them? Equally, if everyone you meet wants to place orders for immediate delivery would you be able to service the demand? We’re not suggesting that you wait until every piece of the jigsaw is in place before you unleash your brilliance on the market, in business things are rarely ever perfectly finished. The point is to really think about whether you’re ready enough to be exhibiting and whether you have good enough responses for the areas where you’re not quite ready yet?
(Lincoln West, 2016)
Is your customer ready to buy?
You may have put in all the hard work to ensure that your product or service is market ready (or as close to market ready as possible), but do you know that your customers are ready to buy? If you’re operating in an established category or industry, where your product is an enhanced version of something already available, there is less risk. You know your customer wants this product or service and as long as you can clearly articulate why your proposition is better (faster, cheaper, easier, adds more value) than the competition, you have grounds for a credible commercial conversation.
However, if you’re looking to build an entirely new category or industry with your product or service can you articulate why this is currently missing in their life? In these situations, customers and consumers might not even realise that they have a need for your product, meaning you will have to educate them about both the need and why yours is the best solution. A crowded trade show environment, with lots of distractions and minimal space to articulate your message might not be the most conducive place to start engaging with your audience.
Again, this comes back to grounding your trade show investment in customer need, understanding what their problem is and clearly articulating how your product or service provides the best solution for it. Therefore, in considering whether trade shows might be the best tactic for your business, it is helpful to think about the likely problem a visitor is going to be bringing to your stand and whether you can clearly articulate the solution you offer.
(Lincoln West, 2016)
What else do you have in your toolkit?
We talked in Chapter 1 about using trade shows as a marketing tactic in an aligned, strategic plan and it’s important to think about this further when considering whether exhibiting is right for your business. There will be several different sales levers you are likely to manipulate in your quest for sales growth, including pricing, promotions, discount structures, product variations, volume bonuses, etc. Each of these need determining before you can effectively manage a wider portfolio of customers. For example, if you’re a manufacturer of tools you may offer a different discount level to an independent high-street DIY store than you would to a national wholesaler such as Screwfix – but you might meet both at the same trade show. Understanding how you will profitably manage different customer requirements and needs within your portfolio will not only help you to better filter visitors at the trade show itself but enable a quicker and more productive follow-up after the show.
In clarifying your sales strategy, it is likely that some obvious marketing tactics fall out of this to reach your audience and add value to the conversation you have with them. Let’s go back to the tool example for a moment, potentially this could be a complicated purchase for your end user in selecting the most appropriate tool for his specific job. In that case, providing factsheets with details about what types of job each tool is most appropriate for will help them make an informed decision and ensure they are happy with their purchase. Although that is an example of a consumer marketing tactic, it’s important to your trade show plan in demonstrating to your customer how you will help them sell through the products that you’re selling directly to them. Developing a clearly aligned marketing plan across all channels will add value to the conversations you have at trade shows and build credibility and trust with your customer. Trade shows are rarely an effective tactic if used in isolation, or because you have always exhibited at them, or just because they sound like a good idea. The power of trade shows comes from alignment with a range of other trade and consumer marketing tactics that support each other as part of a proactive and strategic plan.
Can you afford it?
Corporate events and tradeshows usually fly under the radar when times are good and then are scrutinized when times are bad. But it’s clear that reducing exposure at events is risky to future sales, and that attendance has recovered solidly following the past two economic downturns.
—Michael Hughes, MD, Research and Consulting, Access Intelligence
Trade shows are notoriously expensive – there’s not really any other way of saying it. They’re not easy, and to do them well takes time, money and energy. If you’re not prepared or in a position to invest a lot of all three, then trade shows may not be the right tactic for your business. We will talk more about monetary budgets in Chapter 3, but if you’re going to invest in a trade show then invest well – in time and money. So often we hear from companies who have invested thousands of pounds in space on a trade show floor, then don’t want to spend any more money on a stand or marketing so turn up with a couple of pop-up banners and one person to man the stand. At the end of the show we hear such exhibitors complaining about the lack of traffic at their stand, the conversations they haven’t had and why they’re never attending the show again – before signing on the dotted line for next year for fear of missing out (FOMO).
It is true to say that trade shows are difficult to evaluate and quite often businesses can be reluctant to spend big on them for fear of a lack of transparency on return. It may be difficult to demonstrate a return, certainly an immediate one, but it is not impossible. The setting of specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely (SMART) objectives and a clear follow-up strategy are crucial to the process of calculating return on investment (ROI) and we’ll help you understand how to do both throughout the book. But don’t be afraid to spend money on trade shows – just be sure you’re spending it well and squeezing every single opportunity out of the cash you’re putting in. If, however, you’ve only got the budget to book your space and nothing more, we’d advise you to think twice about whether trade shows are the right tactic for you. There are clever ways to spend a small budget, there are no clever ways to spend no budget.
In terms of resource, exhibitors can often be quite surprised at how much time needs to go into delivering an effective exhibition. Planning for a trade show can never start too early and ideally would be at least 12 months out from the start of the show (don’t panic if you’ve a show coming up in a couple of weeks and you’ve done nothing yet, this book can still help). The time spent on executing a trade show well becomes more intensive as the show approaches and in the last few weeks can almost feel like a full-time job – but investing the time into getting the right people to your stand on the day gives you a much greater potential for demonstrating a return on your investment. If you’re a single business owner trying to wear the hat of production manager, marketing
