How We Get More Exhibition Stand Visits and Stronger Leads For Clients
Attending exhibitions is a regular and important element of working life for many of us, especially for businesses that sell products or are launching into a new target marketplace. As an outsourced sales agency and outsourced marketing agency, it’s no different for the team here at OSBOS, who travel with our clients from Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Birmingham and more locations for expo season. As we prepare for a busy trade show schedule we’ve been thinking about how we can make it the best yet for our clients, running marketing and sales campaigns that generate fantastic ROI. Here we share 3 of our top tips to get more exhibition stand visits and encourage stronger leads.
Engagement, engagement, engagement
An engaging feature at your stand is an invite to potential customers and has been proven to get more exhibition stand visits. It encourages visitors to get involved and interact with your brand on a more substantial level and the more engaging you make your presence, the more you’ll be remembered. All businesses are aware of engagement. However, in the jam-packed lead up to an expo and because of the need for a return on investment, focus and finances are often directed to selling on stand. And by this, we mean sending in your best salespeople and using their communication skills to generate leads that’ll convert.
To complement this, consider investing in digital assets to boost interactivity, engagement and thus positive, lasting impressions of you. Ideas such as touch screens with information downloads, quizzes and the ability to control the visuals or lighting on stand have been very successful. Live social media feed walls, photo points and competitions are also popular and relatively affordable to set up, too. You never know, recollections of a fantastic stand may be what gets you onto your next big contract shortlist.
Think outside the box (or the shell scheme)
When signing up to an expo, make sure to negotiate your floor plan placement. Your exhibition address is so important and ideally, you want to be in the location that’ll experience the highest footfall and therefore generate the most organic visits to your stand. Dream stand location or not, you can still maximise your own footfall and nurture strong leads by designing a great layout. Make sure to take visitors on a journey – show them what they want to see and engineer a layout that encourages them to make the decisions that’ll benefit your business.
If you’re fortunate enough to have the resources, contacts and budget, what’s to stop you going all out for a truly memorable presence? We’ve seen some breath-taking creative exhibition stand setups that make use of optical illusions in the flooring and panelling, unconventional shapes and graphics, on-stand performances and even utilising products to form part of the stand structure.
Don’t just captivate, generate
You could have the most captivating stand of the lot and be the cause of much envy from your competitors. However, if you don’t proactively and diligently reach out and invite visitors, leads and customers to see you, then you’re relying on just passing footfall which is only a small segment of your revenue opportunity. We’d recommend targeting accounts and fellow exhibitors that you’d like to win by undertaking a pre-expo invite campaign, whether by phone, email or social media to get more exhibition stand visits. Also, consider incentivising a visit to your stand.
When you’re at the exhibition, consider arming one of your team with physical invites and branded goody-bags and have them visit those target accounts in person. Pair a great conversation with a few creative, professional freebies and your chances of converting from prospect to lead and hopefully, customer is much higher. Whilst working the floor, your team will also become a walking advert for your business thanks to portable branded gear.
Does your business attend trade shows, expos and events throughout the year but struggles with generating a justifiable return on investment, or wants to make more revenue than previous years? Then OSBOS would love to hear from you. We specialise in B2B sales, businesses development, strategy and marketing for SMEs and have a proven track record of supporting our clients with achieving their trade show goals and growing their business.
We service clients across locations including Cheshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Birmingham from our Gadbrook Park, Northwich offices with low-risk, scalable outsourced sales and outsourced marketing. Our exhibition support services allow businesses to plug us in exactly when additional skill and resource is required, removing the headaches of managing a busy trade show season.
To find out how you can get more exhibition stand visits and to share your exhibition experiences, just call + 44 (0) 1606 822606 or email .
