TRADE NIGERIA; Garden City Xmas Market & Trade Expo - Why does anyone participate in exhibitions?

 One question that often lingers in a potential exhibitor’s mind is: Why does anyone participate in exhibitions?

Exhibiting at trade shows offers several benefits to your business. Unlike other marketing activities, exhibitions and trade shows offer a wide platform for brands to showcase their products, services and communicate their key message to a more receptive audience. Exhibition participation can help you meet with customers who are pro-actively looking for a deal, which will result in you being able to collect more leads.

Unlike, cold calling that gets annoying for any person who might not be in the right place or the right mind-set to talk to you about your product or service. But on the other hand, exhibitions offer the opportunity for brands to emerge and stand out through their exhibition stands.

Exhibitions are usually targeted at business and people concerned about a particular industry and welcome a diverse range of professionals. Participating in an exhibition will enable you to market your brand to a broader crowd and make them aware of your product and service. According to the type of industry, exhibitors can carry out shows and gain business or general feedback about their offering before they release it to the general public. You get a reliable pool of interested customers that you can reach out to after the show. So, apart from these long-term benefits what are the immediate advantages of exhibition participation?

Let us delve a little closer to what are the importance of exhibition?

1. Face-to-face interaction

Networking is the masterstroke when it comes to marketing your business, and nothing can beat connecting with your audience personally. With just cold calling and emails, you will find that you are ignored, whereas meeting someone face-to-face makes a huge difference. Standing out from the mass and getting your voice heard can appear challenging but with the right approach, you can make the most of it.

Although as a part of BTL marketing activities, exhibitions are organized for brands to showcase or demonstrate their products, their innovations, and services to its target audience. It is a platform for face-to-face interaction and focuses on encouraging consumer engagements. Your brand and your target audience get a reason to interact. Hence, it is also necessary to have a compelling and relevant exhibition stand design to attract a large number of visitors to your exhibition stand.  After you complete this first step to get your consumers to visit your exhibition stand then the next step would need your sales team to find a way to connect your target audience’s needs with your products and services, which ultimately results in effective win-win for both parties.

2. Exhibitions help build brand proximity

One of the most important benefits of participating in an exhibition is that it helps in creating brand relevancy. Exhibiting at industry events is an excellent way to raise your brand value and generate awareness. Understanding the importance of participating in an exhibition show will enable you to boost your advertising and sponsorship opportunities. With the help of engaging and appealing exhibition stands, you can make your target audience come to your stand and engage with your brand. Once they develop a sense of brand familiarity, they will automatically connect with your brand. This proximity benefits you as well since it helps you understand your target audience and their needs better.

The importance of exhibition shows for positioning your brand can’t be understated.  An exhibition stand will help your company get noticed. Your exhibition booth at an exhibition with the right design will position your business in the minds of attendees. Allowing attendees to engage with your products by conducting various engaging activities with branded giveaways will create memorable experiences for your audience thus helping you build brand proximity.

3. Better platform than irksome cold calling

It usually happens if you are a businessman or high-ranking professionals that you are working on an important task and you get startled by a phone call. And if that phone call turns out to be from a salesperson, then not only have you lost your concentration, but you’ve also lost it for something trivial. Reports say that you need at least 20 minutes to get back to work once you’ve lost your focus, so disturbances like cold calling often leave customers to feel annoyed and indifferent to your brand for a long time. Cold calling also comes across as a pushy marketing strategy that can make you lose your potential customer too. That is why; exhibitions are not only a better option but rather the best way to grab your target audience.

4. Exhibition visitors are in the right mind frame during the show

Unlike cold calling, exhibition visitors are always in the right frame of mind to attend the show. This is why marketers stress the importance of exhibition shows. In most cases, during a sales cycle, you need to spend more time initiating contact and qualifying yourself. But in an exhibition show, these steps are shortened since visitors are already interested and they are coming to your exhibition stand during the contact phase. So you get to capture the attention of your audience with your exhibition stand, and your target audience would be attentive enough to appreciate the exhibition stand designs and effectively get the message your brand is communicating.

Garden City Xmas Market & Trade Expo is giving your brand the leg up it needs to get useful leads.

5. Exhibitions help you know your Competitors Well

In today’s competitive marketing world, apart from providing the best services and innovative products, it is essential to have a fair knowledge of our competitors too. Technology gives you the liberty to check your competitor’s website and keep a record of their client’s feedback, but exhibitions give you an opportunity to watch all the market leaders concentrated in one place. It is one of the benefits of an exhibition that allows you to understand your competitors better by visiting their booth thus helping you plan your next marketing strategy in a more efficient manner.

So, instead of cold calling or utilising other lead generating and promotional techniques, try participating in exhibitions show, you will be quite surprised with all the exhibition benefits and leadership opportunities that your business will get organically.