NEWS & UPDATES

September 19, 2007 In Archives By Advent

Pre-Show Strategy & Tactics

Too many trade show exhibitors don’t do pre-show mar­ket­ing. Of those few that do, most send out a post­card to all of last year’s atten­dees. That’s bet­ter than noth­ing, but for the same money you could get much bet­ter results by doing a more tar­geted campaign.

1. Don’t send to the list of all atten­dees. Instead, choose a much smaller list of com­pa­nies that are can­di­dates for your ser­vices, and that you would like to do busi­ness with.
2. Send a pre-show mailer that they HAVE to open. Instead of spend­ing $1 on a post­card that goes out to 10,000 peo­ple, spend $10 on a mailer that goes out to 1000 peo­ple. You spend $10,000 either way, but a much higher per­cent­age of peo­ple will open the sec­ond mailer, and they’ll be peo­ple that you want to do busi­ness with.
3. Give them a com­pelling rea­son to come to your booth. Make it worth their while. Remem­ber, you’re only send­ing this to con­tacts that you’re tar­get­ing for future busi­ness. And you only have to “pay out” if they come by for a meet­ing. It’s worth some­thing to you to be able to sit down with these people.
4. Build in a way to track results. You want to know how well the cam­paign per­forms, so you can use it as a base­line for your next campaign.
5. Real­ize that you win no mat­ter what. If they HAVE to open your mailer, then one of three things will hap­pen: a) they’ll act on your mes­sage and come by your booth, b) they’ll be exposed to your mes­sage even if they don’t come by your booth, or c) they’ll self-select out because they’re not inter­ested in your offer­ing (we don’t want to meet with some­one who is not a can­di­date for our services).

Steps 2, 3 and 4 require a lit­tle cre­ativ­ity and expe­ri­ence. How­ever, this type of plan is doable on just about any pre-show pro­mo­tion bud­get. If pre– and post-show mar­ket­ing are not cur­rently part of your trade show strat­egy, you’re not get­ting the most out of your investment.

Authored By Advent

Advent partners with organizations to help them visually express differentiation.