Exhibitions are a great marketing tool; they allow you to talk face to face with prospects as well as network with other industry professionals to build relationships.
However, it cannot always seem easy to find an exhibition which will suit the industry that you’re in. This blog post will talk you through a few of our tips to finding the perfect trade show for your business.
A Specific Venue
Travelling across the UK for a trade show may not be how you want to spend your day, especially if you’re a smaller company. So, decide where is the closet and biggest venue for your workplace and visit the venue’s website directly.
The venue lists future events on their website with information about the day and an option to either visit or exhibit at the event.
This can be a great way to find out what kind of exhibitions are on in your local city. You will have the bonus of being a local business to the visitors attending – this can be a big selling point, especially for smaller companies.
Remember, if you want to exhibit at one of these shows, look in advance as the exhibitor slots may sell out fast at popular events.
Companies in Your Industry
Word of mouth can be a really powerful marketing tool for exhibitions, and this is for a good reason. If a business has previously exhibited at an expo, enjoyed their day and had a lot of business from the show, it will mean more to other business owners than a Facebook campaign ever will.
Ask other owners whether they have attended any good trade shows both as visitors and exhibitors; remember to ask for extra information like how many people to expect. This can prepare you for the type of event you will be attending and give you a bit of insight as to which shows are actually worth attending.
These don’t even have to be business owners that you know well, maybe you know of another MD from a similar company, you can start building a relationship just by asking.
Exhibition Directories
Now, this may be the most straightforward and quickest way to find an exhibition to attend, but you could miss out on a few gems that aren’t listed in a directory – check elsewhere to make sure you aren’t missing any smaller events.
A directory will list a whole range of exhibitions located in the UK or Worldwide; filters will allow you to narrow down your results.
This can be interesting to find out what shows are out there and available for your business to attend.
Expocheck.com is a worldwide exhibition directory with a large number of categories and locations around the world.
Social Media
Social media allows you to find out what people are talking about and their opinions on different events.
Twitter, for example, is a great tool if you want to find out what people think about certain shows, search the name of the show and you’ll find all the tweets containing the event’s name. This may help you find new recommendations as well as answering any questions.
Another way you can use social media is to ask your followers, find out if any of them have experience at a trade show for your industry sector – remember to use hashtags to reach the most people.
Finally, most exhibition social pages will have optimised their accounts to be found using key phrases, so try using your social search like Google with phrases like “Car Exhibition Birmingham”, this will bring you up lots of Facebook pages which meet this search.
Once you have found a few exhibitions which work for your business and who can find you the right customers, you will be able to stick with these rather than trying to find new shows all the time.
