ExhibitDay

How to Choose the Right Trade Show

There are thousands upon thousands of trade shows that take place not only in the U.S., but throughout the world. Selecting ones that are right for your niche can be hard, especially when costs are factored into the equation. You only have so much time and money that you can spend on trade shows — which is why there can be a lot of pressure behind your final decision.

Here is a quick guide for identifying trade shows that are the right fit for your business:

Audience

Who is your ideal buyer? Your ideal investor? Are they millennials? Are they established Baby Boomers? Men or women? If you are trying to target a younger crowd, going to a trade show in a big metropolis, like New York City or San Diego, is basically guaranteed to get you in front of millennials. But, if you are targeting an older crowd with more established roots, then bigger and more conventional trade show centers (in places like Orlando) might be better suited for you.

Intent

What is your ultimate goal at a trade show? Do you want to increase leads and sales? Strengthen relationships with customers? Raise awareness for your brand? Depending on your end goal, you might want to consider different sizes of trade shows. If you just want awareness, then massive trade shows can get your name out there. But, if you want a few intimate leads, consider a smaller, more targeted and more exclusive trade show.

Event History

You will be taking a chance on a newly established trade show; although, one benefit is that you can probably negotiate a good deal with newer trade shows. For all other, more established shows, make sure to check out their history. Here are some topics to research before committing to a trade show: Did the show organizer invest a sufficient money and effort into advertising the trade show? How long have they been around? On average, how many people attend their shows? …This is all free information you can aggregate before you decide.

Budget

If you are on a tight budget, then not every trade show is going to work for you. Sometimes, you might even have to pick based on timing of the trade show. There is a discount window when trade shows first announce their dates – you might find yourself simply basing your decision on the trade show dates to ensure you align the discount window with your budget.

Yeah, there can be a lot of trade shows to choose from. Don’t feel overwhelmed. Take your time; use the guidelines above; do your research; find the trade shows that are the right fit for your business.

Good luck, and Godspeed.

Event Task Management, FTW!

Today, we launched ExhibitDay’s Task Management feature. This release marks a big milestone for ExhibitDay because it allows event teams to collaborate on trade-show-related tasks and get things done.

Here is how ExhibitDay’s Event Task Management works in a nutshell:

You can create generic or event-specific tasks like: “Find a new vendor for booth displays” or “Order swag for the booth at the CES Conference”. Then, set a due date and assign the task to any team member in your workspace.

The rest is straight forward: The task assignee gets notified about what they have to do; you get notified when the task is complete or when others leave a comment on your task. … and, so on. And, of course, you can control all your task-related notification settings (under the My Profile and Preferences section).

The Task Board

The task board is the main hub for all the tasks across all your team’s events (and, even, generic tasks that may have nothing to do with a specific event). You can track and manage every task in your workspace from the Task Board (including the ability to move a task from one event to another).

Event-Specific Tasks:

Each event has its own [Tasks] tab. Under the event [Tasks] tab, you’ll find all the tasks related to that event. There, you can manage all the tasks related to the event (just like you would on the Task Board); the only difference is that you won’t be able to move tasks to another Event (you’d have to go to the Task Board to do that).

Pro tip: If you are adding a handful of tasks for a specific event, instead of creating them on the Task Board, go to the [Tasks] tab of the event and enter them directly there. This will save you the time it would take to drag the tasks to your event if you were to create them directly on the Task Board.

User Permissions for Task Management:

We get it — Every team has its own way of doing things. So, we added granular control over who can do what when it comes to managing tasks in your workspace. You can limit a team member’s access to Tasks based on these three levels of access:

1) Full Access – the user can view/add/update tasks for anyone on your team.

2) Add/update Access to One’s Own Tasks Only – the user can view (and comment on) all tasks assigned to others on the team; but, they can only add/update tasks assigned to themself.

