Creating and Maintaining Trade Show Focus

Trade show effectiveness and success depends on achieving a focus on your strategies and executing them. There is a natural tendency for trade show exhibitors to either attempt to do far too much, or they fail to do enough. What you really need is to understand what is going to happen on the day well in advance of the event itself. The issue is how do you know what is going to happen in the first instance?

We know we cannot predict the future, but by carefully planning and preparing we can gain an increased understanding of the possible opportunities or pitfalls. In order to establish focus we should first determine what goals and objectives you are looking to achieve. You need to be specific when setting your targets because this will help you when it comes to measuring how well you are succeeding in meeting them. Being specific will also help you when you are working with your trade show team and allocating responsibility to individual members; a specific target is undeniable and unarguable.

Thinking through your goals will help you to create a strategy which is creative and able to identify problems and choke points in your plans. Specific goal setting will also help you in motivating your team, both in the planning phase and on the day of the show. You will also find that establishing goals in “hard terms” will also help you with budgeting and deciding on what is an absolute priority and what is an optional extra that can be dispensed with if budgetary considerations require.

The first step to creating focus is to create a short list of your objectives. Once you have half a dozen or so, then you should proceed to ascertain which of them will generate the greatest ROI. It is these objectives which should dominate your resources, investment, time and energy.

Effective Trade Show Marketing on a Budget

Budgets are under a great deal of pressure; there is restricted money available for campaigns but at the same time, there is an even greater need to do more with less. How do you maintain and improve on your marketing effectiveness when clients are harder to sell into and when you have half the budget you had last year?

That’s an acid test situation!

An initial broad approach is to revisit your planning and research. The more you invest in planning, the better the potential outcome for the budget. Focus on shows and activities which have generated positive ROI based on past experience. Cut out the extraneous, optional extras you can do without and identify just what the mission critical aspects of the campaign really are.

This may mean cutting out poorly performing trade shows you traditionally attend; it may mean you try new tactics and strategies and move into new areas to exhibit. By now, you should understand you are going to be moving well out of your comfort zone, but therein lies the real point; with a tight budget you have no choice but to get creative.

You have restricted options for cutting costs with trade show management. The way trade shows are contracted for means there is a substantial lead-in period – it is not unusual for a trade show to be booked up a year in advance. You can cut costs by sharing the space you have booked with someone else who is looking to exhibit, and you can cut out the optional extras that you don’t really need. Again, this comes back to taking a cold hard look at what you really need to get the job done.

Ultimately though, exhibiting is not about spending money; trade shows are money spinners and should be viewed as profit generating centers. Focusing on Return on Investment (ROI) will maintain your profitable momentum and ensure you retain a strong focus on the bottom line – this is not an exercise in customer relations but a strategy to deliver substantial, bottom line performance to the company profit and loss account.