Pre-Trade Show Marketing: Tips For Success

Things can get quite hectic for several months before a trade show or conference. You are either just beginning or are barely into the planning stages, and the trade show is far enough away that you aren’t feeling the urgency just yet.

Pre-show planning is vital if you want to maximize your trade show and conference return on investment (ROI). The strategy, goal setting, and implementation of the pre show marketing is so incredibly important that it is considered the beat that is born of the same exact goal. With that being said, it deserves as much attention as the plans that you have—or will have—for the event day.

Here are a few tips that will help you put some focus on your pre show marketing efforts. The below tip swill help inspire some commitment and implementation within your team that will boost the potential for an incredible trade show or conference ROI.

#1: Straighten Out Your Goals

If you don’t have direction with your action, then everything is just going to be chaotic. Therefore, it is important that you ensure your goals are clear—to everyone on your team. Some of the most ineffective marketing efforts before the trade show are severely focused wide-ranging goals that try to attract others but wind up attracting absolutely no one. So, it is important to determine who your target audience is and then keep it and the implementation laser focused.

Basic goal – To schedule a large amount of one-on-one meetings.

Defined goal – To schedule 50 meetings between 10 sales team members with 30 brand-new prospects and eight existing clients for a revenue opportunity of $400,000.

Goals are the representation of the direction of success that you want to achieve. Therefore, the more specific that you are able to be with your goals, the better of your will be in the long run. In this instance, you can use your specific goal to move backwards and recognize the marketing strategies that will aid you in achieving your goal.

Developing systems will allow your team to stay attentive, which is particularly important the closer that trade show event day approaches. This provides you with the opportunity to reflect back on goals throughout the process and ask whether those efforts are impacting the goal. If they are, then continue on.

#2: Secure Your Advertising Budget for the Pre-Show

When preparing for a trade show or conference, you cannot forget to plan your advertising budget for ensuring that you get the word out before the event day. More often than not, people get so caught up in the amount that they’re spending for the event day itself that they ignore the opportunity for pre-show advertising until it is almost too late. If you set aside a general budget for your event, then it is recommended that you set aside about 25 percent of that for pre-trade show advertising. With a budget in mind, you are able to maintain your focus because it is distracting if you purchase outside of your pre-determined budget. The goal is to make money rather than spend a lot of it.

#3: Understand Advertising Strategies for the Pre-Trade Show

Once you have set your goals and finalized your budget, you need to determine the strategies that will be best for your team to reach your goals. There are many marketing strategies that can be used in pre-show advertising, and these tactics can be classified as earned, paid, or owned media.

Earned – This refers to SEO and word of mouth.

Paid – This refers to any online marketing tools that are paid for such as SEM (PPC), social media ads, and content discovery tools like Outbrain.

Owned – This refers to direct mail, e-mail marketing, content marketing, organic social media, landing pages, and corporate website.

All of your strategies must be consistent with one another, your brand, as well as your event presence. Ensure your entire team is aware of any experiments with your message. Are you focusing on getting demos for a brand-new product? Are you A/B testing for a slogan that has been recently updated? This all feeds into your overall advertising strategy pre-trade show.

#4: Schedule a Team Meeting

You should schedule a team meeting for anyone who deals with pre show advertising. This may include copywriters, designers, digital advertising team, social media managers, project managers, and the sales team. Get everyone all in one room and inform them of the plan. To ensure that the meeting goes smoothly, send the overall outline to the team prior to the meeting. Assign two members of your team with tasks: one to ensure the meeting stays on track so things so get out of hand and one to take notes. Make certain everyone at the meeting is clear on goals and deadlines prior to leaving.

Please note: While the entire team doesn’t have to be at the meeting, it is important for everyone to check in daily to make certain that they all understand that the project is incredibly time-sensitive and requires solid implementation.

#5: Write Everything Down

If you have been to a trade show before, you have likely seen those experienced marketers before that have big binders full of papers that outline everything they need to ensure they get through the event smoothly. Nothing can get by them because of this. You need this same kind of state of mind with your pre-trade show advertising approach. Write everything down, even if you think they are just half thoughts of your own or from an intern at your last meeting.

#6: Make Sure to Stay on Track

It is inevitable to get distracted, as there will be other projects that will arise and need to be completed with urgency, but it is important that the entire team remains on track. This is where organization and time management will be key.

• Make sure that the goal is communicated to the entire team as frequently as possible.
• Schedule pre-trade show labors at the start of the work day so they are prioritized.
• As the day of the event inches closer, try to compartmentalize pre-trade show and actual event day efforts. Avoid letting advertising get behind simply because you’re preparing for the event day itself. Make sure there are two team leads—one for pre-show and one for event day—to keep everything separate and equal.
• Keep in mind that each minute invested in pre-trade show advertising will likely be a minute that won’t be spent pulling irrelevant event attendees off the floor at the trade show to your booth.

#7: Take the Time to Gauge Your Success

Regardless of whether it is the day prior to the event or on the ride there, ensure that you take the time to perform an analysis of all of your pre=show advertising labors. This allows you to have a solid understanding of what did and didn’t work prior to arriving at the trade show. It is helpful to know whether your advertising campaign assisted the team in securing the goal that you set early on.

If the end results did not make the goals that you initially set, you need to acknowledge the improvements. Even the smallest of improvements can add to compound success in the long run. Among these subtle improvements, you may find flubs, but you should not turn the cold shoulder to them. Make use of them as main talking points the next go-around. You will not realize the full culmination of your work until the event is over. Therefore, while it’s important that you complete an analysis and review prior to the event, you should perform a post-show breakdown as well.

If you would like to learn more, reach out to us at Expo and Show today.