After countless research, we believe in pre-show marketing and targeting your show selection.

Show selection is one point that continued to come up in many conversations and was a key factor in driving results and helping reduce costs. By targeting your “niche market” with a larger presence, your company can stand out as a leader in your market.

With more careful and earlier planning of your trade show season, you can reduce unnecessary expenses. Many exhibitors rely on online trade show management programs, that allow them access 24/7 to their booth staff, shipping and scheduling of events. This way you are not over staffing your booth, and you know when and where items will be at any given time. Reducing the last minute shipping charges for literature or missing components.

Lighter weight exhibits and modular solutions also will decrease your shipping and drayage costs drastically. With re-configurable portable solutions, you can stretch your marketing dollars.

Creating a process for follow up to measure your results to target your most successful shows will also help stretch your marketing dollars. If you notice poor performance from a certain trade show but fairly decent performance from another trade show, why not concentrate your efforts on the show that gives you the best results.

Managing your trade show leads is one of the best practices for success at trade shows. Always implement a plan for lead follow up, even before the doors to the trade show open. Whether it be outsourcing your trade show lead follow up or implementing your staff into using online software to manage and track your leads, you will see the results and see where your efforts are paying off.

We have an IT company and I was wondering what IT trade shows are in the UK, or the best way to find out where and when they are.

Thank You – Jonathan

Jonathan,

There are several resources out there for selecting trade shows, whether they are in the UK or in the USA.  Check out – http://www.exhibitions.co.uk/ for UK specific shows, as well as http://www.tsnn.com/, where you can do a location search for any country, city or state.

Start searching online for various directories, add these to a master list and fine tune it as you go.  There is good information on specific show sites as well, you can see what your other companies are saying about the value of certain trade shows.

Researching where your competitors are exhibiting  is another great way to narrow down your trade show selection.    There is not one specific site that has all of the available trade shows in any given country, it is best to gather data from a variety of sources and start your research.

“There is a need for a robust solution that gives accurate and detailed information on conferences and trade shows to all the professionals out there.  With Bvents.com, we tried to build a tool that lets you search and find that information” said Yoav Markiewicz, Co-founder & VP Product Management at Bvents.

Nimrod Raizner, Co-founder & CEO at Bvents says: “A substantial amount of our resources were devoted to building sophisticated tools that work at the backend of our website. These tools allowed us to create, edit and improve the information.

With the ability to find exhibitors, keynote speakers and look into detailed floor plans, organizers and exhibitors have a wealth of information at their fingertips for early event planning.

Typical site visitors to Bvents.com are conference and trade shows attendees and exhibitors, as well as event industry professionals.

Judy

I sort of chuckled at this post Judy since I had recently went out to purchase winter boots in the cold blizzard season of the Windy City and there was not a pair to be found.

By a consumer stand point, I would like to see a variety of all items offered, whether that’s on the trade show floor or in retail.  Product launches for trade shows can draw the prospects on anticipation of what’s the latest and greatest.  When done properly, focusing a trade show around a product launch with teaser marketing can peek your prospects interest.

On the other hand, if you have a reliable product that’s a top seller but it’s new & improved, that will solidify your customer loyalty, if it’s worked well in the past, it’s a product worth showcasing.

I would do a little research on similar product lines and see how other companies have approached their fashion trade shows.

Thanks

April

Hello April,

We have seen smaller companies grow their business because of their trade show marketing strategies.  I actually just read the following information pertaining to CES in Las Vegas -

The 2009 International CES runs January 8-11 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and will feature 2,700 exhibitors, including more than 300 companies exhibiting for the first time. These companies will unveil their
latest CE S products on more than 1.7 million net square feet of exhibit space.

More than 300 companies exhibiting for the first time, that’s quite impressive.  With such a huge market place and stiff competition in the electronic industry, many of the smaller companies are branching out and taking advantage of trade shows and going after their potential buyers and customers on the trade show floors.

It is necessary to do your research to find out where similar companies are exhibiting and what shows they attend on an annual basis.

Finding an exhibit house that can assist with every facet of your trade show display and exhibit program is one of the best solutions, especially if you are new to trade show marketing.  Being able to show the value of your trade show program is an absolute must.  Having a system in place for budgeting, analysis, follow up and reporting will help you immensely when it comes to planning your trade show.   Here is a unique offering for not only a trade show display but a comprehensive exhibit program management tool, this may be a great place to start.

We’re thinking of exhibiting at a local Chicago area trade show for our pet supply company and we were wondering if you had any recommendations?

It will be our first show so we want to make sure we get the most attendees stopping by our booth.

Our website is AnimalsNeedHelp.com and we can use all the extra exposure we can get.

Do you know a good pet related trade show in Illinois or can you tell me a place to look to find tradeshows that are available online?

Thanks,

Stacy