When you have your own business one of the important things is that you attend any of the trade shows, conferences or conventions related to your business branch. These meetings will help you present your product either to potential business partners and/or potential customers. If will also help your present business partner or customer be informed of your current and future products.
The main goal is to put your brand in the focus between hundreds of others trade show attendees. Not only for business growth purposes, but to return a few thousands of dollars invested in appearance at certain trade shows.
Make your goals clean
Knowing your expectations from the trade show you’ll attend is the most important thing. This will help you focus on your brand marketing strategy for the upcoming event. There are several ways to return your investment at a trade show. Some of them are: use of social media, growing your marketing list, meeting with top managers, acquiring potential clients and/or investors and so on. Some of these ways will return your investment faster while some of them are good in the long run.
Hitting the target
There are lots of trading shows related to your business throughout the year and all over the country. Not all of them have the same benefit for your business. You’ll have to choose wisely which one you’ll attend and which one you’ll skip. Give yourself enough time to prepare and come up with optimal marketing strategy for the upcoming event, for example 30-60 day span is just enough for you to be fully prepared. Make a yearly plan of conference attendance. There are few factors that you have to have in mind when making this decision:
- Is the conference relevant for your business branch?
- Way the conference is promoted. If it has lousy made web-site with useless information on it, it’s not worth attending.
- Social media coverage. Active social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkdIn, Instagram, and Pinterest) speak enough about quality of the trade show. Not only that you could be informed about other attendees, but all other attendees can be well informed of you as well.
- List of attendees. If some of the big names in your business branch are attending, you should be there too but with different marketing strategy in order to be seen and recognized among all the known brands.
- Media coverage in the past. If the conference wasn’t well covered in the past, it means that the media doesn’t find it interesting, and this lowers your odds to be mentioned and been heard of in this kind of marketing.
Preparation
The conference is chosen. Next, you have to prepare to market your brand and to attract more new investors and/or clients. There are few things that you have to take care of before the conference starts. First of all, see if you can grab a chance to speak as an individual speaker or on a panel. Prepare some interesting lecture. Get the media list and use it later to provide the media with breaking news related to your business and your company. If needed, buy or rent trade show displays which will be used to display video and pictures, or any kind of material related to your company and your products or services you provide.
Trade show attendance
During the trade show try to mingle amongst other attendees. Tweet regularly; post some news on Facebook or Google+. Take more pictures of people standing at your booth showing interest for your products and post them on Instagram or Pinterest. Talk about your company. You can write one or more blog posts on trade show. Be sure that everyone takes your business card. If you have some breaking news supply media that cover trade show with them.
After the trade show
Follow up with all the media or reporters that posted news about you. Make a contact with everyone whose business card you got. Don’t be forgotten until the next trade show you’ll attend.
After all, these are few tips on how to market your brand. Think of them and build up optimal marketing strategy for every trade show you’re interested in, and your business will grow.