3) No Access to Tasks – the user has no access to the Task Board or the [Tasks] tab of the events in your workspace

Pro Tip: if you want to give a user purely view access to all the tasks in your workspace, add them as a Guest User — they’ll be able to see every task but won’t be able to modify anything (and won’t be able to comment on any task).

We’re totally excited!

We hope you enjoy our new Task Management feature. As always, we look forward to all your feedback.

ExhibitDay

ExhibitDay is a simple exhibit tracking and trade show collaboration tool that helps you track and manage all your events.

www.ExhibitDay.com

The Do’s and Don’ts of Every Trade Show

When it comes time to present your company, startup, or idea to people from around the world, you want to be prepared in the best way possible. Sometimes, all you get is 30-seconds to convince someone to either invest in you, partner up with you, buy from you, or franchise one of your businesses. And, so, there are definitely some trade show do’s and don’ts you need to know before you show up for the big day.

Ready to master trade show management? Here’s how to get started…

The Do’s

1) Listen More

When people make an effort to stop at your exhibit booth, chances are, something piqued their interest. They’ll start to tell you about this interest. Therefore, our rule of thumb is as follows:

Listen 80% of the time; talk 20% of the time

Make sure to let people feel like they are part of the conversation. They will like you more for it and, therefore, be more likely to invest in you by the time it’s all said and done.

2) Stay in Touch

Make qualified leads out of people who are generally interested in your business. Take time to really listen to every person and identify what it is they are looking for. Once you make connections with exhibit hall attendees, be sure to stay in touch. Craft a great follow-up email that lets them know you haven’t forgotten about them and are looking forward to working together with them.

3) Provide Giveaways

People love free things. That’s why giveaways do so well. Just be sure they are somehow related to your business – if you hand out coasters and you are trying to promote a shoestring business, what’s the relation? Make it easy for people to remember.

The Don’ts

1) Don’t Be Negative

Do not talk negatively about the competition, even if you want to. It immediately shows people that you feel threatened for some reason; could it be because your product is not good enough? Instead, talk to show attendees about your services in an educational manner.

2) Don’t Be Unfriendly

Do not stack your exhibition team with negative and unfriendly people. Your booth staff should be energetic, engaging, and moving at all times. Do not allow staff to sit in chairs and stare at their phones. You want to ensure your trade show booth is as approachable as possible.

3) Don’t Be Unprofessional

Do not have food sitting around (like snacks and lunches). Nothing looks more unprofessional than the sight of half-eaten sandwiches and French-fries littering your nicely assembled exhibition space. Also, try not to eat around lunch time, and if you do, bring gum so your breath stays minty fresh.

The Top 5 Trade Show Mistakes to Avoid as an Exhibitor

Every single year, thousands of trade shows and exhibitions take place in the U.S., allowing businesses, inventors, entrepreneurs, and startups to showcase their products or services to potential investors, partners, and consumers. It’s a great way to launch a new product or service (or a franchise) into international success. It all starts with an educational and interactive display that gets the exhibit hall attendees excited.

However, there is a lot that goes into trade show etiquette, which is why you want to ensure the next time you show up to an exhibit hall, you won’t make these mistakes.

Here are the top 5 trade show blunders to seriously avoid:

1) Lack of Sufficient Staff

Nothing is more unprofessional to conference attendees than your exhibit booth not having sufficient staff present. People have questions they want to ask, information they want to know, and demonstrations they want to see. If you send one person to represent your business and 2 or more people want to learn about it, the remaining bystanders are going to end up walking away and passing up your business. Remember: they want intimate, one-on-one attention.

2) Last-Second Preparedness

A lot goes into the coordination and presentation of a trade show exhibition, which is why it is not something you will want to put off until the 11^th hour. From the banners and pop-up displays, to the digital tools and handouts, if you wait until the last second, you’re going to end up paying thousands in rush-order fees. It’s just not worth it!

