to follow-up calls with clients to foot traffic at your booth. Thus, it helps to have a scorekeeper of sorts at your company’s trade show booth – somebody that can collect real-time data for future use. If your accountant or analyst needs a trip away from the office, the next trade show is a great opportunity!
4. Direct selling
Probably the biggest reason companies market at trade shows is to directly sell their product to the market. It omits the complications of over the internet or over the phone selling and allows you to interact with both your product and client to achieve a successful sale.
5. Equal opportunity
One big benefit to trade show marketing is the low-cost barrier to get involved. From locally-owned small businesses to multinational corporations, everyone has access to the same attendees at a trade show. It’s almost as simple as paying for your exhibit location space, designing your trade show display booth, promoting your business leading up to the tradeshow and interacting with the audience during the show. Even a relatively unknown business can generate large numbers of sales and leads through trade shows. Certainly this is possible via other marketing channels, but few are as easy to execute as trade shows can be.