Why Your Marketing Department Should Include Trade Shows in Their Strategy
Not all marketing departments are receptive when it comes to allotting budgets for trade shows in their budgets. There seems to be too many costs associated with the trip – accommodation, flights, a trade show booth and shipping costs for expensive promotional materials. On the flipside, there doesn’t seem to be any concrete evidence that the business trip will earn all these expenses back. How do you convince your marketing department that trade shows are worth the costs?
We understand the challenges involved when you have to navigate a corporate setting with many people in managerial positions, and this is a short list of arguments to bring up:
It’s a good strategy to bring brand awareness to key markets
Trade shows attract all the relevant players and experts in your industry under one roof. That’s all the audience targeting that you need – done for you for the price of admission. A trade show booth offers in-person marketing to experts, influencers and prospect buyers. It’s crucial for your brand to have a physical presence in the most important event for your industry. Not to mention, putting a face to a brand guarantees that you’ll have an easier time arranging meetings and closing deals, because you’ll have personal interactions to leverage. It pays in the long-run to be a friendly face.
It gives you valuable insight into prospect buyers
Marketing relies on customer insights and behavior to plan out advertising campaigns and identify the best ways to sell to their target audience. Trade shows give you the best opportunity to fine tune your branding as your company meets with potential clients. Once you deliver a sales pitch, you can always tell what part intrigued a prospect and what their needs precisely are. You have a great opportunity to understand how to market your company’s product better, ultimately earning a competitive edge. This information also serves as the basis for developing advertising strategies that align you better with the values, needs and aspirations of your intended audience.
Trade show booths and print materials are just as effective marketing tools
The thing about marketing is that it’s doesn’t work all of the time. There is simply no promise that even the most brilliant advertising campaign is going to be successful, and you may never really know why. Even if it attracts anyone to pay attention, it doesn’t always convert. Trade shows are made so that supply and demand can meet in the middle. In short, people come with the expectation to buy. A trade show booth that’s branded and offers print materials doesn’t only introduce your brand, but also attracts sales leads. If you have the right tools to manage sales leads, you’ll return home with more concrete data on your performance and potential to sell products. Not only that, but you can incorporate giveaways and trade-show-specific ad campaigns that further drive up the interest in your company and spreads your message far and wide!
It’s a way to educate customers why you’re the one
Most marketing campaigns and advertising have to compete for attention in a day and age where it’s impossible to concentrate on a single thing for more than a few minutes at a time. This makes it costly to broadcast your message, which gets shorter and shorter to be eye-grabbing. There’s no such concerns at trade shows. It’s a one-to-one conversation between a company representative and a buyer. You have already won, because you have the undivided attention of this person and more time to not only lay out your sales pitch, but also impress on them how your company is its own entity on the scene. When done right, this conversation will create the so-called “unique value proposition” and that’s how you earn sales.
Use only one of these or all of them, and you’ll see quite the dramatic change in your marketing department’s attitude towards trade shows! They might even let you suggest any destination you prefer.
