11 Practical Tips to Keep Your Trade Show Participation Secure

Have you ever given a thought to the fact that participating in a trade show event and expanding your outreach while yielding a return on investment also entail risks? These are risks that eat into the return from investment in participating in a trade show and pose challenges to your brand value, data security and subsequently to your valuable merchandise on display in your tradeshow exhibit rental.

These are risks that need to be addressed to make your trade show participation journey smooth and successful. Let us look at the challenges that are posed to your team onsite and online when you begin on your trade show participation journey and related solutions to maintain complete security of your brand and booth stand.

Securing your Brand Value

1. Project Management in the Run Up to the Trade Show Deadlines

Have you checked and took the necessary follow-ups with your trade show partner prior to your participation? Participating in a trade show event requires you to fill-up innumerable forms related to validating your identity as a brand.

First of all, you need to be very clear and precise on how you proceed with all these pre-trade show paperwork requirements, as it plays a very crucial role in your trade show participation. Lacking any detail in the middle of form-fill ups or project related delays might make your participation unsecured.

Consider working with a trade show partner that takes all the necessary and effective measure to endeavor to maintain a speedy process with your pre-show paperwork formalities and related project management activities.

When you complete all your pre-show entrance formalities well before the designated timelines, you tend to secure your trade show participation smoothly.

2. Keep monitoring the comments on your social media posts

When you participate in a trade show event, most of your competitors or anti-social elements, in general, aim to denigrate your brand on social media sites for their own selfish means. You need to stay alert from such miss happenings from taking place by taking the requisite measures.

Your team can maintain a close eye on all your social media handles before, during, and after the trade show, and see if there exist any suspicious posts or online activities that can have an adverse effect on your brand identity at any point.

Online users get easily influenced by any type of social media activities that stay trend at a given point of time. Be active and available on social media platforms to easily keep a track how your trade show participation is being judged by the general public, and take the necessary measure to secure your brand identity, if you find it getting blackened by any of your competitors or online thieves.

3. Scan Codes for all Brochures and Market Catalogues that You Give Away

Avoid any type of situation where your competitors try to put a bad name on your brand by bringing in fake catalogs and brochures similar to your own and start raising impractical questions. You can easily deal with such situations by putting up barcodes and scan codes on all such marketing material that can be misused by any person.

With this, you would be able to identify clearly your authentic marketing material and keep your brand name safe and secured.

Cyber Security/ Data Security

4. Use a reliable and tested CRM software product for your data

Once you arrive at your trade show location, it becomes of utmost importance for your staff to maintain reliable and handy Customer Relation Management (CRM) software to feed all the data related to forthcoming leads, list of existing customers and other high-security data.

You certainly would not like the idea of leaving your sensitive data open to get accessed by your tough competitors and lose all your earned leads within a few seconds. Also, make sure that you put your data with a user access code that restricts the additional staff working on your behalf to use the information on a read-only basis.

A possibility could arise where the thieves or burglars might try to steal your data through online measures, or even through stealing your digital files from your booth stand. Eliminate the possibilities of such incidents from taking place with active use of secured CRM software that is insusceptible to such illegal activities.

Security of Valuables

5. Hire a Professionally Trained Concierge Team to Handle Trade Show Display Rental – Pre-show

Before entering your trade show premises, there are a lot of areas of concerns that need to be addressed on a priority basis to ensure the security of all your high-value products and items to be used in your booth display.

The best way to stay assured of safeguarding your valuable items is to hire a professional booth partner that undertakes the complete responsibility to transport your products to be used during the trade show event with utmost care and concern.

The major responsibility falls in place with your concierge support team, and how well they manage to safeguard and transport your property without any signs of theft, burglary, and damage.

Having a professional team look after your booth products reduces the chances of any miss happening to a bare minimum.

6. Surveillance Equipment to Monitor Inflow and Outflow of Cargo

There are incidences at trade shows where the thieves or burglars might try to replace your valuables with fake products of the same identity.

Not only that it brings a bad name to your brand, once it reaches on the display table, but there is also no turning back. You would have to showcase it to your visitors and be embarrassed in the end.

Avoid such uncalled for situations by getting access to high-quality surveillance equipment to intelligently put a check on what all products and items have been transported under the name of your brand in and out from the event location. It would save your team’s efforts and integrity, and secure your valuables at the same time.

7. Automation software to bring all your staff on the same page

How do you plan to regulate the working of your staff on the floor of the event without encountering any type of confusion? You might face many challenges in raising leads and attracting the targeted prospects toward your booth due to miscommunication between your staff and other event officials.

The very reason for participating in a trade show event gets challenges if any such situation arises for your marketing team. Counter it easily by incorporating automation software to your event planning to bring all your staff on the same page.

If a person raises a query regarding any of your brand offerings, your staff members should be quick to handle it without any signs of confusions from anyone’s end.

8. ID cards and dress code for your staff

It is very important for your visitors to recognize your staff members to place their trust in your brand without any confusion. How would you ensure that if you have not made the necessary plans to put proper identifications on your staff?

On the floor of the event, while engaging a visitor in an impactful dialogue, you need to zero down the gap between your brand and their trust. One of the ways for doing that is to use ID cards and a peculiar dress code for your staff members.

The aim here is to represent your staff in a unique way to solidify your brand memory in their minds and make it easy for the visitors to exchange their sensitive data with your staff in an easy and secure manner.

9. 3D Holograms on merchandise that is being sold

In order to secure your on-site sales in a better way, put 3D holograms on your merchandise. Your competitors or thieves might try to steal your authentic products and merchandise by coming forward with fake replicas.

You can tackle any such situation by checking your authentic items with your own 3D holograms, and catching up any such obnoxious activity in an instant, thus making your booth safe and secure against any theft and burglary.

10. Billing and Invoicing Software Must be Double Checked for Offline Functionality

There are cases at trade shows where the billing machines fail to start or create unnecessary disturbances for your team. If you are selling your products on-site, it is very important for your team to check your billing software twice, and keep transferring the date through API to the management team to be safe against viruses.

It would be seen as highly improper if any such thing happens in front of a business professional that might have the potential to become a lucrative lead for your business development.

11. End of the trade show logistics- Winding up – Post Show

After you have concluded the event successfully with generous leads in your hand, you would want to ensure safe transport of your booth items and products without any type of damages, theft or other such unforeseen events.

Invest smartly to hire an on-site support team that manages to carry forward the activities of disassembly and drayage of your booth display items to ensure the full security of your valuables post-trade show event.

Follow these steps to avoid any type of security-related challenges that you might encounter before, during and after your trade show participation.

Hiring professional help from an experienced trade show booth company would minimize all your worries to a great extent and make your trade show experience truly enjoyable and productive.