3) Overwhelming Displays

People are inundated with information from the moment they wake up — they don’t want to show up to your exhibit booth and feel overwhelmed by the displays. If there is text everywhere, plastered all over every piece of content, where are they to focus their attention? What is the ultimate point of the product? Keep it on-point, on-message, and digestible for the average person.

4) Lack of Passion from Temp / For-Hire Staff

More businesses are considering outsourcing the representation of their trade show to a staffing company. However, one of the worst things you can do is have individuals with no industry experience or passion representing your product. Only you and your team can do that, and, yes — the people at these trade shows can spot passion (or lack-there-of).

5) Repeat Materials

Many trade show attendees attend a given trade show multiple years in a row. They will start to notice if you recycle your materials; not to mention, the styles and designs will begin to appear aged. You don’t want to come off as cheap, which is why it’s worth sprucing content up for each new trade show.

ExhibitDay: Trade Show Management

We know that preparing for a trade show, measuring its effectiveness, and organizing the whole event can be stressful. ExhibitDay provides the free tools you need to track and manage all of your exhibits, and focus on results.

8 Reasons Why it’s Important to Exhibit at a Trade Show

It takes a lot of time, money, and energy to create a successful and attractive exhibit booth at a trade show. Plus, you may have to travel a long distance to get to the conference venue, and training your employees and sales staff on properly projecting the image of your brand can be overwhelming.

Your trade show exhibit strategy must be based on a well-developed plan which achieves the marketing objectives of your business. Otherwise, the exhibit can be a failed investment that does little to help with your business goals.

Exhibiting at a trade show is a powerful marketing strategy that can quickly advance your business by earning you more brand-awareness, leads and customers — especially if you’re introducing a new and innovative product or service.

So, why is it important for your business to exhibit at a trade show?

1) Capturing Leads

Trade shows give you the opportunity to generate leads for your business. You just need to request contact information from exhibit hall attendees (so that you can contact them again in the future with your promotional materials). When attendees walk by your booth, connect with them, tell them about your products and offerings, ask for a business card or have them fill out a small questionnaire.

2) In-Person Marketing

Potential clients like to see a face attached to a brand. Trade shows allow clients to finally meet company founders, leaders or representatives and talk to them for the first time. This is a great way of winning over a potential customer and turning them into a real, life-long client.

3) Brand Promotion

Big corporations and small businesses can benefit from promoting their brand at trade shows. There are plenty of interested consumers walking around looking for the next great product to purchase. A simple standard exhibit booth (10’ x 10’ in size) is typically good for establishing product displays and kiosks.

4) Making Sales

Thousands of people attend trade shows because they’re looking for a new product or service that will solve their problems. If you happen to showcase the product or service they are looking for, you may be able to generate more than just leads at a trade show. You may generate actual sales from new customers who you would otherwise may not have been able reach.

5) Analyzing the Competition

Trade shows create a rare opportunity for you to snoop around and see what your competitors are doing at their exhibits. You can even pose as an interested customer by asking questions from your competitors at their exhibit stands. Study their answers and overall presentation because they can inadvertently provide ideas on how to conduct your own exhibit.

6) Introducing a New Product or Service

Trade shows are mostly about introducing the latest and greatest products or service offerings to a targeted audience of professionals in an industry. This can be more effective than online or print advertising because there is a live audience that gets to witness your product or service in person. If you’re selling something tangible, then the audience is bound to see it up close and experience it first-hand.

7) Building Business Relationships

Trade shows are not all about trying to outdo other competing businesses. Sometimes, you find partners or other companies that can actually help your business succeed. For instance, if you own a manufacturing company and connect with a logistics company at the trade show, then you have found a potential company to build a business relationship with; as a result, the logistics of getting your products from the manufacturing line to the retail line will get a whole lot easier that way.

8) Gathering Customer Feedback

You will receive direct and honest feedback from your target audience at trade shows. This is unlike online feedback (where people can often be trolling, or be insincere in their remarks). As a business owner, you will want to hear this honest feedback because it will help you introduce better products or services for your customers in the future.