Show time: time to reinvigorate your message, revisit markets and generate new prospects.

• Author: Cantor, Dan
• Position: Trade Shows

THERE IS SOME EVIDENCE that our national economy is beginning to wake up, so businesses now have the challenge of shifting from "survival mode" to "growth mode."

Your company's participation in one or more trade shows may be a very effective way to urgently reinvigorate your message, revisit markets and generate new prospects.

REINVIGORATING YOUR MESSAGE

Rather than wait for the next planning session to address your marketing message, use the deadlines imposed by a fast-approaching trade event (even if it's a small show) to focus your product's message and articulate its features, benefits and differentiators.

At a trade event, you are faced with having to explain your product offering to new prospects and your industry press, and support that explanation with appropriate marketing materials and visual media. Trade show dates and deadlines don't move, so this process of bringing new focus to yore message can get addressed quickly and completed on time.

REVISITING MARKETS

Competitive and structural changes in the marketplace create new opportunities. Trade shows provide an effective way to revisit old markets and test new markets for your products. If your company is visiting a new markets for the first time, start small. The biggest of companies still regularly use 10-foot exhibits for new and peripheral markets. Size may matter, but effective pre-show marketing tactics can go a long way toward attracting the right prospects.

Trade shows no longer require a significant capital investment. Suppliers today will allow you to rent exhibit components of any size, and may even create a customized rental solution for multiple uses. Many leasing companies will also provide capital for this purpose. Technology to support innovative and exciting visual media presentations may also be rented hit one-time use on the show floor. Media created for the show can be used for subsequent shows, redeployed into a permanent showroom environment...