How Successful Trade Show Marketing Can Boost Your Brand Value?

Both salespersons and accountants are smart species of employees in any company, but who are smarter? When it comes to assessing brand value and understanding the impact of corporate spending on augmenting it salespersons turn out to be better than accountants.

The fact is that brand value is not restricted to the numbers shown in the corporate balance sheet. There are implicit and explicit costs and then there are implicit and explicit components of brand value.

It is perhaps, this rationale that makes it difficult for corporate executives in the senior management to comprehend the impact on brand value created by a successful trade show marketing experience. The costs are explicit, but more often than not the impact on brand value is implicit.

While trade show marketing may not always have significant sales deals and top line numbers to show on the event floor, it makes enormous good sense to assert that trade show marketing is one of the most powerful levers to accentuate brand value.

To be able to make sense of the jigsaw puzzle of the ways in which trade show marketing creates an impact on brand value, take a look at the below stated arguments.

It is Not How it Looks, It is how it Feels

What is the essence of a trade show? What is the rationale behind investing in visual experiences that shall at best last for only three to four days and then shall be wrapped up neatly and out away into warehouses.

Think again. Corporate spend on visual interfaces between the brand and the visitors like trade show displays, immersive technologies and giant size high definition screens does not fizzle out abruptly.

The visual sensory experiences stay with the visitors for a time period. These items are symbolic systems that create a brand recall factor that salespersons can use to follow up, build relationships and close sales deals.

Visitor Engagement Matters and So do the Visuals

There are different ways of executing brand messaging actions. Advertisements aired on print, electronic and digital media in copious volumes are prime examples of brand messaging. Trade shows are also examples of brand messaging actions.

How brands choose to interact with buyers and decision makers is a crucial in deciding the strength of the bond between the two. People read, listen to and watch advertisements but participate in trade shows.

Advertisements allow brands to speak to the buyers and decision makers, but custom trade show displays bring the voices of the buyers and the decision makers to the forefront. It is for this reason that spending on conference booth display items, trade show furniture, audio visual equipment and brand memorabilia are important.

Trade show marketing spend allows brands to pull people towards them and participate in action, voice opinions and get heard.

Trade Show Participation is About Shaping Perceptions

The difference between a new market entrant and a market leader is that the former is an unknown quantity to stakeholder groups like customers, wholesalers, retailers and prospects whereas a market leader has perceptions attached to it.

Many corporate executives like to think of strategy as specialization because there is always one adjective that people have to describe how they perceive of a brand.

Trade shows help in shaping perceptions and thus augment marketing strategy by cementing an image in the minds of people that matter. Remember that the first step towards zeroing down the customer gap is announcing brand identity and the identity itself fetches value.

Being in the News is About Staying Relevant in Business

Keeping the cement concrete mixer going is a challenge in business. To stay relevant in business, brands have to be relentless in marketing communication, stay connected to buyers and decision makers and convey brand excellence, offers and prices continuously. Not doing so has repercussions.

What kind of a brand stays aloof from an industry gathering that features the big names?

How do customer perceive of a brand when they see sales executives coming in, only once a while to take orders and is nowhere to be seen for the rest of the year.

Maintaining the confidence of people in a brand requires it to take a hands-on approach to business and participate in marketing communication on the floor level.

Keeping Alive the PR and Media Machinery

Beyond selling objectives there are essential non-selling objectives that salespersons participating in trade shows have.

One such non-selling objective that augments brand value is engagement with PR and media machinery and keeping alive the star status of a brand so that every time that it disseminates information, it becomes news in the industry circles.

Participating in trade show booth displays is a great way to invite friends from media to cover the brand’s presence at the event, give exposure to the brands existing and emerging products and concepts and create a community of followers for the brand in the market.

Visualizing the Future Through Concept Products

In the competitive landscape it is not just enough for brands to live in the present.

Salespersons and marketers must be able to create the future and build the confidence in its employees, distributors and users that the brand has what it takes to sustain the rigors of the changing dynamics of the vertical and is future ready.

A futuristic approach to marketing certainly adds to the brand value. In verticals like automobile, energy, consumer electronics, software, entertainment and fashion, early birds catch the worm.

It makes sense in this regard for brands to participate in trade shows and display concept products and enable people visualize its next initiative.