How Trade Shows can thrive when combined with Digital Marketing: An XPO Exhibitions Observation

For millennia, traders have showcased their products face to face in market squares around the world.  Trade Shows were the cornerstone of the business calendar.

In more modern times, before the days of Google, Skype and in fact e-mail, trade shows were a hub for industry professionals to network and for businesses to launch initiatives which they hoped would keep consumers and competitors talking for months to come.

What made trade shows so special is seemingly being surpassed and made irrelevant in the digital age. However, despite this trend, trade shows for pretty much every industry imaginable continue year on year and hundreds of thousands of people annually clear a space on their calendar to attend. So why do trade shows remain popular?

The answer is to get people talking and not just the industry professionals and journalists, but the businesses and consumers who they really want to target.

Compliment your Trade Show presence with online interaction

When supported by online activity trade shows can provide an opportunity to put your service or new product into the spotlight. This means putting it right under the noses of the important figures who can help your idea, as well as your content, to go viral.

Bloggers, vloggers and opinion leaders are often only a click away online.  Touch base with advocates and early adopters of your product, utlilise testimonials and speak with them face-to-face.

People do business with those they like and trust.  Great content online is ideal for building a following of subscribers receptive to your pitch.  Marketing your product online can be pretty cost-effective, but getting it the recognition it deserves is what trade shows were designed for.

The development of trust is most effective when done in person by face to face interaction at Trade Shows, informing and educating people of the full and varied nature of your business.

Building a database to future proof your business

Trade show investment is now much more measurable than in the past with cutting edge technology to electronically collect data and follow-up actions and orders.

The XPO Leads App is an example of new technology allowing you to capture details from prospective buyers at the touch of a button simply by scanning their visitor badge.  Build your very own database, record follow up-notes, survey your prospects / customers, take orders and view all records instantly from your phone, tablet or online.

Trade Shows provide a physical opportunity

Written content and even video content are both very useful, but there is nothing quite like actually meeting the teams who help other businesses to function and having a frank discussion about what their service or product can do for your business.

We’ve seen how this worked for an EMEX 2016 exhibitor who sold a $1.2m machine because the prospect saw the video content on the trade show website and organised a face to face meeting with the exhibitor.

This is where there is value in using trade shows to enhance your digital marketing and trade show organisers as XPO Exhibitions assist you with this!

Furthermore, trade shows provide the space for feedback and to find out first-hand which aspects of your strategy are successful and which are simply unnecessary. Being able to speak privately and openly with critics as opposed to online blogs that can cause lasting damage, it is this kind of feedback which is valuable when looking to grow your brand.

An opportunity to learn and interact

Many who attend trade shows will never have any intention of exhibiting themselves, but there is still value to be found in attending.

If the event is industry specific, then it provides the chance for you to look around at the activity of competitors and industry leaders.

An Exhibitors ultimate objective is to sell and generate leads, which is why their strategies are plain to see.  This provides fantastic insight into how the industry is developing and the trends which it is shifting towards.

Trade shows and digital marketing may sit on two very different realms and while it is simple to argue that the former is becoming increasingly dependent on the latter, there is still a huge amount of potential within exhibition halls. While online we can gain access to a huge audience, the difficulty has always been to turn that click into a buyer or a subscriber.

Trust is what has made trade shows such a key event on the calendar because businesses and consumers can interact face-to-face.

It is this aura of trustworthiness which digital marketing can often struggle to recreate.