03 Mar Five Benefits of Marketing Your Business at Trade Shows
Trade shows offer many opportunities and potential benefits for your business. At a trade show, you can meet fellow leaders in your industry, showcase your products to potential partners, and develop new business connections in an organic environment.
Understanding the benefits of trade shows and how to take advantage of the opportunities they present can help new businesses get off to a running start. Here at Mousegraphics, we’re proud to offer our support in making your trade show debut successful with high quality print products to help you promote your brand effectively.
1. Meet Motivated Customers
Don’t make the mistake of focusing entirely on online marketing—trade shows offer some key advantages by allowing you to do some marketing in person. Online marketing and direct mail campaigns both target a wide audience. One benefit of trade shows is that you get to meet people who are already interested in your products and services.
Your business can make a solid first impression by designing effective display and product demonstration materials before the event. You can create new partnerships by providing quality printed materials to prospective clients. And don’t forget to bring business cards—they allow clients who know what they want to reach out and contact you after the show.
Additionally, the incorporation of VR and AR technology into trade show displays has allowed whole new experiences to emerge. Virtual reality devices provide an opportunity to create perfect, accurate experiences of your products without needing to rent larger spaces. You avoid the higher expenses of such spaces and create a more unique experience as customers are interested in technological advances and associate them with your products.
Augmented reality on the other hand can be great for providing bite-sized interaction for motivated customers. By displaying scannable QR codes at your booth, customers can have information about your products and social media channels delivered directly to their devices. When your staff might be handling hundreds of clients in a single day, every chance to optimize the process of information delivery helps you make a strong impression on them.
2. Analyze Your Competition
Likewise, always make time at a trade show to do a little exploring. This is a chance for you to take notes on your competitors’ offerings and strategies. At a trade show, you’re watching professionals show off their products in real-time. This allows you to observe their tactics and gather more data than you can from the information they share online.
In addition to that, by analyzing what other businesses are showcasing, you can identify successes, mistakes, and missed opportunities. You can then incorporate these points into your sales and development strategies going forward. Spotting missed opportunities, in particular, is fantastic—you can exploit holes in other businesses’ product coverage to satisfy niche demands in the marketplace.
3. Expand Your Reach
Another critical benefit of trade shows for your business is diving into new markets. By attending regional and national events, you can present your brand to a wider, dedicated audience. You’ can go beyond industry partners in your local area. A trade show exposes your products and brand to regional and national leaders and partners.
4. Get Feedback from Existing Clients
Trade shows also present an opportunity to meet with existing clients for the first time. Many partnerships begin through digital exchanges, with some businesses having no physical offices and working purely remotely. This can limit the opportunity for physical meetings. One key benefit of trade shows is that they allow you to finally match names with faces.
During trade shows, you get an excellent opportunity to hear what’s working for your clients at the moment. Email communications can be slow and imprecise. On the other hand, in-person meetings allow your client to highlight what’s working and what’s failing, to ask specific questions and get detailed answers. Additionally, you may even come up with an innovative solution that would not have been obvious without the spontaneity that conversations can bring.
5. Make New Sales
Finally, the main benefit of trade shows is meeting new customers and making sales. A trade show is effectively one of the best locations for generating leads for a sales team. Every moment at a trade show is a new opportunity to grow and expand your business. You simply need to know how to take advantage of it for the best results.
How to Take Advantage of the Benefits of Trade Shows
At trade shows, you can leverage great first impressions into immediate discussion and negotiation. You can take the best and avoid the worst to develop your marketing efforts further. You can expand your brand’s reach as a memorable industry competitor to make sales in new regions. Lastly, your existing clients can be impressed by your continued efforts to help them. This of course allows you to remain partners and to enjoy possible referrals.
If you want to use a trade show to grow your new business, follow the steps outlined above, and always bring high-quality display and printed promotional materials. If you’re making plans to attend a trade show, start designing your display exhibit early to ensure your success. Here at Mousegraphics, our seasoned digital specialists can help you craft the perfect displays for any event. Contact us today at (480) 470-7438 to get started.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (6/17/2022). Photo by Product School on Unsplash