6 Benefits of Event Sales and Marketing for Your Brand

With pay-per-click, social media and search engine optimisation (SEO), you might be thinking that there’s no point in traditional event marketing. However, exhibiting at trade shows and conferences is still as important as ever. Stats show that 67 percent of all attendees are potential prospects for exhibitors.

If you’re on the fence about a trade show or you need some help convincing your boss, then here are six benefits of event sales and marketing for your brand.

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Why Your Brand Should Exhibit at Events

  1. Access to Your Target Audience

  2. The Chance to Build Awareness

  3. See What Your Competition is Doing

  4. Collate Valuable Feedback

  5. Recruit New Team Members

  6. Complete Sales with Prospects

1. access to your target audience

A trade show or conference is the perfect opportunity to network with your target audience. It’s sometimes difficult when running a digital marketing campaign to make sure your content is reaching exactly who it’s supposed to.

But with an event, hundreds of members of your target audience are attending and interacting with your booth. You won’t have to go out and find your audience as they’ll be walking past all day.

It’s a unique chance to talk to potential customers and generate good-quality leads for your business.

2. The Chance to Build Awareness

There’s a good chance that attendees at the event won’t know much about your business. They may have heard your name but only have a vague idea of who you are and what you can offer them.

Even if someone you’re speaking to isn’t ready to be a customer, you can still raise your brand’s profile with them. So, in the future, they’ll think of you when they eventually do need the service you offer.

It’s a great opportunity to really sell your business and show attendees who you are. A fantastic, personal interaction can do a lot more in the long run for your business than any automated email you might send.

3. See What Your Competition is Doing

If you’ve had the bright idea to exhibit at an event, then it’s likely that your competition has too. When you have a spare moment, take a walk around the room and get a closer look at what your rivals are up to.

Pretend you’re a potential prospect and speak to them directly. This first-hand market research can give you a great insight into what others in your industry are doing. It’s a good way of making sure you aren’t caught out by anything that they’re offering.

See how they interact with prospects. Are they playing videos, giving demonstrations or handing out print marketing too? See what’s working for them and what isn’t and use that information to adapt your own strategy.

4. Collate Valuable Feedback

Trade shows are attended by experts and leaders in your industry. They have valuable knowledge and insight that you can access by offering passersby the chance to give feedback on your business.

Ask them about the booth and the information you’ve provided. Did they find it useful or confusing? Are you the best business they’ve interacted with that day or the worst? Why? Give out quick feedback forms to attendees and ask them a few simple questions. This data can then improve how you approach future events for your business.

It can be difficult to get valuable information from attendees for free. To encourage the more reluctant visitors, run a competition for anyone that provides feedback. It can be a free consultation from your business or even something as simple as Amazon vouchers.

Either way, you’ll find you get a much better response rate.

5. Recruit New Team Members

As well as speaking to new clients, trade shows are also an opportunity to speak to industry talent.

You never know who you’ll run into at these events and it isn’t just potential clients that are walking the conference floor. The next member of your marketing team could be someone who’s visited with another business who’s fallen in love with your product.

Swap business cards or social media handles with anyone that could potentially be a good fit at your company in the future.

6. Complete Sales with Prospects

To stand out from the competition, many trade show exhibitors offer conference-only pricing and special offers. It’s a great way of grabbing someone’s attention and convincing them to visit your booth.

You might have already been speaking to a potential prospect, so the trade show is an opportunity to close the sale after a little bit of face-to-face encouragement. Eighty-one percent of attendees have buying authority and can agree to a sale there and then.

Stand Out from the Crowd With Large Format Printing

At any event, you’ll be competing with hundreds of other exhibitors for the attention of visitors. Fail to make a good impression and you’ll find that passersby don’t pay you much notice. To catch the eye of prospects, you need to make sure your booth is as engaging as possible. You can achieve this through large format printing.

See how large format printing has helped brands at huge events like Gaming Expo and YouTube Brandcast by downloading our free Success Stories guide.

Click on the link below now to get your copy.

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