Do you want to showcase the latest products of your company in a truly grand manner? Then you need to present at the most relevant trade show for your company. Trade shows provide the perfect platform to educate customers about your latest products and services. But trade show success requires creative thinking to attract the customers to your booth. A hanging display will help you to create a buzz in the trade show and get the maximum attention from prospective clients.

Hanging displays are specifically designed to meet the customer from a distance. These displays inform the customers about your presence and carry messaging about your company. The striking appearance of these displays will lend a special appearance to your stall.

Trade show displays offer a very economical way of reaching out to the customers. Exhibit displays and the expo displays can be set up at the minimum cost and also occupy the least amount of space. Attractive pop up displays and exhibits will benefit your company with increased customers, sales and profits.

Impact Displays offers exhibit display. The website www.impact-displays.com provides complete information about the company.

Do you want to create lasting impression in the biggest trade show in the country? Well for an event with such a grand scale your preparation also has to be really grand! Portable display booths can provide a professional look to your booth and ensure that it gets the maximum attention from visitors. Trade show displays have evolved to include significant technical advances.

Display booths are available in various designs and you can choose one according to your budget and space considerations. You may choose a large “island” display if you are a veteran of the trade shows or you can choose a moderately priced, attractive pop up display banner if you are venturing to your first show. Choose a display with good design and the latest technology makes to really stand out.

At trade shows, every company is vying for the customer’s attention. Exhibit booths and display booths provide a very economical way of achieving this goal. Display booths can also be fitted with LCD TV’s to deliver the message effectively. Get a good display – your get your customer’s attention and generate a lot of booth traffic.

Impact Displays offer trade show display booths. The website www.impact-displays.com provides complete information about the company.

As you prepare for your next trade show, make sure to consider a truss display, one of the most popular modular displays available. Truss displays provide you with tremendous capabilities for displaying messaging and product and have a unique, architectural appeal. Truss will make your booth truly stand out.

Truss trade show displays are modular exhibits which are manufactured from light weight materials like aluminum, steel and composites, which makes them very portable. The flat side panels are perfect for displaying large graphic murals while the use of magnets makes it easier to stick the murals together.

Truss trade show displays give your booth a very attractive look and will get the attention of your customers (and your competitors’ customers). They can be set up quickly and come in various shapes and sizes and can be customized according to your requirements.

Impact Displays offers Truss trade show displays and various other trade show exhibits. The company also provides useful trade show tips. The website www.impact-dispalys.com provides complete information about the company.

As you may know, Impact Displays is an SGIA (Specialty Graphics Industry Association) member (www.sgia.org). The SGIA has a number of great programs and they make a very effective industry organizer. They have been supporters broadly of environmentally friendly printing practices and most recently they have given great support to a movement within the commercial printing industry that promotes sustainable printing practices - the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGPP).

Sustainable business practices are near and dear issues at Impact Displays - we’ve offered environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional media for several years, and we adopted low VOC as our printing format more than five years ago.The SGPP (www.sgppartnership.org) ups the ante significantly by enforcing programming, audits and compliance within a framework of sustainability, workplace safety and minimal environmental impact.

Impact Displays has been provisionally accepted into the SGPP while we complete our compliance audits. We’re excited because we believe this will become a very broadly based movement driven by smart corporate sourcing decisions. We expect that within five years, every credible US and European printer of any scale will be SGPP certified. So while SGPP certification may be a differentiator today, we hope (for all the right reasons) it’s table stakes in the printing game in the future.

So the next time you have a choice of printers - whether Impact or another company - choose an SGPP certified printer. Good for the planet, good for you and good for your kids (and mine!).

Looking forward to participating in the upcoming trade show? Well, then make sure that you are well prepared for the event. Trade show banner stands can help you to create that impeccable impression on the entire show. An attractive booth centered banners and murals will engage prospective customers.

The most popular trade show banner and mural displays include modular and pop up displays. These stalls can be set up easily and provide various features. These displays provide ample area to display promotional graphics. Trade show displays have numerous options for direct and indirect lighting to create the right customer environment.

Banners and murals offer a smart option to educate the customers about your products. A well planned banner campaign can generate tremendous customer interest and translate into new customers. Creative design and high end printing and finishing will create a professional appearance for your company and its products.

