Advent Blog

When exhibitors set out to build an elab­o­rate trade show booth, they should spend equal, if not more, energy con­tem­plat­ing the ques­tion “How do we get peo­ple that we’re tar­get­ing to come by the booth?” A traffic-building strat­egy is crit­i­cally impor­tant to increas­ing and mea­sur­ing the return on invest­ment (ROI) from your tradeshow experience.

TAKE AIM. First, con­sider your tar­get audi­ence. Targeting allows you to take lim­ited resources and invest them wisely in order to achieve the high­est ROI. Many exhibitors have an erro­neous per­cep­tion that every­one who enters the trade show makes up their tar­get audi­ence. Instead, they should look for atten­dees who exhibit sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics to their best cus­tomers. Size, scale, and buy­ing power are a few char­ac­ter­is­tics that put a prospect within the sweet spot (tar­get audi­ence) of an exhibit­ing firm. Be selec­tive. Ask ques­tions like: To whom must we intro­duce our prod­ucts? Do we hope/need to grow our exist­ing cus­tomers?  Sometimes prospects include promi­nent indus­try fig­ures such as other ven­dors or trade jour­nal writ­ers and edi­tors. After clearly defin­ing a tar­get audi­ence (demo­graphic or firmographic), work with your trade-show strate­gies part­ner to deter­mine the total pop­u­la­tion going to the trade show. Next, bump the qual­i­ties that char­ac­ter­ize your best cus­tomers against that total population. Finally, pick a rea­son­able num­ber of prospec­tive atten­dees with whom you will test and deploy trade show traffic-building strategies.

COMMUNICATE YOUR MESSAGE. Ask the ques­tion, “What do we want to com­mu­ni­cate?” There is a clear, key mes­sage that must break through all the dis­ori­ent­ing clut­ter of the trade show. It should clearly com­mu­ni­cate who you are and what you offer. This mes­sage may vary. For exam­ple, a key mes­sage for an exist­ing cus­tomer will dif­fer from that for a prospec­tive cus­tomer. Prospects need a mes­sage that intro­duces who you are, what you do, and what dif­fer­en­ti­ates you from the com­pe­ti­tion while exist­ing cus­tomers may need to be exposed to newly launched prod­ucts and ser­vices in the hopes that they will select more.

DEVELOP “THE PACKAGE” along with the tar­get audi­ence and key mes­sage. We want our clients to get away from the typ­i­cal del­uge of pre-show post­cards. Differentiation is at the heart of great mar­ket­ing and great brand­ing and must also be applied to trade-show audi­ence prospect­ing. A mailer is no good if it gets tossed into the trash­can before it’s read. Advent believes that dimen­sional pack­ages break through the clut­ter and speak louder than post­cards or single-page mail­ers. The out­side of the pack­age should be so eye-catching and provoca­tive that the tar­get audi­ence is enticed to open it and thus be intro­duced to your key mes­sage. The call to action should be very clear and related to your firm (ie: web address, logo or brand name). Advent helps our clients go one step fur­ther with a pack­age that’s clever and requires a response to be com­pleted. These crit­i­cal details have led to 20 – 78% response rates on behalf of our clients.

SHOW TIME. Pre-show pro­mo­tions should tie into the show day performance. The team at the booth has to be well-trained and aware of the dif­fer­ent offers that exist. They should be sen­si­tive to dif­fer­ent audi­ences with whom you’re try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate. And they must be very aware of the key mes­sage. We also believe that graph­ics and mes­sag­ing at the show should tie into your direct mail. In case they for­got who you are or what you do, the look and feel of the booth will remind them of the direct mail they received.

Effective pre-show, traffic-building pro­mo­tions are a func­tion of good plan­ning. Thoughtful, delib­er­ate, dif­fer­en­ti­ated plan­ning will bub­ble up unique ideas that will break through the del­uge of clut­ter trade show atten­dees receive. Even with­out a response, recip­i­ents will remem­ber your contact. We work with a sales trainer who has the phrase that a quick “no” is just as impor­tant as a quick “yes”. If the direct mail offer clearly com­mu­ni­cates who you are, what you do, and how you do it dif­fer­ently, the recip­i­ent is then empow­ered with the choice: is this offer appro­pri­ate for me? While we love high response rates (as do our clients), in the end we are aim­ing for responses that will lead to con­ver­sions. Why is this so impor­tant? If we were giv­ing away thou­sand dol­lar bills, we could achieve very high response rates. We could drive lots of traf­fic to the booth, but #1 that’s a very expen­sive endeavor and #2 the folks we attracted to the booth are not nec­es­sar­ily inter­ested in being our customers. We believe rel­e­vance is crit­i­cally impor­tant to the pro­mo­tion, so that those who respond are those who may actu­ally have a need for your prod­ucts or services.

The famous ad agent, Leo Burnett, uses a for­mula to define and describe persuasion: persuasion = rel­e­vance + involve­ment + enjoy­ment. I believe Leo got it right all those decades ago. If we will think about choos­ing an audi­ence that is within our tar­get and make our pack­age highly rel­e­vant, involv­ing and enjoy­able, we can per­suade peo­ple to come by the booth. We’d love to talk with you about effec­tive traffic-building ideas or help you lift the responses and increase your returns from your trade show invest­ments. Please don’t hes­i­tate to give one of our team mem­bers a call.