Picture this: a company shows up full force to a trade show but finds that nobody’s interested in stopping by their booth. You might be surprised to know that many businesses experience this scenario. Many companies find out too late that they failed to advertise their presence in a trade show. Fortunately, whatever your budget, there are tons of easy and practical ways to drum up buzz and drive traffic to your booth. Start with these ideas.
Get in Touch with Your Existing Customers
What better way to drive traffic to your booth than by inviting your customers? This is also an excellent way to nurture your relationship with them. Use email marketing or IP PBX phone system to send messages, voice mail, or even contact them over the phone. For example, you can offer them an advanced peek of your up and coming products using your business presentation app. You could also ease their business-related concerns, and allow them to know your company better in a less formal and more fun environment.
Ask your sales or customer service team to send out invites weeks before the trade show date and reminders several days before the event to show your customers that you’re keen on having them there.
Use Geotargeting
Geotargeting is one of the easiest ways to drum up interest to your booth and get people to stop. With help from an app or service, your marketing department can target people with smartphones who are already inside the event. Once those people look at their social media accounts, they will see ads about your booth and increase the chances of them actually stopping by.
Host a Happy Hour
Hosting a happy hour in your booth during the first day of the event is a simple way to get people to come to your booth. On day two of the show, these people will remember the great time they had at your booth and how you engaged with them in a friendly and casual manner.
Leverage Your Social Media Accounts
Begin sharing visuals and details about your products and services as well as what people can expect when they go to your booth. Don’t forget to use the top-performing industry hashtags and the hashtags of the trade show. Preferably, it would be best if you did this a couple of months before the event itself and then post more regularly in the days leading to the event. Ensure that your posts are informative, relevant, and intriguing to help capture the attention of your target market. You can likewise consider hosting a contest on social media to build more buzz about your booth.
Consider Purchasing the Show List
It’s common practice for trade show organizers to offer specific benefits to exhibitors like the ability to purchase the trade show list. Do note though that some show lists only contain names, companies, and titles, so your marketing team might need to dig deeper in order to obtain the email addresses and other contact info of people on the list.
As you can see, you don’t need a huge amount of money to create interest in your booth and get people to come to your booth and chat with you. You need to market your booth the best way possible and rest easy knowing that people will go to your booth because you did your job right.
