Have you built into your marketing plan trade shows and conference attendance?

Add Trade Shows and Conferences to Your Marketing Plan

By Robbie Motter, Contacts Unlimited

Article index

Business Plan, Creating Your Marketing Roadmap To Success

Add Trade Shows And Conferences To Your Marketing Plan

Writing Press Releases, Getting You and Your Company In the Spotlight

Affirmations, A Unique Marketing Strategy that Works!

Have you built into your marketing plan trade shows and conference attendance? If not, you are missing out on a valuable tool that can immediately bring results to you and your business. It doesn't matter whether you sell a product or service, there is a trade show or conference just for you.

Trade shows can fit all budgets, so the key is to first identify how much you can afford to spend in a year and plug that amount into your marketing budget.

The next step would be to look at what trade shows and conferences are available that fit into your type of business. Your ultimate success with any trade show depends on having a clear understanding of specifically what you expect to gain from exhibiting and whether that trade show is the proper venue for your expectations.

It is very important to pick the right show. You need to ask yourself some questions, like is this show drawing the specific customers or contacts you seek? Are the people who attending coming to buy or browse?

Determine the most cost-effective way to participate. Look at all the costs. Do you have the funds to rent the space and also to design and furnish and staff the booth? If exhibiting is too costly there are other options.

Working a Show Without Exhibiting

This is one of my favorites. Here you attend the show or conference and view all the exhibits and talk to all the people who you meet and learn what they have to offer and see if there are any opportunities for you to work together. Always have plenty of business cards and brochures with you, as well as a bag of some sort to gather all the materials you will be picking up.

There are times that I personally find that for some shows it is more effective for me to attend rather than be an exhibitor. Two recent shows that I attended as an attendee were the Governors Conference in Long Beach and a big health fair in Pasadena. I came away from the conference and the health fair with some great leads for business and some new friends. I also found an opportunity to leave information on my business as well as some of my clients businesses, and from those contacts several business opportunities have unfolded.

Become a Conference Presenter

This is a great opportunity and allows you to get to the conference and in many cases you can negotiate a speaking fee as well as get a free booth. Sometimes you get the booth in lieu of a fee. I have used both of these methods for different shows that I have done and they have worked great for me.

Finding the Right Show

The Hanson Guide to Worldwide Trade Shows and Exhibits lists in their 2000 publication over 9,966 trade shows and conferences that have exhibits. The book lists the shows by category and location.
Online, Trade Show Central features more than 30,000 shows.
Your local convention centers and hotels with convention centers can give you some ideas of what conventions have been booked at their location for the coming year. They also have the names of the contacts that have booked the event that they can share with you.
The calendars of your newspapers and magazines list upcoming events. Take time to review the information and use the contact number to follow up if you need additional information.
Other directories I like and use are the National Trade and Professional Associations Directory of the US ($99) and State and Regional Associations of the US ($79), both published by Columbia Press in Chestertown, MD. (888-265-0600) These directories not only list the names of the associations, but the number of members and where their conferences are being held.

So if the association market is a good place for you to be for your products and services these directories will help you to easily contact the association that best fits your products or services.

Most of these events also have the opportunities for vendor displays booths that are usually a lot less expensive than a major trade show and all offer you the opportunity to network. These are also great directories to use if you want to be a presenter at a given event as it lists the location of the conference, their budget and the number of expected attendees, it usually lists a few years of upcoming events for each organization and also provides the contact person, telephone number, mailing address and e-mail address.

Why trade shows?

They offer incredible opportunity for networking with prospects, competition and other vendors. They also have like companies featured, which attract many buyers in that field.

You also get the opportunity to test your marketing presentation and your marketing materials as well as how your products and or services are received by the attendees, so you can quickly evaluate what works and what doesn't. This allows you to adjust your presentation and even look at possible changes you may need to make to your presentation and marketing materials.

Trade shows also help you to establish credibility. But they can be expensive, so it is important that you carefully evaluate the show, who the attendees are and if the show fits the market base for your product or service. Also look at the costs and the expected return on your investment to see if it is the right place for you to be.

Linda Hurley, sales manager for Cookie Lee Jewelry and PWR member, loves trade shows because they offer her a great opportunity to display her products. At the Women's Conference in Ontario this past May, you could see the women crowded around her display.

