While the rise in remote working and more flexible schedules has been welcomed with open arms, effective sales teams still know the power of in-person interactions when it comes to business relationships.

During the pandemic, many businesses felt the effects of not attending the trade shows and events that brought them great ROI year-in-year-out, but some also may have realised they weren’t quite making the most of the investment.

It’s all well and good booking a stand at a trade show because it’s good to be ‘seen’, to have a presence or because competitor businesses might be there, but there must come a time when sales leaders ask the question – are we generating ROI?

Exhibiting at industry events, conferences, and trade shows can take up a huge amount of your marketing budget. Without an effective trade show strategy in place, it’s easy to habitually continue exhibiting and attending the same shows, without scrutinising the effectiveness in line with your KPIs and goals. We’ve outlined our step-by-step guide to honing your trade show strategy and making sure you reap the rewards of your events investments in the era of change.

Establish your goals

As with any other campaign, your trade show sales and marketing strategy should be specific, achievable, and measurable. Simply ‘make more sales’ isn’t a good enough goal for a significant trade show investment. Consider promoting specific products or deals in line with the audience that attends a specific show. This will make it easier to evaluate your success at the end of the event. Or, set a specific target such as generating 20% more leads than you collected at the same show last year. Sometimes, your goal might simply be to raise brand awareness, but essentially, you’ll need to make sure that you can quantify your success when your team wrap up.

Find the events with the right audience

Once you’ve established the aim of trade show attendance in line with your wider business goals, you’ll want to make sure you’re attending the right events for you. Over the years, your business strategy changes, new products launch, and you might be looking at a completely new target audience or market. Assessing the events, you attend every year is crucial, otherwise, you could be throwing money down the pan. Review this year’s calendar of trade events and ask yourself if you did everything to maximise the opportunity and if these shows still serve you. If it’s a resounding no to the latter, shop around for up-and-coming events in your industry, shows that could target your ideal customer demographic, or the shows your competitors have had a presence at in recent years.

Plan ahead

Your trade show plans should be strategic, not reactive. Once you’ve established the right trade shows for you to attend or exhibit at, put together a plan centred around offering something that will be irresistible to the customers that attend each show. 92% of tradeshow attendees are actively looking for new products. Assess your tradeshow marketing strategy in line with your broader business goals, the product roadmap, and your marketing plans in general. Timing your tradeshow presence around new product launches or seasonal promotions, and giving attendees something new, could be very powerful.

Bring you’re a-game

Before you even show up on the day, it’s super important to brief your team. Make sure every person representing your brand on the day knows about your goals and is motivated to meet the challenge. The team is your secret weapon, but if your team don’t know the bigger picture or the specifics of your goal for that event, it’s unlikely you’ll generate your desired ROI. You’ll also want to make sure everything on stand runs as efficiently and easily, both for your team and the customers and prospects who stop by. Make sure you have sourced, implemented, and trained your team on the best mobile sales tech. Whether that’s a simple lead capture tool or a comprehensive solution that can display your entire catalogue of products, access stock details, add customer details, and place orders all in real time, it’s important to streamline processes where possible for a busy tradeshow team.

Follow-up

It’s important to ensure your sales team doesn’t delay when following up with the customers and prospects they met during the event. Engaging with so many people, and so many different brands in one day means tradeshow attendees could easily forget yours. You’ll also want to follow up in terms of those goals you set at the beginning of the process. Measure the number of leads captured, orders taken, and new customers logged on the system against your initial goal, evaluate your success, and share that with the team. Being able to analyse your key insights, customer buying trends and behaviours could be really powerful when it comes to honing your tradeshow strategy for the future.   

With a new year just around the corner, it’s worth looking at your tradeshow strategy, asking if it’s working for you, and making some changes to ensure you’re choosing the right events, and you have the tools in place for your tradeshow team to perform at their best.

Request a demo today to find out how Toucan’s comprehensive, mobile sales tools could help you tackle your 2023 sales strategy with fresh eyes and better clarity on your goals.