Industry Trade Show – How to Nourish This B2B Channel to Drive Your Business Growth?

A crucial aspect of our trade show is that it helps bring together all the relevant stakeholders of a particular industry in the same space. It can include the potential buyers, suppliers, the businesses operating in the domain, and related organizations who want to do business with you.

An industrial trade fair is a personalized platform that ensures all the visitors reaching your booth fit the profile of your target audience. It also provides an opportunity to act as a space to showcase your muscles before the competition.

This article highlights the various ways to optimize this channel to maximize your B2B business prospects. However, the list is not an exhaustive one, add inputs based on your learning and industry-specific needs.

Building Relationships

Every business leader knows the importance of building relationships. One of the fascinating aspects of the trade shows is the wonderful opportunity that it helps provide to forge new relationships.

So, meeting and talking to all attendees at the venue is crucial for the event’s success. You should get in touch with other exhibitors, event organizers, and visitors to increase your reach. No one can forecast from where and how a new business prospect can come.

Any industrial trade show is a pre-planned event of which you can get the details in advance. Therefore, it is advisable to check the list of participants, exhibitors, companies, or prospective buyers registered for the B2B meetings.

Some of the organizers also provide an opportunity to request meetings with the participants of your interest in advance. Such meetings can play a crucial role in the success of the trade fair participation for your business.

Keep the Booth Alive

A great option to engage the visitors coming to your booth is having branded promotional products as giveaways. It is critical to identify a relevant product as a giveaway that is in sync with your brand and is beneficial for the customers. Commonly used and durable options for giveaways include reusable bags, pens, USB drives, notepads, water bottles, etc.

The trade show exhibits should be moving and active. You can get in touch with the experts to help you create a structure that does the job for you. They can help you create customized exhibits that can tell your brand’s story to grab the attention of visitors and passers-by.

You can also look at a range of exhibit specials to create exciting trade show designs. You can also organize a short presentation or product demonstration. The trade show exhibits by ClassicExhibits offer perfect examples of what you should display at your booth. You should make sure to announce these through your company’s marketing channels beforehand.

Some organizers have apps that help you get updates about the fair for the participants and visitors. The availability of mobile applications for seamless transfer of data across the various stakeholders of the fair increases connectivity. You can choose to use such a platform to give out information about your event plan.

A short video that includes your product attributes and puts forth the various engagement activities for the visitors can be very engaging. You can divide the time duration of the day into various slots and design events accordingly. Keeping the booth alive helps churn customer interactions and gives you a better shot at sending out the required information.

The presence of interactive mediums such as virtual reality or VR can help make a difference. However, while planning for such a tool, you should be cautious about its implications for your business. It is ideal to avoid such tools if it does not fit your objective or business’s communication strategy.

Getting in Touch Later

As a trade show is a tool to get in touch with potential customers, a critical step after the show is to get in touch with them. You can choose interesting options to thank them for their attendance via email. Also, make yourself available to arrange meetings and answer any queries.

For most businesses, these clients generally end up in your drawer. Contacting these leads after 2 to 3 days of the show is advisable. Just after the trade show, sending any communication can get lost among the piles of mails that the prospects receive from the exhibitors.

Research data suggests that 80% of the exhibitors fail to reach out to their prospective leads after a trade show. You need to follow up with the interested leads, else they can forget you. Your mandatory follow-up will help determine the worthiness and ROI of your participation in the trade show.

Trade shows as a platform help the exhibitors reinforce the brand name strongly and also aid in getting long-term clients. You should avoid such mistakes and stand out in the crowd to make a mark among the clients.

Evaluation of Achieved Objective

Any sales activity that a business undertakes needs to go through an evaluation process for determining its efficacy. It applies to an event like an industrial trade show too. Keeping track of the fulfillment of the established objectives and any opportunities that arise from the fair is vital.

You can set parameters like the average footfall in the exhibit, contact information shared, number of meetings that happened, quantity, and value of the commitments received. Although these factors are basic to any industrial trade fair, you can add parameters that you feel are ideal to gauge the performance in the sector.

This step helps you to have a better evaluation of your businesses’ participation in the event. It aids in the identification of the scope for improvement for the next edition of the trade show. Many businesses excel with the help of industrial trade fairs. Hence, monitoring and evaluating the entire participation process can help decode a lot about your approach.

Final Words

Therefore, as you can see, a successful industrial fair needs to have prior planning. Following the above steps, you can check your various communication methods and training of the frontline staff as critical pillars of success.

Various trade shows are happening around the year. However, it is crucial to participate in those that are in sync with your domain and industry. Choosing the right industrial fair and having proper benchmarks in place can help you reap the maximum benefits from the trade fairs.