Did you miss our recent webinar about “The Value of Trade Shows”? If so, click here to access a recording and copy of the slides.
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I’m often asked about the best way to determine your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for a trade show booth. Simply put, how do you quickly grab someone’s attention and show them how you’re different than the other guy?
Wikipedia has quite the in-depth definition, which you can see at this link. I prefer to summarize it in layman’s terms:
Write down the answers to these 3 questions and you’ve now started to determine your unique selling proposition.
To successfully convey your USP at a trade show, you’ll need to focus a few steps:
1.) Design your trade show graphics to answer the 3 questions listed above.
2.) Create a pre-show marketing campaign to peak interest and give prospects a reason to stop by and hear about your USP (a drip-marketing campaign before the show).
3.) Train booth staffers to ask the right questions and provide information that conveys your USP.
4.) Tie together at-show and post-show campaigns to expand upon your USP message.
5.) Give booth staffers a “go or no-go” option when engaging with prospects — Is this someone we want to meet with soon? If so, scan the badge and agree upon a next step (such as a phone call next Monday to schedule a meeting). If not, should we scan the badge and add to our B or C lead list (they might need more nurturing).
So, determining your USP for a trade show doesn’t have to be a scary and arduous task. With time, focus and input from your team, you can easily develop a strong USP!
It’s been 7 years since Skyline published the pre-cursor to this book, calledCreating Effective Trade Show Promotions. At the time, it was perhaps the most complete book ever made about how to boost trade show results through pre-show and at-show promotions. Yet now it’s become horribly out of date.
That’s because, during those intervening years, came along a little thing called social media. And trade show promotions would never again be the same.
Social media, once thought the potential death of trade shows, has become a powerful tool to reach, engage, invite, and inspire attendees to visit exhibitor’s booths. Exhibitors that once only had to mail, call, and advertise, now know they must also tweet, connect, and post, in order to reach trade show attendees who now exert far greater control over the media they consume.
This book contains 28 articles that have been published on the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog. Half are geared to trade show promotions, including areas such as selecting promotions, creating an invite list, pitfalls to avoid, details to watch for, and more. But in this era of established social media, there are also 14 articles about integrating social media with your trade show program. These articles give you guidance over how to tailor your messages, what social media sites to use, how to use specific sites like YouTube and Twitter, and more.
There are also three worksheets from Marc Goldberg, of Marketech, Inc., to provide more ideas on determining which promotions to choose, and how to execute your plan.
And while social media has changed how to do trade show promotions, it has not changed the strong need to do promotions overall. With about 400 exhibitors at an average trade show, and visitors only spending quality time at about 5% of them, exhibitors still need to excel at promotions in order to get those valuable visitors to move out of the aisle and into their booth.
Use the ideas in this book to your advantage, and get more brand awareness, attendees, leads, and sales from trade shows.
Get more of the right people into your trade show booth. Request your free copy of the new book, Using Promotions & Social Media To Get More Trade Show Visitors, by clicking here.
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The goal of this new book is to provide booth staffers — and the people who manage them — better insights, tools, and ideas to increase their trade show results.
It’s a valuable and a much-needed goal, because there is a surprising disconnect between what exhibitors think about their booth staffing skills and the reality of what happens in their booths.
When we have surveyed exhibitors about what trade show topics they want to learn most, they usually put booth staffing way down the list, feeling that they’ve already mastered staffing. At the same time, they offer lots of quick tips about how to staff a trade show booth. Too bad most of their own staffers don’t follow their advice!
It’s possible to walk down the aisle of any trade show and see booth staffers that are desperate to be doing anything other than engage with prospects. Too many exhibitors waste the lion share of their trade show investment by bringing staffers who don’t want to be there, bringing the wrong staffers, or by not providing adequate training and tools to help them succeed.
This 56-page book contains 34 articles that have been published on the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog. Half are geared to increasing skills and perspectives of individual booth staffers. The other half are for the trade show manager and trainer who must prepare their booth staff. Some articles are broad views of what is involved in booth staffing, while others are deeper dives into key skills, such as engaging attendees, listening better, how staffers can better manage leads, how to measure booth staffers, and more.
We also have included two excellent worksheets useful for managing booth staffers, provided by Marc Goldberg of Marketech, Inc.
This may seem like a lot of info to digest “just” about booth staffing. But there is so much riding on your booth staffers, as 85% of what attendees remember is based on them, and trade shows are still the top marketing spend for business-to-business marketers.
