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The most important part of marketing your brand is to know your short- and long-term goals. Once you have them identified, everything else will follow because your objectives will guide you in creating marketing decisions and carrying out campaigns.
Setting up a trade show is one of the most effective ways to promote your business. Either you own an apparel boutique, a hardware company, or any business else, this is for you.
Trade show marketing is an exhibit of products and services from the different businesses that belong to the same industry. It normally occurs in a convention center where businesses feature what they have for potential clients. The press is also invited to cover the event and create writeups about it for publicity purposes.
Trade Show Marketing Campaign
Trade show marketing is an amazing opportunity to introduce your company to various people in the field as well as to know the needs of your clients. In setting up your campaign at the trade show, you can use the steps in the following phases below to achieve successful marketing.
The Planning Phase
Everything starts with planning. As the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This marketing campaign must not be rushed; it must be thoroughly planned. Build a foolproof plan that will not crumble any minute by running a detail-oriented plan. Take it slowly, use a systematic approach.
Conduct an analysis of all the information and data you have gathered from your research and previous experiences. Simply put, use the information you have in planning a trade show campaign. Develop your budget and run a cost-efficient analysis. Set a feasible timeline for all the work that you need to do, even a reasonable deadline for each step.
Remember, you are doing this to introduce your business to your clients in a better way. You are marketing to persuade them that you have the best products and services in the field. So go ahead, perform in-depth research regarding the wants and needs of your audience. Understand them better so that you will know what to offer and how to market effectively.
The Preparation Phase
Once you’ve made a concrete plan for the campaign, it’s time to get started with the preparation. This is a show, so it needs to be actuated, organized, and rehearsed. Gather your team and assign tasks for each of them. Anticipate every scenario that might happen during the event. What solutions should be provided to solve them? What remedies can be made? How can you take the campaign to the next level? Make sure to answer this type of questions during the preparation phase.
After that, make a noise and talk about your trade show campaign everywhere. In social media, to your clients, friends, and your business partners. Create publicity materials that you can post online or print out for display. Everyone should hear that you will have your own booth in the trade show. To be fully prepared, conduct a dress rehearsal so that you would know how the events will unfold during the show.
Lastly, don’t hesitate to outsource services if you need them. Sometimes, it’s more practical to hire trade show models than do them on your own. If you plan to get help in setting up your custom booth, installing or dismantling it, visit http://www.aplusexpo.com/ and have your booth design generated at once.
The Marketing Phase
It’s showtime! During the actual day of the event, use all the strategies that you’ve planned as a team in promoting your brand to potential clients. Based on the research and analysis you’ve conducted, market according to the needs and wants of the audience. You are the exhibitor, you should be persuading your clients.
Make a good impression. Catch the eyes of the audience through your great design and excellent communication skills. You should not force them to like your products, you should be impartial, sharing the advantages and disadvantages of your products, but explaining why it is the better choice.
It is also essential to build relationships with people who visit and stay in your booth. Build a good rapport with them, and they will never forget it. Selling is different from annoying them, so make sure you don’t become the latter. Just demonstrate your product well and confidently, and you’d do good marketing.
The Follow-up Phase
The follow-up phase comes after the trade show event. You don’t just let go of your potential clients right away, do you? So here’s what you’re going to do: keep your relationship with them. Contact them via SMS, email, social media, etc. Keep in touch and develop an effective virtual marketing method. Time is of the essence, so don’t let them go! Keep in touch right after the trade show and be persistent.
Also, do not forget to convey an internal audit of your team’s performance. Assess, evaluate, and improve. Make an inventory of the products that sell, those that do not, and everything in between. Propose solutions for every potential problem. Anticipate and resolve.
Today, all brands are taking advantage of trade show marketing. Marketing strategies evolve as trade shows become fully immersive. Remember, you must provide people a significant reason why they should visit your booth and patronize your business. Persuade, but not impose anything on them. Good luck!