My initial thought is that it's expensive. You often have to be a member of the sponsoring trade association. THEN you have to also pay for booth space shipping and drayage and any necessary travel. It's literally thousands of dollars. Before you sign the booth contract make sure you're going to see a serious return on that investment.
Decide first on your goals for attending. Do you want/expect retailers to place orders to have your product(s)? I'd communicate as many retailers as you can first and ask them how they would be likely to learn about a new product line at the show and place an opening order. If they have never heard of you or your company odds are against it statistically. If you actually want to reach end-consumers a trade show isn't really going to back up you with that. Get a booth at a consumer event where your target merchandise (the end user) will be doing the buying.
If you want to simply increase awareness that your product exists and is available you might see how you could attend a trade show without having an actual booth. Then try to make strategic appointments with magazine editors. TV producers and distributors to promote your product and message. If for some reason you couldn't get into the show without a booth you could still book a dwell in the host city during the show and make appointments to meet people in nearby restaurants or whatever.
If you do end to have a booth take advantage of the opportunity to teach a class. Classes are the best way of reaching lots of retailers (~50-100) all at once. Use your categorise to train them to use your product and communicate your product's best selling points. Give them ideas for classes they can teach in their own stores and how they can upsell more product after the classes. By giving retailers this education directly you are in essence creating your own legion of ambassadors to go forth and spread the word about your company and product.
Another tip if you decide to get a booth: prepare touch kits for the touch room. Members of the media make a inform to stop by the press room to check out what's new from all the manufacturers. In effect that means the media is stopping by to ask you. "What would you like to tell me?" At a recent trade show I attended only 33 out of 300 exhibitors had left press kits. Numbers like that make it easy for you to stand out in lie of the media.
Whether or not you rent a booth at the show you can also donate product samples to professional designer gatherings. Various groups of designers and related professionals arrange to meet for dinner one of the nights of the show. Sometimes the dinner organizer will solicit manufacturer donations to be distributed to "opinion-leading" designers. These designers are influential for creating word-of-mouth buzz. Do a little research and sight out who is coordinating the dinner and offer her some product samples as giveaways.
The key marketing thing about trade shows is that all these decision-makers and influential people are all in one place at the same time. You don't necessarily have to have a booth to be able to do business.
Wondering how to best promote your company at a craft trade show? Pondering how to inform your target audience about your products? Freelance writer Angie Pedersen provides blog consulting and marketing communication services for the craft industry. She has written articles for both change and consumer craft magazines and edits three professional blogs. For writing services and blog marketing advice contact Angie/at/onescrappysite com or
Related article:
http://myricks9788.blogspot.com/2007/11/attending-craft-trade-show-without.html
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