How To Prepare For Your First Exhibition

One of the greatest ways to advertise your business early on is to go and attend a number of expos. These are very often opportunities to meet a lot of people in your field, expand your network, and get your product and service ideas out there in full force for people to see what you are offering. But in order to make the most of them, you do need to ensure that you are fully prepared. Let’s take a look at some of the things to bear in mind as you prepare for an exhibition.

Set Your Goals

Before you even start, you need to ask yourself what kinds of goals you are hoping to achieve. What are you hoping to exhibit, and what will you get out of it? If you like, you can set yourself two or three strata of possible successes: a low, medium and high level of success. What does each look like? How many new leads will you be happy to have made? Are you expecting direct sales on the spot? Without having a good sense of what you’re trying to achieve, you are less likely to make the most of the event.

Design The Stand

You are going to need to design a stand which is going to be attractive and stand out, and this is not something that is always going to come easy. For one thing, you need to make sure that your branding is all over it, but without making it garish. You want it to be visually appealing and bold without being over the top. Use some large format printing to make your banners and signs, and be sure to keep the whole thing on-brand as much as you can. That should serve you well.

Consider The Size & Space

You should carry out some research about what kind of spot you will have. If you have been to the specific exhibition before, you can get a good sense of this, but you might want to ask the organisers too, just to be sure. It might be that you are going to have more or less space than you might have thought possible, in which case it could alter what you are trying to achieve. The more prepared you are in this way, the better.

Practice Your Pitch

You are going to need to attract the attention of passers-by in about three seconds if they are going to stop and talk to you, and become a potential lead. How do you achieve this? Simple: by having a good, well-rehearsed pitch that they are going to respond to positively. You can never guarantee that every single person will respond well, but as long as you are well-practiced you can make it much more likely that people will stop and talk to you at least. So spend some time practising at home before you go, and you should find that you are much more likely to get what you want out of the event.