5 Trade Show Strategies for Market Leaders with High Market Share
Because market leaders enjoy high market share, they have a different problem compared to most exhibitors: Many show attendees are already their clients.
How’s that a problem? Because too many of those existing clients mistakenly believe they already know everything the market leader offers, so they don’t think visiting their exhibit is necessary.
Yet in the recent past, the market leader has invented many new products and added new divisions that offer products they know would be useful to their existing clients.
Moreover, a new study from Explori, UFI and SISO reveals that exhibitors who focus on meeting with existing customers have better trade show outcomes.
Here are 5 trade show strategies market leaders can use to get those reluctant clients to visit, so they can cross-sell more of them:
1. Host an Enticing, Fun Activity
Offer visiting clients the opportunity to enjoy a fun activity, such as an interactive game, a photo or video experience, a creative activity, or an entertaining performance. Make it even more appealing by choosing activities relevant to your customers, based on their business demographics (their industry, job or profession) or their personal demographics (their age, gender, and socioeconomic status). Then weave your cross-selling messages into whichever fun activity you choose.
2. Invite Clients to Warm, Generous Hospitality
Attendees get tired, hungry and thirsty after walking down dozens of aisles. Let your clients know before the show that you will offer an oasis amidst the chaos. Consider barista-served coffee and luxurious pastries in the morning, substantial finger food midday, and a client-only happy hour towards the end of the show. You can even theme your food and beverages to reinforce your marketing messages. Then, equip your exhibit with adequate comfortable seating and tables (with phone chargers), along with graphics and digital content that tell your full product line story.
3. Offer Meetings with Your Employees that Clients Want to Meet
Your customers have developed relationships with members of your team. Clients often want to put a face to the name and to thank their Account Executive, Customer Support contact, and if appropriate, Tech Support. This deepens the relationship between them and your company. It also gives clients a chance to get their questions answered. For your top customers, offer a meeting with members of your senior management team, to let them know how special they are, and to open the discussion on other needs that you can serve.
4. Sell Your Complete System
Rather than promote your different product lines or divisions individually, sell how your various products are essential components of a unified solution. This shifts your value proposition from “we have lots of things” to “we provide a complete solution that solves your bigger problem.” Show the bigger customer pain point that only your system can solve. Provide proof how customers have achieved greater outcomes only achievable with your combination, aided by graphics that diagram your complete solution. And evolve your graphics’ text from “division” or “product line” language to system-level language like “platform” or “suite” or “network.”
5. Build Your Exhibit Around a Complete Product Tour (and Reward Clients for Taking it)
We’ve seen a Fortune 100 company do this to great effect, with the busiest exhibit at a 300,000 square-foot show. They offered a bundle of goodies to attendees who completed a passport for watching several short product demos spread around their exhibit. The substantial giveaway motivated attendees to learn about many of the exhibitor’s products the clients were not aware of before. And kept them in the exhibit for an extended period.
Which one of these 5 strategies is right for you? There may be no single best choice – in fact, you can rotate through these over several years, just to keep your client experiences fresh.
Train Staffers to Pivot to Cross Selling
All of these strategies will work better if you alert your booth staff that your exhibit marketing strategy is aimed at enticing customers to visit, and their job is to use the moment to educate clients about the relevant products and services you offer that they don’t know about already.
So, whether your staffers are hosting a game, serving an expresso, or introducing clients to their customer service rep, make sure you’ve enabled them to pivot to cross sell all your products and capabilities!
If you’re a market leader, we hope you find these strategies effective at bringing more of your clients into your exhibit, allowing you to cross-sell more of your products and services.
And if you are looking for an exhibit partner well versed in helping large trade show programs succeed, contact us to learn more.