Exhibitions and trade shows hold immense potential for you to network, boost sales visibility, and elevate your standing within your sector. Each year, thousands of businesses attend these events with the hope of significantly improving their business outcomes and increasing sales. The possibility of success is real and achievable.
While success is a possibility for many, there are common mistakes that can hinder your ability to fully leverage the event. By understanding and avoiding these pitfalls, you can ensure that your participation is worthwhile and productive. Let’s explore some of these common mistakes that businesses make when attending shows and exhibitions.
Table of Contents
Not Following Up Leads
Whether this is with potential clients or peers for you to network with within the industry, not following up on leads is a huge mistake. Firstly, for the event, you need a way of collating the data; you can collect it to facilitate this. Whether it’s an email signup form, adding information to databases or collectivizing physical or digital business cards, Have something in place to collect what you need and a way for you to chase up viable leads and contacts post-event. Don’t leave it a chance, be intentional, know what you need and have the resources in place.
Not Having A Custom Stand
Showing up with a bland, generic stand will only force you to blend into the background and become invisible next to other stalls; you need to be attractive and visible to get people to come to you and see what you’re about. This means having custom-built stands designed explicitly for your company. It’s having your branding on the stand and encapsulating what you’re about so people are enticed to come over and what you’re doing. Whether you’re putting on interactive displays, using screens and visuals, or setting up tasting sections, your stand needs to facilitate your reasons for attendance and be impactful.
Scrimping On Costs
Exhibitions aren’t cheap. All these aspects can add up, from the attendance fees to your stand banners, marketing materials samples, transport set-up fees, employee costs, and more. However, scrimping on costs will show, and it will only backfire. If you cannot afford to invest in the show or you can’t justify the costs, then no attendance is better than turning up and cutting corners because that’ll show through and end up wasting money. Be prepared to invest heavily, and if you do, you can be guaranteed to get what you need from it.
Not Planning and Preparing
Turning up and winging it isn’t going to go over well. You and your team need to be prepared for the event and have all the training and information you need. If you want to engage with attendees and have them engage with your company and be interested, but If your team aren’t interested or ill-informed, then you won’t attract the interest you want or need. Instead, you need to focus on delivering the perfect sales pitch, demonstrating what you do and arming yourself with the knowledge to answer any and all questions.