Maximize Your Trade Show ROI (Calculator & Free Checklist)

Trade shows are an excellent way for manufacturing companies to engage with people who might be interested in their products. When you exhibit at a trade show, you can put yourself out there before your current and potential customers, prospect for new leads, and gain insight into what other industry leaders are working on.

There are great benefits to exhibiting at a trade show, but it’s not an easy task! To help you improve your trade show ROI, we have created a success strategy blueprint which you can follow and adapt to suit your needs and goals.

Planning for Trade Show Success

Trade show planning doesn’t start when you arrive at the venue—a successful strategy takes months to create and execute. So what exactly do you need to do in the months leading up to the show?

6 Months Before the Trade Show

Even before you begin your strategy, the first step is to choose your trade show. This selection should be a strategic decision; you want to exhibit at shows where you can grab the attention of attendees in your target market. Take the time to do your research on this step!

Once you’ve decided which trade show you’d like to attend, start with these steps to maximize trade show ROI:

1. Check if your website is up-to-date. Your site is a great way to showcase your business and leave a great first impression. Your website should speak for you, and you wouldn’t want it to look outdated or broken.
2. Design a marketing strategy. What are you setting out to achieve? Is your brand relatively new, or have you just announced a new product? This could be to your advantage, as a trade show would provide a great platform to get the news in front of your current and future customers. Better yet, updating your website with this news is a great way to increase traffic, gain new leads, and pique the interest of your website visitors.
3. Start announcing your attendance at the trade show. A well-optimized website and an established social media presence are powerful tools, so get creative with announcing your presence at the trade show. Better yet, ask organizers of the show to send you their logos so you can implement them in your announcements and designs. Once you have the designs ready, send out an announcement email and start posting on social media for your followers to see—two or three social posts per week will get people talking. Bonus: does the show have its own hashtag? Start using it in your social posts!

3 Months Before the Trade Show

By now, your clients and customers should be aware that you are attending. Your social posts and emails should have led to some quality conversations about your attending the trade show—and you can use these conversations to set up time to meet with prospects!

Now is the best time to focus on how you’re going to present your business at the trade show.

1. Prepare the presentation, the pitch, and brochures. As you prepare, the “wow” effect should be top of mind. Try to develop two separate pitches—one that people within your industry would understand (this would include all of your stats and technical jargon), and one in everyday English. Look at it from the perspective of someone interested in what you are doing, but unfamiliar with your niche. If that person can fully understand what your business is all about, you’re on the right track.
2. Establish your target audience. Trade shows are a great networking platform, so it’s important to know who you would like to meet. Who is the ideal person that you would like to do business with? Try to imagine how a conversation with them would go, and what questions they’d ask.
3. Set up KPIs. How are you going to measure your success at the trade show? Number of contacts created? Number of mentions on social? Number of people who enter your booth? There are lots of ways you could measure success, so it’s important to establish your key performance indicators (and decide how you’re going to measure them).
4. Create a plan to capture leads. Lots of potential customers are going to come through your booth—how are you going to capture their information so you can follow up with them later? One effective way to capture leads is to bring a spare laptop where you can jot down names and email addresses of people you talk to. Better yet, create a landing page on your website where people can input their information. Set up a laptop in your booth for visitors to use; if they’re interested in your product, they can quickly fill in their information and it will be entered directly into your CRM.