Impact Displays offer trade show banners, murals and displays. The website www.impact-displays.com provides complete information about the company and its products and services.

If you’ve attended or exhibited at trade show you know it’s a great opportunity to interact with your prospective customers. After all you get an opportunity to talk to many prospects who evaluating alternatives and making buying decisions. You can offer a great experience to your customers with the help of exhibit displays which form an effective selling environment at the trade shows.

Exhibit displays are specifically designed to let you coordinate and manage the entire show professionally. They combine graphics, product displays and traffic management options to bring customers into your booth. The displays and graphics provide the prospective customers with a snapshot of your business and facilitate a selling environment.

Exhibit displays from select vendors use graphics printed with special eco-friendly ink on recycled print media to minimize adverse impacts on the environment. These inks and media produce imagery that compares well with traditional inks.

Exhibit displays are emerging as the preferred mode of advertising, since they are very effective for interpersonal promotions.

Impact Displays offers a wide range of exhibit displays and graphics solutions. The website www.impact-displays.com provides complete information about the company and its products and services.

We’re back on track to make your next tradeshow or event more productive. We left you last time with a sense of how to plan a productive show and who to focus on. But now you have to do the leg-work.

So you have a list of Prospects, Customers, Partners and Competitors that you want to do something with/to at your show. It’s  a big challenge, so you have to delegate. You just have to – and your staff will get into it if you position it as an important group function rather than an edict. So parcel out the groups and have your staff report back with a plan of attack. It doesn’t matter if they’re going to be at the show.  The agenda should be realistic, actionable and specific. For example, “Meet with the following 10 partners and discuss product or service complements. Explore ways to co-market, co-sell or co-develop.” You’ll end up with 30-100 people or entities to meet with. And already this is looking like a MUCH more productive show than you’re used to.

Give special attention to Prospects, since these are a major element of your future business pipeline. You need a way to bring qualified Prospects into the booth for the right type of engagement with the right people. This is where outbound mailings - old school (real mail) or new school (email) – fit in. There are a lot of companies that can help you manage pre-show contacts. One company I checked out at TS2 was Ship Shapes (www.shipshapes.com). They have an oddly compelling target mailer (real mail) that your Prospects are less likely to chuck.

But whichever way you tackle this, use your best sales leads and add to this Prospects that should be in your booth. These might be from a list you buy and qualify, or a group that has requested info. Get as much information from Sales about why they’re a Prospect. What do they want? When are they making a decision? Then give your Prospects an early invitation and a real reason to come by. Consider a “hands on” product demo, side by side comparison, free trade in voucher, warranty extension card, etc. Once you’ve mailed them, follow up to confirm. Make it personal, not generic. Calendar your meetings in all of these areas and create a master calendar. Suddenly you’re not standing in the booth, you’re driving new Prospects towards a sale, connecting with Customers, dialoguing with Partners and scoping the Competition.  You’re ready for a great show.

Next time we’ll tackle one of the most overlooked way to drive value - booth staff preparation.

At Impact, when we think about tradeshows we’re generally thinking about the exhibits. We’re an exhibit house – so it’s our job. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help our customers find ways to get a higher tradeshow ROI in ways that are not necessarily exhibit related.

I was reminded of this when I attended Steve Underation’s (http://www.tradeshowprofitsystems.com/) program at Exhibitor 2009 a few months ago. Steve does a great job of focusing exhibitors on everything you do to getter a better return tradeshow (except buy a bigger booth). I highly recommend his course and books – they’re packed with good advice. With that in mind we’ll take a few of our posts to outline a plan of attack that will make your tradeshow budget, whether it’s big or small, deliver more return.

Answer this simple question: why are you going to the show? 90% of the people I ask mumble some version of “We have to,” “Sales wants to,” “the CEO wants to,” “It would look bad if we didn’t.” Of course there has to be a better reason. These are expensive events. They take a lot of coordination and time. But if there are no goals, there will be no goal achievement.

I modestly suggest the following are good reasons to go to the show (others surely exist also):

·                     Prospects are at the show and most will reach buying decisions during the show

·                     You make face to face connections with existing customers

·                     You can take the competition head on

·                     You learn what your competitors say, how they market and position

·                     You dialogue with partners  

Each of these reasons suggests a goal (i.e., line up partner meetings) and a plan. You have to figure out whom to set up meetings with, the agenda, the deliverables, etc. It takes time and effort. I’ve done it – I know. But the amazing this is how much more powerful and effective the tradeshow venue is than any other setting to get this done. Any one of these goals is more difficult and expensive to achieve outside of a tradeshow setting.

