Trade shows and expos are increasingly being used by countries and companies to market and showcase their products as global competition for market shares intensifies. Consequently, many trade fairs have become acclaimed in this respect. A few examples include the London, Shanghai and Berlin trade fairs among others.
There are numerous options to market and promote your products and services. Some options include:telemarketing, classified and display ads, signs, door-to-door, newspapers, magazines, internet, brochures, phone books, television, radio, bill boards, direct mail, flyers, post cards and many more.
However, participating in Trade Shows, Expos, Festivals, Seminars, Exhibitions, Conventions, Conferences, Fairs and Swap Meets is one of the best ways to expose your business. You can call it whatever you want. Any event that allows you to have the opportunity to display and showcase your products and services face-to-face with potential new customers in your target market gives you numerous benefits and advantages.
Instead of chasing down cold leads, you now have a large number of people in the target market coming up to you. As such, friendly business relationships with people are built as they ask questions, get your marketing literature, exchange business cards, watch you demonstrate your items and/or let them try samples.
But you have to find the right kind of Trade Show or Expo for your business that has a large enough attendance record so you are not wasting your time, money or effort. There should be at least a few thousand attendees. You must confirm that the people expected to attend are in your target market.
These people made an effort to come to the event. Most charge some type of an entrance or admission fee and usually a parking fee. So you have people who willingly and voluntarily paid good money to attend. In many cases they gave up their entire day, or their evening, or morning or possibly their whole weekend because they want to be there.
People walk in the door already very interested in your products and services. This is your very rare chance to be face-to-face with the decision makers. They could be the president, vice-president, CEO, executives of a corporation, or it could be the two spouses in a family.
You will also get high-quality referrals. If you meet some people at your booth in the expo that have no need for your products or services, they will still refer you to their friends, relatives and business associates whom they think would be interested. They might even recommend you. It is more likely that these people will be willing to do business with your company through a friend’s referral than you trying to cold call them.
When you give attendees your marketing materials at an Expo, there is a better chance that they will actually read it, or at least spend some time looking it over, unlike them getting junk mail and standing over the trash can immediately throwing it away.
Our recent successful hosting of the second Building Expo achieved much of the above and commendations to those whose idea it was as well as those who were responsible for organizing and staging the event.
From all indications the event was well organized and to date there has not been any negative feedback. On the contrary, all the feedbacks so far have been positive and this is extremely good for our country, particularly in light of the fact that some unpatriotic cynics are relentlessly continuing to paint a negative image of this country.
As to the importance of the Expo to the successful implementation of these developmental initiatives, Housing and Water Minister Irfaan Ali summed it up well: “The Building Expo therefore has a vital role in setting the foundation and providing the framework that would no doubt facilitate these and many more developments in the future.”
Building Expo 2011 closed with a bang as over 20,000 participants crowded the exhibition site on Sunday and joined with the exhibitors in calling for “one more night”.