So make a commitment to excellence. Read and implement the ideas in this book, and really improve the performance of your trade show program.
Improve your booth staffing skills and your booth staff team. Request your free copy of the new book, Better Booth Staffing For Greater Trade Show Results, by clicking here.
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Trade shows are deceptively simple looking. They appear to be no harder than popping up a display, standing in your booth space, and then waiting for all the buyers to waltz in and give you their money. If only it was that easy.
What It Takes To Succeed At Trade Shows
The reality is that trade shows require a wide array of skills, including marketing, planning, organization, communications, team-building, and more. You need an eye for details, and the people skills of a diplomat. You need the creativity of an artist, and the financial drive of an entrepreneur.
You also must build your ability to do specific key tasks for your trade shows to succeed: trade show logistics, booth staff selection, training, and staffing; exhibit design; pre-show and at-show promotions; lead management; and measurement of your program’s results.
Build Your Budding Trade Show Skills
This book provides you with the tools you need to get started on all these areas. Most of all, it provides you with a base level of expectations you can take to heart about the challenges and potential to succeed at trade shows. These insights will allow you to shorten your learning curve and feel more comfortable, even at the beginning of your trade show journey.
Just remember this: all trade show exhibitors were new exhibitors at one time. And while trade shows look daunting at first, you will get through this, and eventually become a veteran exhibitor yourself.
This book contains 25 articles previously published in the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog, and is one of three books in a series for exhibitors at different levels of trade show marketing skills. The three books are:
Trade Show Tips for New Exhibitors
Trade Show Tips for Inline Exhibitors
Trade Show Tips for Island Exhibitors
New to trade shows? Or have a colleague who is? Then get your free copy of the new book, Trade Show Tips For New Exhibitors, by clicking here.
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Welcome to The Big Time.
When you exhibit in an island trade show exhibit, you’re making a major marketing commitment. The costs are larger, the expectations higher, and the risks greater. But so is the potential.
As an island exhibitor you need to bring your A-game to fully realize your marketing investment. You’ve got a bigger booth to fill with an exhibit potentially as large as a house. You have a team of booth staffers to select and train that rivals a professional sports team. You have a budget large enough to catch the eye of your CFO. All eyes are on you, both at the show and in your company.
Make Bigger Better
Therefore, this book contains our most advanced insights and proven methods for all the key aspects of trade show marketing. We go deeper on areas such as booth staffing, exhibit design, measurement, lead management, and logistics. There are even articles written especially for the unique challenges faced by island exhibitors like you.
This book contains 26 articles previously published in the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog, and three worksheets from Marc Goldberg of Marketech. This book is one of three books in a series for exhibitors at different levels of trade show marketing skills. The three books are:
Trade Show Tips for New Exhibitors
Trade Show Tips for Inline Exhibitors
Trade Show Tips for Island Exhibitors
Get more results from your island exhibit. Request your free copy of the new book, Trade Show Tips For Island Exhibitors, by clicking here.
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The Versatile Inline Exhibit
As an exhibitor in an inline exhibit space, you have a lot of company. Almost all exhibitors exhibit in 10 or 20 foot inline spaces. For many exhibitors, a 10 x 10 backwall is the only space they take, and they want to get as much out of this square box as they can. Some exhibitors use 10 x 20 spaces when they want to stand out at their largest shows.
And for the largest companies in our economy, the inline booth space is what they use at their smaller shows, where they exhibit in regional shows or key vertical market shows.
But just because you exhibit in an inline exhibit doesn’t mean you can’t stand out, and it also doesn’t mean that you get a free pass, either. You have to do your part to succeed, and if you do, success is within your grasp.
Getting Big Results From Small Booths
This book provides includes articles to give you, the small booth exhibitors, the necessary knowledge and skills to execute key trade show functions, such as exhibit design, booth staffing, trade show promotions, lead management, and measurement.
This book contains 24 articles previously published in the Skyline Trade Show Tips blog, plus one worksheet from Marc Goldberg of Marketech. It’s one of three books in a series for exhibitors at different levels of trade show marketing skills. The three books are:
Trade Show Tips for New Exhibitors
Trade Show Tips for Inline Exhibitors
Trade Show Tips for Island Exhibitors
Are you an inline exhibitor? Then get your free copy of the new book, Trade Show Tips For Inline Exhibitors, by clicking here.
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