Having a vendor display at a conference with lots of women is a great marketing tool for Linda because women love jewelry.

I love the opportunity to work a trade show because they offer a unique exposure to new markets. In addition to sales, I make contacts in areas I had never considered, I am exposed to opportunities I did not know existed, and I expand my network base to include a whole new group of business associates. Trade shows expand your business in unexpected ways; it's always exciting to see where they will take you.

I agree that one never knows where the opportunities will take you. A trade fair that I exhibited last year in Arizona brought me some great opportunities from interested health stores across the United States who were interested in stocking one of my client's health books. In addition, I met two women who were chemists and have since become vendors for a client to supply his clinic with aroma therapy products which they developed specifically for his clinic and patients. In addition, these same women introduced my partner in another venture to a company in Arizona that could manufacture and package a new product to remove heavy metals from the body called Bio-Chelat (TM).

If I had not attended this event I would have missed out on this opportunity and it would have taken us much longer to find someone who had the capacity and capability to manufacture this product for us as well as the chemists to make the product for a client. At a Pasadena (California) health fair, I met someone who was interested in writing a story about this new product to all of the people who receive his monthly newsletter. If I had not attended, I would also have missed that opportunity.

Here are a few local conferences in the area

Have you been wanting to expand your business into the county government, cities, school districts and local governments in the Inland Empire? If so, don't miss the Eighth Annual Procurement Conference on Nov. 1 at 8 a.m. at the National Orange Show Events Center, 689 South I Street, San Bernardino. This event is sponsored by the County of San Bernardino Office of Small Business Development, and for a cost of only $15 you can learn about bid opportunities for all large, small, mom and pop, construction, professional services, and for all types of goods and services. More than 70 private and public participating agencies are committed to bringing their upcoming contracting opportunities to be awarded within 180 days. For information call (909) 387-8279.
Building Bridges to Business Success -- 2001, a conference at California State University on March 3, 2001 will offer an opportunity for vendors to have a table at the event for $100 including two conference tickets, the opportunity to attend the workshops and lunch and continental breakfast. This event is being sponsored by PWR. Contact Linda Hurley at (909) 697-1298 for an exhibitor package. The morning keynote speaker will be San Bernardino Mayor Judith Valles and the lunch keynote speaker will be Gretchen Tibbits, the president of the National Association For Female Executives (NAFE).
Each year in May the Women's Business Conference, which is held at the Ontario Convention Center, offers the opportunity to display your products and services to more than 2,000 women who attend the event. For more information on the 2001 event, contact Ingrid Anthony of the Inland Empire Business Journal at (909) 484-9765 ext. 27.

In today's world of marketing it is important to work smarter not harder, we are in a time of building relationships and trade shows and conferences certainly offer you this opportunity to build solid relationships. So start today and pick a conference or trade show that meets your needs.

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Robbie Motter specializes in Speaking, Coaching, Public Relations and Marketing. She is an expert in the Government marketplace. She serves as the Western and Mid-Atlantic Regional coordinator for the National Association of Female Executives (NAFE) and Volunteer Founding Sponsor and volunteer Advisor of the For You Network, the Ultimate Women's Network with Heart, which is a 501 c3 organization. She serves as the Senior Vice President for American Seminar Leaders in Pasadena, CA (ASLA), and as a Coach Trainer for Coaching Firm International in Pasadena. Because she believes one needs to be healthy she also is into nutrition with a top nutrition company, http://www.integrisdream.com/targetyourhealth. She has raised a family, been active in community projects, and volunteered her time and talents to help others. She serves as a volunteer on the advisory board on the Inland Empire Women's Business Center in San Bernardino, CA, and as a volunteer Advisor for the annual Women in Business Conference put on by the Inland Empire Business Journal each year. She writes columns for the Inland Empire Business Journal and other business magazines across the country. She also serves as volunteer Vice President for the Omni Youth Music Awards. She is Vice President of Communications for the Career Builders in Crystal Cathedral in Orange Ca. Her company, Contacts Unlimited, works with firms to get government contracts and expand their markets into this large arena as well as the private sector.

Robbie can be contacted at 1-888-244-4420 or rmotter@aol.com her website is http://www.rmotter.com

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