You’ll want to start event planning at least a year ahead. During your initial stage, take into consideration these elements:
The best and most common way to estimate the costs for organizing a trade show is to triple or quadruple the amount you pay for the exhibit space. If your venue costs between $3,000 – $20,000 USD, you can expect your budget to range anywhere from $9,000 – $80,000 USD.
We’ve laid out everything you need to do from start to finish in 15 essential steps. Consider this your essential trade show planning template.
Your trade show starts with sitting down with your team and key stakeholders and identifying SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound), objectives, metrics for success and your target audience.
When it comes to identifying your target audience, decide if it’s your general member base or a specific subsect of it.
Once you’ve identified your target audience, ask them about events and trade shows they have or plan to attend through a survey in your members-only area or next member newsletter.
Create a list from your results and then start your trade show competitor analysis:
Your ideal type of trade show depends on your industry focus and the kinds of booths included. For example, are your vendor booths for attracting new hires or for selling products or services?
Here’s a list of the 11 key types of trade shows:
Your venue sets the tone for your event and impacts attendee and vendor experience. Here’s how to pick the right location for your trade show:
As mentioned earlier, the average budget for a trade show is about three to four times the cost of your venue. Here are 5 tips to cut trade show costs:
Find event sponsors to supplement costs.
Marketing at trade shows is crucial in generating leads, creating brand awareness, and growing and establishing relationships.
Here are the 4 key steps for creating your trade show marketing plan:
Research common layouts from other trade shows. From there, figure out what works with your physical space and your number of vendors. The goal here is to be efficient with space while also creating an enjoyable attendee experience. Leverage tools like A2Z Events to help you create and manage your floor plan more easily with seamless features like:
Contact relevant businesses and organizations to register as a vendor at your trade show through:
When you reach out to potential trade show vendors, make sure you are:
Technology is a key part of your trade show’s success. In fact, event technology can decrease costs by 30% as well as increase planner productivity by 27% and boost attendance by 20%. In some cases, event tech can bring your event to the next level.
When picking the right trade show technology, consider your:
Here are 3 types of trade show technology you can choose to invest in:
Membership management software
If you’re a trade association or chamber of commerce, you may be interested in investing in all-in-one membership software, like MC Trade, that includes comprehensive features to support your events while also streamlining other aspects of your member organization.
If your organization hosts events regularly throughout the year, an all-in-one event management software, like A2Z, is ideal for you, giving you access to:
If your member organization hosts events of all variations and sizes, an event management software like RegTech may be right for you. Get features that gives you flexible event support like:
Use your number of vendors and attendees to help you figure out how many staff members you’ll need for your trade show dream team. You may want to use existing staff, a hiring agency, freelancers, or volunteers. Then, train your staff and volunteers so they’re prepared to carry out their assigned tasks like setting up equipment.
According to an Exhibitor study, pre-event promotion helps increase booth traffic by 82%, boosts sales by 32%, while also improving the quality and quantity of your leads by 37%.
Here are the channels to target with your trade show promotion:
Put together any event collateral, including maps, handouts, and vendor kits. Send your vendor kits out one month before. Include information about set up and tear down, space restrictions, and pre-written promotional copy (social and email).
If you’re using event tech like A2Z or Regtech, make use of its on-site badge printing software features.
Don’t forget to build your trade show mobile app with your event software, such as A2Z’s immersive, branded mobile app technology. Creating an app for your trade show helps:
It’s time to prepare your venue for your trade show. Make sure to:
After your trade show, thank your attendees, vendors, and any sponsors, staff, and volunteers. Send out post-event survey questions in an email and use the responses to evaluate your trade show and improve future events.
Gather your team and conduct a trade show postmortem. Evaluate its success against your post-event survey data, your goals, objectives, and KPIs. Make note of where you can improve as well as areas of success.
As a chamber of commerce, trade association, or other member organization, trade shows can bring value to you and your members through networking opportunities, non-dues revenue, market research, training, collaboration, and more. Expand your member events with a trade show, and see how it can impact your organizational goals and objectives.
Ready to increase attendees and event profits? It starts with optimizing one thing: here’s how to set up registration for an event.
With extensive features that anticipate your needs and maximize your revenue, A2Z is your number one trade show management software that understands you and your organization, every step of the way. Learn more about A2Z here.