Preparing for your first trade show: how to avoid a disaster

So, you’ve just booked your first trade show. Congratulations! However, before you move on to something else, now is the time to start planning to ensure that the show is a successful one for your business. After all, trade shows are expensive to exhibit at, and not only that, they take precious time. So it is important to ensure that you are properly prepared.

As we are the trade show experts here at The Expo People (the clue’s in the name!), we have put together the below checklist to help you prepare for your first trade show., including tips on choosing bespoke expo stands and understanding the exhibition stand design process.

Set a budget

This seems like a pretty obvious first step, but you’d be amazed how many businesses who are new to trade shows forget, and end up nearly bankrupting themselves through lack of forward planning, or failure to keep a tally of what they are buying.

Ultimately, the budget you decide on comes down to affordability. If you’re a small business with limited cash flow, it doesn’t make sense to spend thousands of pounds on a huge stand and boxes of expensive “swag” to give away – especially if it’s a small trade show with modest footfall. But if you’re going to be exhibiting at a huge international trade show where cash-rich buyers are known to visit, it makes sense to make sure your bespoke exhibition stand looks as good as it possibly can. We offer the option of an all-inclusive service, meaning the design, project management, build and dismantling of your stand is all done for you – no stress! Get an idea of costs with our free budget builder tool.

Getting to that budget sweet spot needs to take into consideration lots of factors unique to your business. You also need to think about the value that a new customer or client would bring to your business (both in invoicing and profit), then work out how many opportunities you would need to generate from the trade show in order for it to have been worthwhile. No show can guarantee your business sales; however, don’t underestimate the value of increased awareness from trade show visitors who may have otherwise never have heard of you, but now may become customers in the future.

Plan

A generic, huge multi-day event at a dedicated exhibition venue is what many businesses think of when looking for a trade show to exhibit at for the first time. But you can often find a lot more value from attending a potentially smaller, but much more targeted, exhibition event, that is more likely to have visitors who are actively interested in your company’s area of expertise. With these smaller, more specialist or niche events, you can target your message in order to directly speak to as many of the visitors as possible, increasing your chances of achieving better engagement, and warmer leads.

Once you’ve decided on the right trade show for your business, you need to plan out your timeline, working backwards from the day of the show. Make sure you know final deadline dates for ordering your custom exhibition stand in order to ensure delivery in time. The same goes for ordering any promotional items, such as pens, portable power banks and notebooks – as these are generally branded with your company details, these take longer to fulfil than non-branded items, so allow plenty of time for them to arrive.

You may need business cards and printed brochures – not only do these need printing, they need designing, too, so make sure you allow enough time for this. Along the same lines, is your website up to scratch? You will be hoping that people also visit your website once they’ve met you at your exhibition stand – does it say all the right things, and make it easy for prospects to get in touch for more info, or to buy your products or services?

Ask whether the venue provides food and drink, or if there are any food outlets available nearby. In all the excitement, it can be easy to forget that you will need to eat and drink during the day, so at the very least pack some lunch that doesn’t require any preparation, such as sandwiches or wraps, plenty of snacks for energy, and at least one large bottle of water that you could refill throughout the day. Chatting to endless streams of people is thirsty work!

Hotels – if it’s an all-day show, a multi-day show, or even just far away, consider whether you should book a hotel or Airbnb. Spending all day on your feet at a trade show, talking to lots of people and having little time for a break can leave you exhausted when it’s time to drive home.

Marketing and Promotion

Ok, you’ve followed all the above advice. Now what? If you’re lucky, then event organiser will be working hard to promote the event and the exhibitors, not just on social media, but also on their website, through their email mailing list, in print, and maybe even on tv or radio.

However, in many cases promotion of the event by the organisers can seem a bit lacking. This will mean that you need to be proactive in promoting the event and your presence at it to your existing customers, your mailing list (if you have one), on your own website and also socials. Linkedin is the obvious choice for promoting online if you are a B2B business. But if you are B2C, Facebook and Instagram could be better choices.

Plan a series of posts and/or emails well ahead of the event, that can then be released regularly up until the event itself, to let people know what the event is for, where it is, how they can book tickets, and reminding them that you will be exhibiting there. Offer to pre-book appointments for any clients or prospects who will be visiting and would like to chat to you about a specific project in person. Make sure to include your logo and website address on every post, and use engaging content and imagery that catches the eye and fits with your brand identity.

Follow up

Following the event itself, it can be tempting to immediately put it all behind you as you get drawn back into the day to day of running a business. However, in order to get the best return on investment out of exhibiting, it’s important to follow up on any conversations or leads from the event quickly, reaching out to those hard-won prospects to convert as many as you can into warm leads or even customers.

Adding these new contacts and prospects to your mailing list (with their permission) is a great way to be able to keep them updated about your business regularly, meaning that when they’re ready to buy, they will remember you.

Whether or not the event was a success for you as a business depends on what you wanted to get out of the trade show in the first place. Did you want to secure high value sales for your business? Or were you just hoping to make some new contacts and gain some valuable experience in talking to lots of different people about what you offer and how your business could help them? Maybe a key goal was to see how your business or product offering is received by potential customers who encounter it for the first time, giving you helpful insights into how what you offer could be improved to help increase sales.

Whatever your key goals were, evaluating what went well and what didn’t can help you to refine what and where you exhibit next time, allowing you to use your experience to improve your message, your stand, and your promotional materials for the future.

Get help from the experts

When planning your first trade show, it can be a very good idea to bring in the experts. Having an impactful exhibition space that catches the eye and really sells your business can make the difference between a quiet, tedious day, and a busy day full of enquiries, sign ups and sales.

Investing in a high quality exhibition stand for your business brings the wow factor that a dusty and creased pull up banner never could. If you want to instil trust in your target audience, looking professional is essential. Working with an experienced exhibition stand company like The Expo People takes away the worry of trying to create an enticing and exciting space at your first trade show.

We offer expert advice, meaning that you get the exhibition stand that’s right for you, designed and built to your business requirements and specifications. All you have to do is bring your lunch and merch!

Schedule your consultation with us today to ensure your first trade show is a success!

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