The Five Biggest Trade Show Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Trade shows are awesome. We love attending, we love going, we love it all. But it's easy to get caught up in the planning and logistics side of things and forget what the real purpose is.

You're going to a trade show to grow your business. Most of the time, that's about finding clients. Sometimes it's not about selling on the floor, but I don't know many vendors that attend shows without a purpose.

With the way that the world is changing, you might have the chance to visit a show about experiential marketing and you should jump at that chance, because you might see us there and get to experience MDRN, the best photo booth in Ottawa, in a completely different city!

Trade shows are also a wonderful way to see the world. Catalina Bloch, MDRN’s founder, recently had the chance to speak at a trade show in Australia and decided to make a once in a lifetime vacation out of it. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself with the chance to visit an international trade show, it’s worth doing!

What if you're making a mistake when you get there, though? What if you're doing something wrong and it's severely impacting how much your business grows as a result of that trade show?

We've compiled a list of 5 (actually 6!) incredibly common mistakes and how MDRN can help you avoid them.

Not Capturing Information

You've gone to all the trouble of attending a trade show. Your team is with you, your banners are printed, everyone is trained on exactly what to say. You speak to thousands of people and make a few sales. Job done? Not quite. You spoke to thousands of people. Failing to capture their information means giving up thousands of hot leads. They wouldn't be at a trade show for your industry if they weren't interested in purchasing something.

Many people will find their fit on the floor, but research is becoming an event more important component of the buyer's journey in 2019. Scanning badges just won't cut it. What if you had direct access to the email or phone number of interested clients? With a photo booth activation, you do. We can bring an entirely digital photo booth to any trade show and engage customers who wouldn't otherwise step into your booth. To access their photos, attendees will enter their contact information and receive a message containing their photo or video. At the end of the event, we'll give you a file containing all of the phone numbers and emails. You can include a disclaimer that ensures you have their consent to receive marketing materials. It's that easy.

Not Matching Branding

Branding is everything. It's easy to book people that will help with trade shows. Whether it's booth attendants or contracted sales, your options are endless. Unfortunately, most of those options are off brand for a vast majority of companies. What do dancing girls have to do with *link exchange will be provided by Clay before golive*? Nothing. On the other hand, putting your logo on an image that gets shared a dozen times on social media? That's distinctly on brand. It's something that is only possible with a branded activation. Take a look at our case study *pick a case study* to see just how tastefully we can execute a fully branded event.

Not being Fun and Not Standing Out

These two go together. Ever seen a trade show booth with a line of excited people? This can be you.

Not Going

I think we've all heard that trade shows are dying. People say there's no reason to attend in 2020. It's just not true. If attendance is down, it just means that it's all that much more important to be cost efficient when you're going. Don't leave thousands of leads on the table when you can stand out and blow people away.

Bonus: Overspending on Staff

The biggest cost in business is always waste. The second biggest cost is always labor. There's no scenario in which you want to be pairing waste and labor and yet it's incredible easy to overspend at a trade show. You can bring too much staff--this happens all the time! Look around and see other vendors with people in uniform just standing there on their phones. They're being paid for that, and the money is wasted. We’ve heard of people requiring short term loans to cover the massive overages that can come from a poorly executed trade show. With MDRN, you’ve got an invoice. There’s a lot of fiscal security there!

Those are also highly trained and trusted employees of your business. Nobody else can do their job back at home. The difference here is that we can help by achieving their goals on the trade show floor. Using a solution like MDRN means that you're being incredibly efficient with your spending. By letting us handle the activation, you can work with considerably fewer staff (sometimes even none!) and keep your people doing what they do best.