In the age of mobile phones, digital technology, online marketplace, virtual meetings the value of connecting face to face with end consumers and users is undervalued and underestimated.
When sitting down to look at marketing plan and reviewing the analytics of your business how do you attribute value to a trade show?
Let’s look at the top reason on why you should attend a trade show.
- Showcase your machinery
- Take Advantage of Face to Face marketing
- Sales teams engage directly with end users
- Engage directly with end users through POS, competitions & grow databases
- Boost your brand visibility in the marketplace
- Connect directly with other OEM’s & dealers
- Market Research on what you end users think
- Research your competition
When launching a product to market an exhibition is the perfect way to bring it to life. End users can experience the product first-hand, get feedback from the end user about the product as well.
Grow your database. Get more potential buyers into your database so you can communicate with them and get your sales team calling them to get their next purchase with you.
Market research & industry knowledge is huge! Everyone has their machines on display, attachments, software, finance and heaps more. You can get up to date with what is coming to market in a very short period of time.
Some of the other benefits of trade shows is the culture and team building elements it brings to your business. Staff are working together on stands, engaging, teaming up & solving problems.
Comparing Tradeshows To Digital
An expo or tradeshow is different to digital mediums & not comparable.
What is not taken into account is the complete buying cycle of a piece of machinery. This can be anywhere from 90 – 180 days (sometimes even longer). The reason you attend a show, push out print media, display and other forms of above the line advertising, is to make end users aware that you exist, the value, features & range of products and machines you offer.
Cost per lead argument?
Let’s hit this head on and get it right. You will have digital platforms discussing cost per leads and how the shows are expensive and here are the numbers. It isn’t a simple number of dividing the visitors by the attendees, you have to take into account that most consumers will submit on average 5 leads online to different suppliers.
Browsers
Yes people are browsing at the show and may not be the market straight away. The buying cycle is long, they may be half way through the life of their current piece of machinery and researching the next purchase. GREAT! This is a chance to engage, inform & educate someone who could be a buyer in the next 18 months. Capture their information, put them into your database and communicate with them.
Let’s look at the raw numbers from the last two National Diesel Dirt & Turf Expo’s
Over the past two years we have had over 130,000 adults come through the gates at Diesel Dirt & Turf. Let that number sink in 130,000!!
We aren’t bumping up the numbers with children, dogs or repeat visitors, this is individuals that have attended the show over the course of three days. If only 5% of these people enter your stand, you are looking at a little over 1000 per day.
We had roughly 200 exhibitors showcasing. That is roughly 650 adults per exhibitor! That hits the exhibitor vs attendee numbers out of the ballpark.
Feel free to call Marti & the team at anytime to find out why the 2020 National Diesel Dirt & Turf is a must for your machinery marketing plan next year.