If you’re still with me, make a list of answers to these questions:

Which new prospects do I want to meet with?

Which current customers do I want to meet with?

Which competitors do I want to gather information about?

Which partners or partner prospects do I want to meet with?

Now you know the why and who – get to the what. We’ll cover this in an upcoming post. If you have other insights and successful strategies, please share them. 

If you’re reading this, you have an interest in trade shows and event marketing. So it stands to reason you’ve heard the thesis about trade shows becoming obsolete. In one version or another, the idea is that ubiquitous broadband, media streaming and virtual reality will render trade shows unnecessary. We all have to be concerned about evolutions that threaten our business model - whatever business we’re in. So we’ve dug into this trend to see if there’s fire with all the smoke. Bottom line - anyone that feels there will be a replacement for trade shows as a marketing and sales opportunity is way off. Look at the primary benefits of trade show participation:

1. Trade shows are not virtual - they’re face to face, customer to product and competitor to competitor
2. Buyers qualify products faster at trade shows
3. Decision makers are on the floor (>70% of attendees)
4. Your current and future customers are there (it’s up to you to meet with them)

You can’t recreate these advantages cost effectively with any combination of conference calls, web presentations, telepresence, virtual trade shows, etc. Not possible. And importantly, the limitation is not an issue of technology (which is pretty amazing stuff, incidentally). The truth is that we’re social animals and buying decisions are social processes involving the establishment of trust. Face to face will trump “remote” every time. I’m not saying these new technologies don’t have roles in the marketing and selling process. The can be very cost effective in educating and qualifying prospects, and they may be smart additions to a marketing and sales strategy. But I’ll put my money on the “rubber meets the road” trade show phenomena - it will always deliver the best bang for the marketing buck (by a factor of 2:1 in many cases).  I recently called a CEO friend - he runs a tech company and had recently done a little flash demo on their site promoting a virtual trade show and bashing the real trade shows. This company is always on the leading edge of the curve, so I called him to find out if this “phasing out” of trade shows was for real. Couldn’t get him - he was out of the office. At a trade show (true story). Keep Evolving, Marketing & Promoting!

It was inevitable given the beating that the auto industry has taken - the Detroit Auto Show is expected to be about 20% smaller this year. This is the auto industry’s signature event, but given the belt-tightening going on there will be less glamour and more sobriety (literal and figurative). Among the casualties are Nissan Corp, which has pulled out entirely, leaving US Nissan dealers to rush product in to fill the floor space.But, recognizing the value of the show, most major companies (Nissan aside) are simply scaling back and spending more wisely. For example, GM is eliminating its GM Style fashion show. And in a move that will save it more than $1 million, the Company will opt for carpet in its 120,000 square foot exhibit instead of its traditional wood flooring. These actions reinforce the advice we give all of our clients in tough times: economize, don’t cancel. We’ve posted before about how to do more with less. It’s not magic and exhibitors sometimes do a better exhibit in the bargain. Still, the urge to purge and cancel your attendance is strong.But before you do that, consider these insights. The trade show and event marketing category routinely posts the highest ROI in the marketing budget. Why? Qualified attendees. Unlike much of the marketing budget that goes to uninterested parties, by definition if someone is at the show or event, they wanted to be there. They’re interested. They want to see what’s new. And these attendees are conditioned to the event and trade show calendar - meaning you have fewer but more valuable opportunities than with traditional marketing. But if you miss them, they’re gone. These are your best prospects and pulling out of a show is short-sighted.I realize this will seem ironic, but be like GM. Do more with less. Less expensive flooring. Fewer accessories and give-aways. Use your existing displays and get new artwork. Or if you can’t update your artwork, use what you have. You can do a backwall with banner stands if you need to - there are many ways to get creative without really sacrificing any benefits at the show.  Don’t cut on critical expenditures - like booth personnel. And don’t make the biggest mistake by pulling out of a show. With some creativity, you’ll have a great event or trade show that will pay dividends as the business economy improves.Good luck and best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year.