How to be Effective at a Business Trade Show

Trade shows can be immensely useful in terms of generating B2B connections and sales leads, raising awareness of your business, and improving your authority in your field.

To make the most of all that a tradeshow has to offer, however, it’s important to think about both your short and long-term effectiveness in order to maximize the return on your marketing investment and by using promotional products is a great way to do it.

Professional Appearance

Just being at a trade show will get you a certain amount of traffic, but in order to actually grab the attention of potential customers, you’ll need to take some steps to stand out from the crowd.

Besides simply ensuring that you’re visible with a display booth, bold print, and engaging color schemes, you’ll need to make sure that your space has an overall well put together and well-designed look.

That means grabbing your materials and setting up your booth elsewhere several days or weeks before the show for the purpose of making sure that everything is properly organized and looks professional.

The Trick To Brochures, Pens, and Business Cards

Your company brochure is something to use when talking to people at your booth.

Most customers probably won’t bother picking up and flipping through it at the show.

They will do it later at home.

Ideally, the person you’re talking to will be dazzled by your brilliant business vision, incredible product, and graphics, but if that isn’t the case you’ll want to have a way to remind them of your business, product or services a few weeks down the road.

When someone comes up and begins engaging you in conversation they’ll typically grab a business card for networking opportunity.

This marks the end of their voluntary involvement in your marketing process.

Getting the brochure and your imprinted pen into their hands will be another good attempt for them to get to know your business.

Grab a brochure and a pen from the table and use the pen to circle your name, phone number, or any other detail of your business while chatting; then as you continue on in your conversation about whatever the potential customer is interested in, clip the pen onto the brochure and hand it to them before finishing the conversation and moving on to the next person.

Usually, they will reflexively take it to avoid being rude, or because they’re genuinely interested.

When they go home they will probably throw out the brochure (which is ok), but they will keep the pen because one can never have enough pens.

At this point, your potential customer has your business card, which will most likely go into a drawer or a cardholder, and the pen will be used at home, or be taken to work to doodle on memos.

Whatever the case, if your potential customer didn’t decide to employ your services at the trade show they have a visible reminder of your existence in their hands every time they pick up your pen.

About Author: Alice Jenkins is a writer, graphic designer, and marketer. Alice writes for PensXpress, a business that specializes in custom imprinted pens.