Haven\u2019t been to a trade show lately? Would like to attend one, but the budget at the home office got cut?<\/p>\n
Well, cheer up, marketing maven, you likely have a treasure trove of trade shows right under your nose, or at least down the road. That\u2019s because pretty much every major town has an exhibition centre of some sort and they\u2019re most likely hosting a veritable buffet of trade fairs from which to choose.<\/p>\n
How do you find about these? Consult the local tourism board or exhibition centre in your area or simply drive by the arena with the large billboard sign. In our town, the main highway goes right by the exhibition centre that has a can\u2019t miss sign welcoming….<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen\u2019s Expo 2013.\u201d Me and 5,000 women under the same roof? Count me in. No matter what business you\u2019re in, it couldn\u2019t hurt to know what women are thinking (or more precisely what the folks who market to women are thinking) as I\u2019m assuming you market to women too.<\/p>\n
But that brings up an objection to what I\u2019m proposing here. What has this got to do with my business? That depends. If you\u2019re a marketer, pretty much every business has some likely relation to yours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWelcome, International Association of Taxidermy.\u201d Well, there are exceptions. I\u2019d probably give that one a pass.<\/p>\n
But it is interesting to see how other industries approach typical trade show issues that your industry faces. How do they lay out the hall? What\u2019s the arrangement of the booths? What do they do for entertainment\/plenary session?<\/p>\n
You might find yourself pleasantly surprised, because if you\u2019ve been attending your industry\u2019s trade show for some number of years, you\u2019re likely a bit jaded by now. Been there, done that. But here, in your own town, there may be dozens of trade shows you can drop in on and learn something that may affect they way you approach trade shows in your industry. You may even come away with a different idea of what your industry is.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s largely a myth. For openers, you might be a member of the media or at least a blogger and you may be able to talk your way in for free. Or you may be a customer of one of the companies exhibiting and if you tell them you\u2019re a big fan of Hagstrom Guitars and just wanted to check out the latest, they\u2019ll most likely let you in. Sometimes, they\u2019ll have a fee at the door and if they do, you\u2019ll try and talk your way past it, but if you can\u2019t, it\u2019s unlikely they\u2019re going to turn down your money.<\/p>\n
Once you\u2019re in, you\u2019ll find hundreds who know next to nothing about your town, and you\u2019re the local expert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haven\u2019t been to a trade show lately? Would like to attend one, but the budget at the home office got cut? Well, cheer up, marketing maven, you likely have a treasure trove of trade shows right under your nose, or at least down the road. That\u2019s because pretty much every major town has an exhibition centre of some sort and they\u2019re most likely hosting a veritable buffet of trade fairs from which to choose. How do you find about these? Consult the local tourism board or exhibition centre in your area or simply drive by the arena with the large billboard sign. In our town, the main highway goes right by the exhibition centre that has a can\u2019t miss sign welcoming…. \u201cWomen\u2019s Expo 2013.\u201d Me …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[36,69],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-promotional-products","category-trade-show-tips","tag-trade-show-advice"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}