Keeping a steady stream of visitors at your booth is key at any B2B trade show. Whether your company is large or small, you have unique challenges in drawing attendees to your space. Standing out from the crowd and being memorable may not be easy, but it’s necessary if you want to leave a lasting impression on those who matter most—your future customers. If you’ve attended a B2B trade show before, you know that strategy and execution are both important factors in determining whether your time there was worth it or not. The right approach will help you stand apart from all the other vendors and drive more traffic to your booth. Whether you’re new to trade shows or just looking for ways to expand your reach, we have some helpful tips that are sure to drive more traffic to your booth.
Choose the Right Location
Depending on your company’s goals, you may want to choose a specific trade show to attend. While you want to pick a show that has a high attendance rate and plenty of potential customers, you want to also make sure that it makes sense for your company. You want to make sure that you have the right budget to attend the event, that your product and industry are a good fit for it, and that it makes sense for you to attend.
Have a clear and concise booth strategy
A well-planned booth strategy will help you organize your messaging and prioritize what visitors need to know when they arrive at your booth. This also allows you to better prioritize the types of people you’re hoping to see at your booth and narrow down the best leads. One way to do this is by creating a flowchart of your ideal customer journey, including their pain points, general awareness of your product, how they would normally solve their problem, how you fit into the equation, and how you solve their problem. From there, create a layout of your booth with all the information you want each visitor to know, including pricing, benefits, and contact information.
Provide quality, in-person education
One of the best ways to drive more traffic to your booth is to educate potential customers on your product and services in an in-person setting. But you can’t just throw up a screen and start playing a pre-recorded video. You need to be prepared to face the customers and answer their questions, objections, and comments. One of the best ways to prepare for this is by creating an elevator pitch for your company. An elevator pitch is a short, succinct, and persuasive speech that you could present to a potential investor or client in the time it takes to ride in an elevator. One way to approach this is to ask yourself, “What do I want people to know about my company?”, “What makes us different from the competition?”, and “What are our biggest selling points?” Once you have these answers, organize your thoughts and start creating your elevator pitch. Keep it short and sweet and make sure it covers the main points about your company that you want potential customers to know.
Create a Sense of Urgency
If your product or service is something that people need to take action on now, then you have the opportunity to create a sense of urgency around your booth. How can you do this? One easy way is to hand out scratch-off cards with a special URL on them where attendees can enter their email address to win a prize. You can also host a contest where people can win something if they solve a puzzle or solve a problem that they’re having. These types of engagement and puzzles will encourage people to stay put at your booth, take their time, and get to know you. And if you can show that you’re offering something of value, like a free guide, white paper, or webinar, you can create a sense of urgency around attending your events.
Offer Giveaways and Samples
People want to know what they’re getting out of an experience before committing. One way to show potential customers that your product is worth their time is to offer samples of what you do. If you offer a service, like marketing, this might mean providing business cards or flyers with your contact information on it. If you sell software, you could give a free trial download. And if you sell hardware, you could offer a free demonstration of your product. You can also make a giveaway a key part of your strategy. This could be something like branded swag or a free product sample.
Surprise Guests with Something New
Another way to surprise and delight your customers is to do something new. This could be anything from adding a special guest to your booth to hosting a happy hour for attendees of the show. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something that will leave an impression and make people excited to be at your booth.
Have a Compelling Marketing Message
Make sure your marketing message matches your product. If you’re trying to sell a product that solves problems for small businesses, don’t focus on your product’s benefits for enterprise-level companies. This is a surefire way to drive the attention away from your booth. Your marketing message should be clear and concise and should match your product. You can do this by using the same message you use to sell your product in your marketing materials. Using the same message across all channels will help keep your brand consistent and allow customers to easily identify you. When creating your marketing materials, try to keep them short and sweet and make sure to keep your brand in mind.
Commit to frequency and constant contact
Another key to driving more traffic to your booth is to commit to a consistent, persistent communication strategy with customers. Before the event, make sure you have a list of everyone you want to see at the show. This will allow you to create a schedule and know who you need to see and when. Once you’re at the event, make sure to follow up with all of the people on your list as soon as possible. If they have a map of the event, draw a little smiley face or star next to the names of people you’ve already talked to. And don’t just focus on the people you want to see at your booth. Be proactive about following up with those who aren’t in your target audience. This will help you practice your pitch and identify areas for improvement. And you never know who might end up in your target audience once you start talking.
Make Use of Technology to Stand Out
If you want your company to stand out from the rest, then you need to use technology to your advantage. There are many different ways that you can do this, including by creating awesome visual marketing materials, like a booth backdrop, creating a digital sign, and hosting a live stream event from your booth. Visual marketing materials like a booth backdrop can be a great way to draw visitors to your booth, especially if you want to be the center of attention. And hosting a live stream event allows you to connect with potential customers at other locations, giving you an even greater reach. Creating a digital sign with a message to your visitors can also be a great way to stand out, as well as provide clear messaging and contact information.
Adequate Lead Generation and Outreach
Finally, before you head to the event, make sure that you’re prepared to generate leads. You want to be sure that you have an adequate way of tracking leads and follow up with them after the show. Outreach can be as simple as sending an email with a link to a free guide or webinar. It can also be as complex as sending an email along with a free consultation request. Whatever you decide to do, make sure you have a strategy in place for following up with leads after the event. This will help you turn casual interest into paying customers. There are companies like CLUEZILLA that can help you in identifying and supplying relevant information about your targeted contacts, companies, and markets by studying the event type and demographics.