Trade Shows Part 5: Getting People to Your Booth

There are basically three opportunities to get people to your booth: Before the trade show, during the trade show, and on the show floor.

How to bring people to the booth before they come to the show:

Most trade shows are crowded, noisy and difficult to navigate. Few delegates actually get to every booth, but most have a list in their heads of those they simply must see. This is where good marketing needs to happen. First, get the registration list from the show organizers. If they won’t give it to you, put them on your list of shows not to attend next year and then go rent a list for that industry or use your customer database.

Hit the list with an offer they can only fulfill if they come to the booth, preferably with the mailer in hand. This can be to pick up a special gift, meet a famous person, get a free assessment of whatever you do, scratch a ticket to win and so on. It really doesn’t matter, the point is to make yours a destination booth for the people you care about.

Just make sure the thing they get for bringing your mailer to the booth is different than what they would have received had they just wandered in. For example, I received a post card recently which I redeemed at a show to receive a lovely pen. People without the card received a less lovely pen. I felt special. Another time I received a key in the mail which I took to the vendor’s booth. If the key fit the lock on the big prize, I could win that prize. I didn’t win, but I still felt special.

In addition to special, your customers and prospects will also feel obligated. At least briefly, they will feel as though they need to give you something in return for the free thing. This is where your crack sales team will hunt.

How to bring people to the booth during the event:

Never underestimate the power of the room drop. Most trade shows have a host hotel and all hotels will happily put whatever you want in the rooms of the people you specify, in exchange for money. These are room drops. A lesser version can involve putting door hangers on the rooms or stuffing a post card under the door. For in-room drops, my advice is to make it very special and very limited.

Find your 25 or 50 or maybe 100 best customers or most lucrative prospects and put a very, very nice thing in their hotel room. It should be a combination of your product stuff and things generally considered lovely. One year, I hit key retail software buyers at an event with a gift basket of wine and cheese, cleverly stuffed also with product samples, pricing sheets and an invitation to an exclusive party. For the buyers who were a little less on our radar but needed to be schmoozed, we left product samples and party invites. The response was enormous and we closed most of our sales on the first day.

This is a way to get the right people to the booth without shouting at them. Trade shows, in general, are about out-shouting other vendors. In my experience, one company shouts loudest and the rest are lost in the noise. Unless you are the loudest company, I think it’s better to have quiet, dignified conversations. Say, over a cheeky Merlot and some cheese in your hospitality suite or the hotel bar.

How to grab their attention on the show floor and make them talk to you:

People-watching at trade shows is fun, fun, fun. One of the best things to watch is the Trinket Steal. This is where someone desperately wants one of whatever is being given away but really hasn’t the interest in speaking to a sales person. But the tacit understanding at all booths is that we trade trinkets for talk (if this is not the case at your booth, you have a serious problem). So what are you going to do to get them to stay long enough for your sales guys to speak to them? My faves:

•  Make them fill in a contest form (a quiz or survey works too) – keeps them busy for at least two minutes
• Put a game on one of your monitors – something moderately challenging like a Wii shooting game or a trivia game
• Or have a little putting contest area or one of those carnival style games of dubious skill. People like to show off, they like the idea of winning and they’ll put up with pretty much any sales pitch to do both
• Put in a seating area – probably my favourite if I have room. Rent a sofa and two comfy chairs and a coffee table. Put them in your booth. Put your literature all over the table. Make sure that the view from every seat is not out to the floor but into your booth. Put a sales person in one of the seats (they don’t seem to mind this). When someone sits down, sell them hard. If their feet hurt enough, they’ll listen. If you really want to hang on to them, throw a couple of power bars on the tables (plug them in first) so visitors can charge stuff up while your sales people chat to them.
• Put in a theatre: Even a dozen seats facing a small riser will do. Have demonstrations every half hour or hour. Throw shirts and other crap into the audience during the demo. People will sit because they are tired and stay because they might get a free thing. Make sure your sales people pick off the interested-looking people before they head off.
• Put in a charging service:  For the price of a few Apple or USB chargers and power bars you can offer a valuable to service to people like me who forget to charge their devices. Simply have attendees drop off their phone, iPad, headset or other uncharged thing, give them a claim check, charge the sucker up for half an hour and give it back. You look like a good Samaritan and you have two opportunities to sell to them. Hire students to handle the charging thing and make sure your sales guys are working the opportunity.

BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter