Why Are Trade Shows So Important To Your Business?
In this era of technological interactions, where we’re more accustomed to texting than talking, we may be discounting the importance of “old fashioned” face-to-face meetings. At its core, that’s what trade show displays and conventions offer: a chance for you to meet—in a face-to-face setting—prospects, current users of your product or service, new business partners and even potential new hires. You and other members of your trade show team can also network with business professionals and peers, as well as speakers, authors and others that may be involved in the educational track that often accompanies a trade show. Why is this important?
By meeting face-to-face, you learn what your prospects need, what they want, and what prompted them to look to your company for help. This information is easier to obtain when your prospect is in front of you, as opposed to being in front of a computer screen. And at some point, it’s valuable for prospects to meet the people “behind” the company or the business name.
Being seen on the trade show floor is a way interested people can be drawn to you. Professor Richard D. Arvey, Ph.D. at the Business School of the National University of Singapore, wrote a white paper entitled “Why Face-to-Face Business Meetings Matter.”
In it, Arvey offers five reasons why face-to-face settings are still important to the successful conduct of business.
Why Are Trade Shows So Important To Your Business? Let’s count the ways!
1. “Face-to-face meetings allow members to engage in and observe verbal and non-verbal behavioral styles” that aren’t communicated through technological tools, from texting to tweeting, to the telephone, to videoconferencing. When your trade show booth staffers are trying to persuade prospects that what you offer is the ideal solution to their problem, it’s useful to have access to all the behavioral cues that can help your salespeople close the sale.
2. “Face-to-face meetings afford participants opportunities to develop transparency and trust among each other in ways that are not always possible compared to other forms of communication.” Selling requires trust, and a great exhibit design at the trade show setting gives your sales staff the avenue to build transparency and trust with prospects.
3. “Face-to-face meetings allow participants to evaluate and judge the integrity, competencies, and skills (e.g. verbal skills) of others,” whether that’s a prospect, a competitor or a job candidate. You can be certain your prospects are evaluating and judging companies they may want to do business with, and you have to be there to be evaluated. Also, a brief chat with a potential new hire on the tradeshow floor can tell you more about him or her than you’d discover on an employment application.
4. “Face-to-face meetings allow participants to develop strong social relationships.” In an environment where the participants can stand toe-to-toe and shake hands on a deal, that behavior facilitates social bonding and increases your stature with prospects. Those business relationships can take on a more personal dimension, once both participants have met face-to-face.
Face-to-face meetings allow participants to develop strong social relationships. Click To Tweet
5. “Attending face-to-face meetings help individuals develop more clear understandings of how they themselves ‘belong’ to the organization in which they work, how they fit in and their relative status among other group members.” This speaks not only to interactions with trade show booth visitors that help build your brand (allowing prospects and customers to feel a sense of “ownership” in your organization), but also to the shared group experience of your staff working the trade show together. “Surviving” that experience can bring your people closer together, improving relationships among your personnel.
It’s important to note that online communications with your customers and prospects can—and does—have a place in your marketing mix. I’m not suggesting that face-to-face interactions should replace your marketing efforts through social media. Rather, it’s necessary to create an integrated marketing mix, where your participation in trade shows can be exploited through online communications.
For example, your trade show calendar might be posted on your website, with instructions for prospects to contact you to schedule an appointment with your sales staff or even senior management at the display stand, or simply an open invitation to stop by your booth and say hello. Through social media like Facebook and Twitter, you can promote your participation in upcoming shows—even offering social-media-only opportunities to participate in contests or giveaways.
Another reason trade shows are important to your business is that your sales staff will be interacting with decision makers and people who hold the purse strings for their companies. It’s difficult in online marketing efforts to tailor your “pitch” to the person who’ll be writing the check, purchasing your product or service. But in the exhibit hall, most attendees have purchasing power.
In that face-to-face setting, your salespeople can absolutely tailor their product presentation to each individual prospect. Consider, too, that trade shows are an ideal environment for generating excitement and “buzz” about your product or service.
This happens within your trade show exhibit, but it can also move outside your booth through press releases and your own efforts at promotion through online channels. Whether that energy is centered on your product or service, an in-booth presentation or product demo, or a contest or giveaway—all these things can be shared through both social media and traditional media.
Can you tell I’m gung-ho on trade shows? What can I say? It’s what we do, and we’ve been doing it for decades. If you need help with your trade show exhibit, that’s what we’re here for. If you have a question, check out our site – american-image.com – and then call us. If you need a new trade show booth, or changes to your current exhibit, call us. Call at (425) 556-9511 or email [email protected].
Check out our tips for your first trade show and why trade shows are not events.