23.03.2023
5 TIPS TO MARKET YOUR EXHIBITION STAND
Have you reserved a stand at an upcoming exhibition? Over the years Oyster has acquired extensive expertise designing, building and promoting show stands across Europe for a variety of clients. We have learnt a lot from these experiences, and it probably comes as no surprise to reveal that clients with a strong pre-and post-show marketing strategy in place not only achieve the highest footfall at exhibitions, but also the greatest return on investment from attending.
Here are our top 5 tips to help you market your exhibition stand and achieve optimum ROI:
1. Social media
Use your social media channels to build anticipation for the event. Develop a ‘360’ content strategy that includes details of what you’re launching or promoting at the event, speaker updates, sponsorships & collaborations, industry statistics, promotional offers and giveaways, as well as highlighting your presence using video and posting reels/stories. Make sure you have a plan in place to create, publish, promote and track your organic social media activities. Schedule posts to appear at regular intervals and start well ahead of the event to build interest and engagement.
2. Paid media
To target new audiences, it’s worth considering a paid media strategy to promote what you’re launching/exhibiting on LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, or whichever platform your audience is most active on. Depending on the event, you could also consider press and radio advertising. Decide whether this would be worth your investment and then develop some hard-hitting ads and fine-tune your audience targeting for optimum results. For paid social activities, don’t forget to utilise pixels to track the results of your activities.
3. Email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to re-engage an existing audience, as well as reach new prospects. Use compelling subject lines, display valuable content to explain why it would be beneficial for people to visit your stand, and include a call to action (for example, potentially offering free show tickets) to encourage the user to sign up to attend the event, or visit your website to find out more information. Also consider buying additional mailing lists to expand your reach.
4. Develop an eye-catching and engaging event landing page
Your website should include a well-designed event page, offering all the relevant information and attractive visuals to engage users and generate interested in your stand. The landing page should showcase what sets your stand apart, key benefits and features of your products or services, who will be the main point of contact, third party testimonials and so forth.
5. Ignore post-event marketing at your peril!
In our experience, many companies focus most of their time and effort on planning the design and build of their exhibition stand and often don’t have a pre-planned strategy in place to generate and follow up leads afterwards. The design of your stand is obviously of huge importance when it comes to attracting attention at the event, but it is not the only thing to consider. To maximise your return on investment, it’s important to plan an effective post-event follow-up campaign to turn leads into live customers. Consider using a variety of channels for this purpose including telemarketing, e-marketing and direct mail, as well as LinkedIn, for maximum effect.
At Oyster, we have extensive experience helping businesses get maximum return on investment from exhibiting at trade shows. Check out our case study for the CLPA where we designed and built their exhibition stand aswell as providing the pre- and post-show marketing.
In addition, take a look at the exhibition stands we designed for Think Learning and Mitsubishi Electric Power Systems.
Exhibition organisers may be interested to know that we also promote entire events. See our case study on EAG Expo, an annual leisure event that takes place at ExCeL London as an example.
If you’re exhibiting at an upcoming event and need help with your stand design and build, or advice on how to market your exhibition stand, please get in touch by email at info@oysterstudios.com or call +44 (0)1582 761212.
