Book more meetings at the expo

We are listing reasons and ideas for attending an expo. Participating as a guest or exhibiting at a trade show is good idea for many reasons! It’s a perfect opportunity to increase your brand awareness, and keep in touch with existing and potential customers. Exhibiting is an effective way to introduce your product or service, introduce new features of your product or SaaS platform. It is also great to mingle, broaden your network and find new potential collaborations. Make sure to do something extra if you’re in charge of your booth, to maximise the outcome of joining the trade show.

 

Best growth hack is to bring your best sales reps!

If your company exhibits at a trade show it is important that your best sales representatives are in place and ready to make your sales go through the roof (their pitch game should be on point these two very intense days). Make sure to prepare them properly: Plan a breakfast the same morning, arrange a joint ride to the expo (with some good music) so their day begins with friendly and energetic vibes. Suggest an internal competition to arouse competitive instincts to get the sale spirit going! Make sure that you, as the project manager do everything to make both your sales team and your expo audience enthusiastic!

 

So, at which expo are your leads?

Do a thorough research of which trade shows are coming up and make sure to find out which one your target audience and potential new leads will attend! These are two questions that you need to find out before choosing where to exhibit. LeadPilot will for example exhibit the Mark Tech Expo at the Kistamässan in Stockholm on April 20-21.

It’s always good to have experience in the area, so even if you have a large marketing budget it’s smart to visit a few expos first or to do proper research on which expos are coming up. Where you can generate most leads and book the most meetings, then you have the argument for why you should exhibit. If your company is in the start up / scale up phase with a smaller budget, then it may be worth starting by participating as a guest at various expos to get inspiration and learn from how others are doing it before you exhibit yourself. Find a booth that has the same feeling and look that you want your own booth to have, then do the same (this can save you a lot of time with the preparations for the expo, it is much easier to have a proven vision than to create it yourself).

 

A new way to generate more leads, thanks to clear goals?

Set a budget and clear goals. Your ROI (return on investment) can vary depending on your goals and which expo you choose to exhibit at. If you exhibit at the right expo, the opportunities open up for more meetings with the right people and companies.

A very clear goal can be: A specific number of new leads, booked demos or booked meetings. To set these type of goals more easily start by checking how many participants attended the same expo the previous year. This will give you a better idea of how many new leads or booked meetings you can count on and how many sale reps you should bring!

 

Attract your leads to your booth!

Here you have a fantastic opportunity to increase the awareness of your company and your products / services but also your personal brand (for you who participate).

Focus on the message and promote it. What do you want to say and what it is that you want people to remember you by? Create your booth according to that. Choose the right colours, use company branded clothing, mugs, glasses, sweets, etc, to attract visitors and to increase brand awareness.

An excellent opportunity to collect contact information for new leads is to organise a competition and get passing visitors to participate and for example, “guess how many pieces of candy there are in the jar”, invest in a cool prize that the winner of the competition receives. Thanks to the competition, you hopefully have a lot of leads to follow up on after the expo!