Exhibiting at a tradeshow costs money, no two ways about it. You can do your show on the cheap, but cheap looking handouts, flyers and exhibits translates into less attention.
This article is NOT about your display, but your trade show marketing effort. If you are going to invest in exhibit marketing, then pull out all the stops and take advantage of FREE pre-show and post-show internet marketing.
People who attend tradeshows look up information about the show before and after the event. Your pre-show marketing effort should be associating your business name with the trade show name: so when show attendees search, they find your company name along with the show name.
Use business blogging (a FREE blog site on WordPress.com will work) to blog about the trade show and your reason for attending. Your wordpress blog is NOT a time to sell, rather a time to build relevant keyword associations to your company name AND the trade show name.
When blogging, you should write about the demographics connection and why your company decided to speak to that particular audience. Be specific, write about how women who own their own service based business (if that is a demographic of a potential show attendee) are an important aspect of your business. Write about ALL the show demographics if they apply to your business.
Do not relate your blog articles to customers, they are not customers yet, they are not even prospects; they are internet searchers looking for information about the show. You will have plenty of time to sell later. Right now you are making marketing impressions. Write about the show and include your company name as it will appear on your tradeshow booth, business cards, flyers, etc…
Plan on publishing at least one article per week. Use my FREE Business Blog Article Outline as a starting point for formatting your blog article.
Why?
Basic marketing theory 101 is it takes seven impressions of your business name to stick. Between your blog site, website, tradeshow exhibitors list, common area signage, trade show booth, business cards AND post-show advertisement; you’ll have seven hits.
Ed Bejarana
Zenith Exhibits, Inc.
BusinessBlogging.net is the internet marketing division for Zenith Exhibits, Inc.
Because this subject is so BIG, I have broken it into three parts and published it on three blog sites.
On this site I covered changes to your face-to-face, trade show marketing efforts and how to use internet marketing to improve your ROI.
Over on PortlandBusinessCommunity.com you can read more about business blogging concept and using community blog sites.
Over on BusinessBlogging.net you can read more about social marketing part of the discussion.
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[...] Finally, on ZenithExhibits.com I cover changes to your face-to-face, trade show marketing efforts and how to use internet marketing to improve your ROI. [...]
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