[newrealityltd]

Hi Guys,

i was just wondering if anyone had any advice on making the most out of having a stand at a exhibition as i have our first coming up to see how useful it might be.

cheers

[solutions4finance]

Have you trierd contacting your local Business Link type place? I'm fairly sure that the one local to me runs seminars on how to get the best out of exhibitions with guest speakers from professionals who organise these things for a liiving, and companies that use them as a marketing vehicle.

best of luck with it

Just

[gregsta]

I have run a few stands in the past both in Britain and over in the middle east for the last company that I worked for. Here is what we used to do...

First step was the packing list, all my marketing collateral and a pop up stand (larger exhibitions we would have a stand building company build the stand for us)

An email invitation would be built and sent out to the entire database for the surrounding county / country. The email would basically be saying we are going to be at xyz event, would you like to come along? There would be links to the website, the event website and then whatever the latest marketing campaign was.

The email served two purposes, through tracking links I could email a report to the sales team telling them who was interested in what because I could track exactly what each person had clicked on. They could then follow up with a relevant phone call - no more cold calling!!!

I'd go down to the event with some of the other marketing execs and sales guys, we'd (marketing) would act as 'chat up guys' to get people to either fill out a contact log so we could email them more information / phone them. The hot prospects would get passed over to the sales guys for a demo.

This next piece of advice might be a bit non-pc, so please dont slate me anyone! One of the best ways of swapping business cards I found was TGL.. Tobacco Generated Leads. I smoke so it isnt a problem for me but if you have a member of staff that smokes let them go off to meet people in the designated smoking area. They will automatically form a bond with the other people out there and its easy to get contacts that way annd even bring over to your stand.

Hope this helps...

[Sam (Mr. Mu)]

TGL - like that gregsta