The Top 6 Ways to Exhibit Efficiently at Your Next Trade Show

Everyone knows a trade show requires a lot of time, resources, and investment to make it effective. That’s why planning for your next trade show can seem overwhelming and frustrating at times, especially if you are a new business or a startup. However, with the right preparation, you can maximize your return by carefully planning for each required resource in advance. Not to mention, you can get your brand loyalists involved in a way that is beneficial to your company for years down the line.

So, how does one master trade shows? Here are our top 6 ways to exhibit efficiently and effectively:

1. Purchase and Donate

You’re going to need furniture, flooring, and other resources to pull off a trade show booth. Check with local companies, like Home Depot or Ikea, and see if they have any kind of items that you can use at your trade shows. Some places will even let you rent them for much lower than buying the items.

If you do buy the items, try donating them afterward to a Goodwill-ideally an organization that will come and pick-up the pieces for you.

2. You Scratch My Back, …

Many vendors, like LCD manufacturers, will bring their product samples to the exhibit hall. Contact them ahead of time and offer them to demo your product or service on their LCD if they were to bring an extra LCD for your booth. This way they would get additional exposure while you would save the cost for an LCD at your booth.

3. Local Help

There’s no need to fly employees across the country when you already have a remote workforce within driving distance of the trade show. Have local partners come in and work through the exhibition so you can save thousands on flights, hotel, and other costs.

4. Brand Ambassadors

Every company has those loyal customers that would do anything for the business. Have your loyal clients come in and provide raving testimonials that really elevate your booth presence. Offer them an incentive in return, like a free product or service. These same people can market your upcoming trade show on their social media to drum up excitement.

5. Do Everything Early

This holds true with everything from booking the booth and everything associated with your event, to setting up the booth. Set up your trade show booth as soon as you possibly can. Many times, setting up one day early can free up your time the day before the conference so that you can spend time and potentially early viewing of your products for your large customers and get a head start before the official start day. Remember you are not the only one that is competing for their attention while they are at the event.

6. Schedule in Advance

Some of the most valuable trade show magic can happen 4 to 6 weeks in advance of the actual trade show. Make yourself highly available to interact with your existing customers over the phone, through video conferencing, or even via flying to the show a few days early to secure a deal.

There are a lot of different components that go into an effective trade show, which is why we want you to be prepared to really maximize your value the next time around. Follow our tips above to ensure you are stocked up and ready to go ahead of time.

Trade Show Event Binder

Just released — the ability to create an Event Binder for your trade shows.

From the extended Event menu, you can now create an Event Binder by exporting any event in your ExhibitDay workspace to PDF. Before creating the Event Binder, you choose what information you’d like to include (i.e. Booth Info, Travel Reservations, Event Attendees, etc.).

Sign up for a free ExhibitDay account and start tracking your trade shows, exhibits and event sponsorships.

3 New ExhibitDay Features

Just Released — 3 new ExhibitDay features: the ability to duplicate/copy events, the ability to filter your Events List to just the events you ‘re tagged in, and the ability to sort the Task Board by due date.

1) Copying Events

Sometimes it might be easier to “copy/paste” an existing event rather creating a new event in your ExhibitDay workspace. With the new Duplicate/Copy Event feature, you can make a duplicate copy of any event in your workspace. When you create a copy, you choose which properties the event you’d like to carry over to the new copy (i.e. tasks, attendees, budget, etc.).

2) “My Events” Filter

On the main Events page, you now have the ability to filter down the list of events to only the ones that either you created or you’re tagged in (as an attendee, or assignee of a task, or travel reservation, etc.)

3) Sorting Tasks by Due Date

On the main Task Board tab, you can now sort all tasks by due date.

Sign up for a free ExhibitDay account and start tracking your trade shows, exhibits and event sponsorships.

Tracking Custom Data for your Trade Shows

Just Released – the ability to customize the fields under the Event [Info] and [Booth] tabs, as well as the ability to create custom fields in your ExhibitDay workspace.

What are Custom Event Fields?

Custom fields can be used to store information about your trade shows that may not necessarily fit the standard event fields in ExhibitDay (e.g. “Projected # of Leads,” “Tips from Prior Year,” “Internal / Cost Center,” etc.).

How to Customize the Event tabs and add custom Fields

As an ExhibitDay Workspace Admin, you can customize Event fields under Workspace Settings link (under the setting menu). You can show or hide any of the event fields. You can also add new custom fields, and change the order in which fields appear (by dragging them up and down).

Sign up for a free ExhibitDay account and start tracking your trade shows, exhibits and event sponsorships.

How to Measure ROI for Trade Shows and Exhibits

The new ROI Calculator in ExhibitDay helps you measure the Return on Investment for exhibiting at trade shows and sponsoring events.

How it Works

After entering the actual costs for your event (in the “cost” field for booth reservation, booth services, shipments, sponsorships, travel, etc.), under the [ROI & Analytics] tab of each event in your ExhibitDay workspace, you can enter the Actual and Potential revenue amounts attributable to the event:

As you enter the attributable revenue figures, ExhibitDay automatically calculates the Return on investment for your event in the summary section:

Comparing ROI Across Your Events

You can compare the Return on Investment across all your events for a given year under the [Annual Budgets] link:

Compare Engagement Metrics and ROI Across events

Sign up for a free ExhibitDay account and start measuring the return for your investments in trade show exhibits and event sponsorships.