How to Harness the Power of Social Media at Trade Shows

We may continue to dispute the true power of social media as a professional marketing tool, but there is little doubt that it remains an incredibly effective way of driving your business forward. This applies to all aspects of business promotion, including offline marketing methods such as attending trade shows and exhibitions, as social media can help to drive consumers to your event and create a buzz around your entire brand.

With this in mind, how can you harness the full power of social media to create a memorable and productive trade show? Consider the following: –

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Prepare Thoroughly and Access Social Media Prior to the Event

Preparation is crucial if you are to successfully utilise social media at a trade show, primarily because it enables you to promote your event and create interest around your brand. By sharing updates and information through an integrated online profile including sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, you can alert your audience well advance of the exhibition in question. When using Twitter, you should also remember to include your official brand name a unique hashtag for the event in every communication.

Focus on the Quality rather than Quantity of your Posts

During the show, it is often tempting to subject your followers to a barrage of updates and tweets. This can easily disorientate the customer, however, while also increasing the risk of issuing bland content that is poorly structured or grammatically incorrect. To avoid this, you should focus on creating quality updates rather than producing them in high volume, using creative and engaging content that seeks to drive traffic at specific times of the day.

Post Pictures and Videos While Embracing Multimedia Resources

If you have invested heavily in creative banners and colourful display panels for your trade show, it is crucial to utilise these through audio-visual media and images. These eye-catching design elements can be extremely effective in enticing potential customers, especially if they are shared in real-time through a number of visual social media sites. By sharing this media across high traffic sites such as Pinterest and YouTube, it is possible to narrate a theme throughout the day and enable your customers to share in an interactive trade show experience.

With this in mind, the content of your videos and imagery is also important, so be sure to capture different elements of the day to convey a genuine experience to customers.

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Beyond Events – The Value of Leads

Exhibitions present opportunities for businesses to sell their products, get in the faces of prospective buyers/clients, and network with other competitors. The benefits of getting your business showcased at an exhibition cannot be overstated.

Rather than focus on only making physical sales, attention should also be given to getting leads for the future. In fact, the number of leads that are gained at an event or exhibition should be seen as a metric to measure the success of that outing. While immediate sales might boost business at that moment and possibly morale, it is these leads that will enable the business grow in the future. Therefore, this part of the exhibition should not be taken lightly.

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Getting The Leads

People present at an exhibition are either business owners like you, or are (prospective) clients and customers. Identify the latter, that’s the group you are looking for. Most likely, the exhibition has a theme and so you do not really have to worry about trying to identify a particular set of prospective clients. For instance, if you’re part of an exhibition for Education, it is safe to say that most person’s that will be available there will be education-based to some extent, and your product should be relevant to most.

Attracting these leads is another thing. I’d like to break it down into two ways:

Direct marketing involves you walking up to prospective clients to begin a conversation. Advance preparation is required here to know exactly what to say and how to act. Note that it might not be necessary to put forth a business proposal at this stage, the main aim is to establish a relationship such that they are comfortable with you enough to engage in further conversation even after the event.

Dress the part, first impressions matter. Visual marketing requires that you set up an attractive booth that would draw people over. Some have found that using colourful banners, catchy copies and catchphrases, and side attractions draw the attention of the public.

Exhibit At TOSSE 2021

Remember the aim of the effort you’re putting in: to generate leads. Therefore, you would need to be able to get the contact information of these ones you meet. Have a viable system of doing this that would not be awkward or make them reconsider. Now you’ve got these leads, what next?

Following Up On Leads

This is the part that should eventually yield results: sales. This is also the tricky part. There are a few tips that can make this process go smoothly:

  1. Separate your leads. Not all contacts you make will require the same level of correspondence. Some might require immediate and constant communication while others might not need so much. Identify these early and strike as necessary so that you don’t get tagged as too pushy or too nonchalant.
  2. Get in contact early. You do not need to wait for too long to get in contact with these leads. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate call, as little as a “thank you” email or text message can do the trick. This will help impress you and your business in their minds.
  3. Personalise your correspondence. Include personal names of the recipients in emails and text messages. Don’t just push out these messages in bulk, it will sound faux and wouldn’t help boost your stock. For direct phone calls, sound friendly on the phone, and engage in conversation rather than giving mechanical responses read off a handbook.
  4. Be consistent. Sales are usually not made at the first contact. This is where consistency comes in. Make sure to always be in contact if you see the prospects of closing a sale on a lead, whether it immediate or not. Persistence would not mean “spamming” these leads as that would be counterproductive. Create a pattern that works.
  5. Know when to abandon a lost cause. Not all leads will become customers/clients. Identify this on time and save yourself a world of stress. To determine this, check for their ability to make a purchase, their motivation, and their level of influence if they stand as a representative for a business. If you determine that they would not be able to patronise you at the time, you’d be better served striking your blows elsewhere. This doesn’t mean you discard their contacts altogether however. Add it to your database of contacts, they might be customers for another product of yours.

Chasing and closing leads might be tedious, but it is usually worth the effort

 

TOSSE 2019 – THE BUSINESS NETWORKING THAT WORKS

We are continuously challenged to create platforms that will add value to our clients. we received testimonies from exhibitors and visitors at the 10th  edition of TOSSE of how it has helped expand their organizations and opened up unlimited business opportunities for them.
We have remained committed to making each edition of TOSSE bigger than the former and this has paid off in actualizing our vision for the education sector

EXHIBITOR INFORMATION

TOSSE 2019 promises to be a highly rewarding business networking platform for all participants. Several educators and exhibitors have attended TOSSE, met just one person unexpectedly and their careers took positive 360 degree turns. Like we say, “You never know who you will meet at TOSSE.”

REGISTER TO ATTEND

As an organizer, we have continuously reviewed how best our exhibitor can derive maximum benefits from TOSSE; this is the reason we have chosen to host the annual Education show in Ikeja the center of Lagos State which is accessible to everyone.  We have streamlined our event to a mainly education based platform making it a one-stop shop for educators all over the country.

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Finnpartnership

Finnpartnership: Business partnerships for a better world

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, Finland has the world’s best-developed education system in the world. Hence, any educational program from the country is one to be held in the highest regard.

Finnpartnership is a business partnership programme financed by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and managed by Finnfund. Finnpartnership aims to generate positive development impacts by promoting business between Finland and developing countries. 

Societal functionality and development ultimately depend on how citizens, companies and societal operators are able to make society function. Finnpartnership activities aim to accelerate this development.

In practice, Finnpartnership promotes business activities and partnerships with the aim of generating positive development impacts in the target country. As the business to be promoted must also be profitable and responsible, the activities ideally create a cycle that reinforces positive development.  

The main services are Business Partnership Support and Matchmaking

In many ways, developing countries are different operating environments from those Finnish companies are accustomed to. In addition, the conditions between countries and within them can vary greatly.

There are usually more questions than answers when visiting a foreign country for the first time. Finnpartnership offers funding, contacts and advisory services, which can be used to assess business opportunities in developing countries. 

Business Support Partnership is financial assistance for researching business opportunities. Match-making connects operators in Finland and developing countries with one another. The services are intended for companies, educational institutions, non-governmental organisations and other operators.  

Team Finland assembles all of Finland’s state-funded internationalisation services in a single place. Through Team Finland, you are able to obtain information on markets and their risks, funding for internationalisation, opportunities to participate in missions promoting exports, and contacts, information and advisory services.

Team Finland will be at the Total School Support Seminar/Exhibition (TOSSE) set to hold on the 1st and 2nd of September in Lagos, Nigeria, to help as many institutions as possible through its solutions to help develop their system. Click here to register for the event.