The digital world has been great for businesses trying to promote their services or products to a wide market. However, nothing builds rapport and customer loyalty by talking to consumers at exhibition booths.

This face-to-face interaction is a great way to personalise customers’ experience with your brand. You want to ensure they get a good first impression and are likely to remember your company well into the future.

Set Your Goals and Your Budget

The first step is to ensure you set goals and determine your budget for the exhibition. Set your team measurable and attainable goals — this way there is an objective that every can work towards with this exhibition. It can be as simple as building up an email database of customers or a more challenging goal of getting a certain number of sales.

Whatever the goal, you can use it to determine your budget, the set up of your booth and the materials you will need.

Build Awareness & Communicate

Your customers need to know you will be at an exhibition. So before, during and even after the exhibition, it’s important to update all your communication channels with relevant information.

Before: Let your customers know when and where the exhibition is. If there will be special discounts or features at the exhibition communicate that to give them an incentive to drop by.

During: Give updates on how the exhibition is going. Talk about the customers you have met and what your team is liking about being on the floor.

After: Give your new and old customers a summary of how the exhibition went. Talk about the goals you set and if you attained them. Give them information on how they can get in touch with your business in the future.

Create Lasting Impressions

Exhibitions are a great time to make use of print materials. From business cards and brochures to banners and posters — now’s the time to get people out of the digital space and into the physical.

Media Walls, Pullup Banners and other signage are important to visualise the branding and tone of your business. Customers are attracted to booths they find visually appealing.

Business cards and brochures are a great way to subtly remind consumers of your business. They might find your card or brochure in their pocket, their purse or their shopping bag long after they’ve left the exhibition. It’s also useful for customers to have a tangible reminder that your business is a good choice for the product/service you’re offering.

Despite a lot of marketing shifting to the digital space, there is still a lot to gain from directly networking to customers. Especially for businesses that know how to combine the digital and physical experience.