Marketing Tips – Leading Up to Your Next Expo
As many of you may know exhibiting is more than just turning up and setting up your booth. Being part of an exhibition is a lengthy process that requires a lot of work, before and after the show! There are many tools you can use to add to the success of your show but one of the most effective is marketing (if done correctly). Here are some tips on how to achieve this:
Before the show:
Firstly, and one of the most important elements of marketing is setting objectives. This is important so that your presence at the show has a purpose.
Define your objective- what you want to achieve from the show.
Ensure they are SMART =
- Specific: This is so the objective is clear and unambiguous, this way you are able to decipher if you have met your objective, or not (no if's, buts or maybes).
- Measurable: This is so that you are able to establish progress towards the goal and thus establish how far off you are from reaching it, how much harder you need to work to get there. This can also be a great motivator for staff, if they are very close; it is great encouragement to work harder to achieve the objective!
- Attainable: This is so that you aren’t setting unrealistic goals. They need to be achievable!
- Relevant: This is so that the objective you set is going to assist your business in whatever direction it is heading in, so that reaching the goal will be of use to you.
- Time bound: This helps to focus your efforts, as there is a deadline, again a great motivator for staff!
The importance of having objectives that meet these criteria is so that at the end of the exhibition, you are able to judge if it was a success, which we hope it is. If not, be able to pin point what you need to improve on for your next exhibit so that the next time it is worth your while.
Pre-show Marketing
Competition within the exhibition itself is fierce, it is a fact that 76% of attendees arrive at the show with an agenda, you want to ensure you are on that agenda and a way to achieve this is pre-show marketing. Although exhibition organisers do provide plenty of pre-show marketing, they are targeting the general theme of the show i.e. food and wine, and not specifically Cider (as an example).
Therefore to ensure you are a part of their agenda, you need to target your specific market with your own pre-show marketing. There are many avenues for pre-show marketing such as direct mail, social media, Internet, magazine adverts etc., most of which are inexpensive. Utilising these avenues to a specific target market and in the case of Cider, which has become increasingly popular in the young adult demographic, you would look at targeting 20-25 year olds as apposed to all restaurant and café ‘goers’ whom the organizers would typically be targeting.
As you are targeting a younger demographic it would be of greater use to choose Internet and social media as an avenue of pre-show marketing, as this is notoriously popular within the younger adult demographic of which you are targeting. Pin-pointing a target market for your specific product gives you more of a chance of
- Having potential customers aware of your product prior to the show (being on their agenda)
- Those potential customers to be those that are more likely than not, to purchase your product in the long-term (simply not just at the show to ‘give it a go’).
This is a successful move increasing sales opportunities for the show and providing great opportunities for long-term clients and thus the profitability of your business in the long-term.
