Eight Ways to Leverage Your Trade Show Participation
If your company exhibited at ten trade shows ten years ago, perhaps you exhibit at five or six now. If you occupied half a city block with your new products and displays at the dawn of the new millennium, you may be getting by with less space. Or maybe your company has continued full steam ahead – with the caveat that results will be monitored very closely. Trade shows today can provide great opportunities. But they are expensive and so each one in which your company participates is no doubt expected to Produce with a capital P, whether the ROI is measured in actual sales generated at or after the show, new prospects gained, new alliances initiated, or great visibility garnered.
For future shows, you may benefit by going well beyond exhibiting and running a couple of ads.
Here are eight ways to make more of your trade show efforts:
1. Plan ahead to talk to a key audience. Up to a year or more before an important show, secure a speaking engagement for one of your key people. Talk about industry trends or innovations. Position your company and your speaker as thought leaders.
2. Get press before the show. Start several months ahead to assure that your company’s name and news are in the publications attendees will read before and at the show.
3. Generate more press while you are at the show. Make booth side appointments with editors and writers from key trade publications and blogs. Be prepared to give them a story worth telling.
4. Introducing a new product or service? Go a step further with the media: hold a press conference.








