Tips to Promote Your Business at an Expo
Unpublished
By Unpublished By Each year the Wanneroo Business Association organises the annual Wanneroo Business Expo.
In partnership with the City of Wanneroo, the event is held at The Marina Mindarie, with over 450 attendees at the last one. Plans are in place to deliver our next Business Expo in March 2023, contact us for more information on this.
Expos are a powerful marketing tool because they generally take place at a single location. They usually last for one to two days, and bring together many businesses, exhibitors and hundreds of potential customers.
Common reasons for exhibiting include:
Pre-plan how you want your display to look. Keep it clean, interesting and inviting!
Consider using stand-alone presentation boards as you cannot rely on having a wall to stick things on. Be creative and make it stand out. Include pictures, if possible, and be sure your company name and logo are more than obvious.
Order a banner to promote your business, this can be re-purposed to be careful about what to print on it. Choose the length of a typical booth, wide enough to take your business logo, website and phone number.
Think about arranging your display, place larger items at the back, shorter items in front of those, and even shorter items in front of those.
An easy expo tip. Don’t rely on the event organiser to bring attendees through the door. Share “FREE Passes” to your existing clients well before the Expo, inviting them to visit you. Encourage them to forward invitations on to their contacts because a referral from a happy customer can mean everything! Encourage them to visit you at the Expo by offering of a special gift of a discount off your product or service.
Make notes as you go to jot down follow up actions. Prepare ‘action’ forms so you can record what you will need to do post event. If you have promised to email a link, give them a call or arrange a meeting, be sure you do so!
Make your stand ‘stand out’! Attract people to gravitate to you but using a video on a screen, subtle music or get creative and use a bubble or smoke machine but be careful it matches with your brand eg a Funeral Director doesn’t want a set up that looks like a party!
Because everyone loves a freebie! Have plenty of material giveaways, but try to think outside the box so you’re giving the same old branded pen or fridge magnets to everyone. Think about items that are relevant to your industry but a little unique to guarantee you will be remembered. Extra business expo tip – food or small packets of sweets are always a crowd pleaser!
Offer a prize that in some way complements your business and appeals to your target audience (you don’t want any old chap entering because it’s free!) A traditional method is to collect business cards in a bowl, which will be drawn later, but this creates admin work to process. Think about using an ipad so people can sign up to your mailing list or fill in a contact form, then the admin is done for you! Check out Mailchimp for this.
In terms of sales, this is one of the best business expo tips! Follow up any leads with the action required promptly by categorising them hot, warm or luke warm because this way you know to follow up the hot ones first.
Thank you for reading our ‘Tips to Promote Your Business at an Expo’, we hope to see you at our next Wanneroo Business Expo.
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