5 trends to make your trade shows a success in 2019

As the 2019 season of trade and consumer shows has just started, the eternal questions related to exhibitor participation keep coming back: how to stand out from your competitors? How to offer a unique experience to visitors? How to optimize your return on investment? Are you attending trade fairs or congresses this year?

Discover 5 trends to follow to optimize your presence and ensure a good return on objectives.

Emotional marketing

Emotional marketing brings together all the marketing devices aimed at taking advantage of the emotions felt by visitors. As they spend less and less time at trade shows, ways need to be found to get their attention. Offer them a unique experience that will arouse their emotions (surprise, joy, recognition, admiration, etc.) in order to establish an anchor.

Why do emotional and event marketing go hand in hand? Visitors are now volatile and demanding; they expect exhibitors to have a unique and memorable experience. The physical encounter allows messages to be transmitted more effectively.

Tip: Feel free to arouse nostalgia or laughter, two emotions that easily break the ice.

Customer-oriented design

You only have one chance to make a good first impression. Therefore, you have to find a way to understand the needs of the visitors and to arouse their emotions. Understanding your prospects and customers is now the only way to stay competitive.

In this context, preparation for a trade fair does not start with the management of the stand and technical services. She starts by getting into her client's mind. Why is he visiting the show? What does he already know about your company and your solutions? What do you want them to remember when they come to your stand? The answers to these questions will allow you to design a customer-oriented booth.

This means knowing their challenges or their frustrations in the market and using them to design a stand that will meet them. Every detail of your booth design should be thought through to reinforce the message you want to convey to visitors.

Carefully select the team on your stand

In a world where digital interactions have multiplied, physical encounters are rarer and more valued. The purpose of a fair is to create physical encounters and bond between participants. This is why it is essential to select the right human resources at your stand. Choose employees with good interpersonal skills and able to answer visitors' questions. We also invite you to motivate the top managers of your company to be present at your stand in order to show your company's commitment to the market and the value you give to your participation in the event. Top manager visitors will feel valued if they can interact with your company's top manager.

Tip: Your company's salespeople must be present at your stand in order to generate contacts. However, do not hesitate to call on other profiles within your company to liven up your stand. The technical profiles or the teams in charge of customer service will have a different approach to your sales representatives and sometimes a more in-depth knowledge of the specific issues of your customers and prospects.

Give preference to live demonstrations

Visitors to a trade show are faced with an overload of information and messages, which can lead to a decrease in their attention and concentration. In this context, offer an experience that will speed up visitor learning and allow you to stand out from your competitors. Remember the reasons a visitor comes to a trade show. They want, see, touch and test the products. They are looking for answers and solutions to their problems. They want to get to know the people with whom they may come to work.

In this context, offer demonstrations and / or workshops that will support the commercial approach of your team on site. You need to provide visitors with the information they came for, in the most relevant and impactful way. Think of this exercise as a tour of your solutions, making them easier to understand and adopt.

Tip: involve your customers in your demonstrations and / or workshops. No impact will be more powerful than that of your customers explaining to their fellow visitors the added value of deploying your solution in their structure. This implies anticipating your participation in advance so that you can organize yourself with your customers.

Harness the power of data

Collecting and analyzing the data of visitors to your stand is nothing new. However, integrating new data mining tools can allow you to speed up and refine their exploitation. Now, data can help you better understand visitor behaviors, drive deeper engagement with your prospects, and foster a richer experience for attendees. When you analyze the results of your presence at a trade show, focus on what is missing: who has not visited your booth? Which segment of your target haven't you met or engaged? Then think about other ways to respond to these shortcomings (another show? Another event format?).

Justification of expenses and return on investment are key elements of any marketing action plan. For several months now, we have noticed from exhibitors a particular attention to data relating to return on objectives. Quantifying is good, qualifying is better! For example: what impact has your presence had on social networks? Do your prospects understand your competitive advantage? Do visitors have a positive image of your brand?

Emphasize the collection of more qualified data including for example the demographics of visitors, the questions they ask you, the knowledge they have of your solutions, the solutions they consider to be alternatives to yours, etc. Participating in a trade fair is now an opportunity to carry out in-depth market research on the behavior and expectations of visitors.

The acceleration of interactions between people and technology, taken to their climax at trade fairs and conferences, promises us in 2019 a lot of innovation in the event marketing strategies of players in the sector.