Exhibiting at a trade show can represent a significant investment. Once you have paid for the stand space, design, staff, travel, accommodation and marketing materials, you need the event to produce something worthwhile.
For most exhibitors, that ultimately means one thing: more conversations with the right people and more qualified exhibition leads for the sales team.
Simply turning up with an impressive stand and waiting for delegates to approach rarely produces the best results. Successful exhibitors have a plan for attracting attention, starting conversations, qualifying prospects and following up afterwards.
Here are 12 practical ways to generate more leads at your next trade show or exhibition.
1. Choose Your Stand Location Carefully
Footfall matters.
The more relevant delegates who pass your exhibition stand, the more opportunities your team has to start conversations.
When choosing your position, look carefully at the expected flow of visitors around the exhibition hall. Entrances, seminar theatres, refreshment areas and natural routes between different parts of the show can all influence traffic.
Being tucked away at the end of a quiet aisle can make life considerably harder, regardless of how good your stand looks.
If you are investing thousands of pounds in exhibiting, don’t treat your stand location as an afterthought. Speak to the organisers, examine the floor plan and understand where delegates are likely to move throughout the day.
2. Have a Proper Lead Capture System
Collecting brochures isn’t the objective. Collecting useful information about potential customers is.
Every worthwhile conversation should have a clear next step, and that usually means capturing the prospect’s details alongside enough information for your sales team to understand why the lead matters.
Depending on the exhibition, this might involve:
- Badge scanning
- A CRM app
- QR codes
- Digital forms
- Competition entries
- Appointment booking
- Notes added directly to the prospect’s record
Don’t just collect a name and email address.
Record what the person was interested in, what problem they are trying to solve and what action should happen next. That makes the follow-up far more useful.
3. Follow Up Quickly
A good exhibition lead loses value if nobody contacts them.
By the time delegates return to the office, they may have spoken to dozens of exhibitors. If your follow-up arrives several days later, there is a good chance the conversation has already faded from memory.
Where appropriate, create an automated follow-up sequence before the show begins.
You might send an initial email shortly after the conversation, followed by a more personalised message from the relevant salesperson once the exhibition is over.
Automation can handle the routine communication, but your strongest prospects should still receive a personal follow-up.
The important thing is to decide what will happen to each lead before the exhibition starts, rather than working it out afterwards.
4. Put the Right People on Your Exhibition Stand
Your stand team can make or break the event.
Walk around almost any exhibition and you will see people sitting behind tables, looking at phones or talking amongst themselves while potential customers walk straight past.
Your stand team should contain people who are comfortable approaching strangers, asking questions and starting conversations.
They don’t necessarily need to be your most senior employees. They need to be approachable, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about meeting people.
Body language matters too.
Standing towards the front of the stand and looking available creates a completely different impression from sitting at the back behind a laptop.
An exhibition is not another day in the office. Your team is there to engage.
5. Think Carefully About Giveaways
Pens, tote bags, sweets and branded merchandise can have their place, but don’t assume that giving something away automatically generates useful leads.
The question should always be:
What does this giveaway help us achieve?
If hundreds of people collect your merchandise without having a meaningful conversation with your team, you may simply be paying to give away free products.
A better promotional item either starts a conversation, reinforces your brand message or rewards the right people for engaging with you.
Spend your budget on creating interaction rather than simply distributing merchandise.
6. Give People a Reason to Stop
One of the biggest challenges at any trade show is getting somebody who is walking down an aisle to stop.
You therefore need a reason for them to engage.
That could be:
- A live demonstration
- A competition
- An interactive experience
- Coffee or refreshments
- A game
- A product demonstration
- Close-up magic
Whatever you choose, the attraction should support your commercial objective rather than distract from it.
A busy stand isn’t necessarily a successful stand.
The aim isn’t simply to gather a crowd. It is to create an opportunity for your team to speak to potential customers.
That’s an important distinction.
7. Decide Exactly What You Want to Achieve
Before worrying about giveaways, entertainment or stand design, decide what success looks like.
“Get more people onto the stand” isn’t really a business objective.
A much stronger objective might be:
Start conversations with decision-makers from our target companies, identify their requirements and introduce qualified prospects to the appropriate member of our sales team.
Once the objective is clear, almost every other decision becomes easier.
Your stand design, staffing, marketing, data capture and exhibition entertainment can then be built around achieving that goal.
8. Spend Your Stand Budget Where It Makes a Difference
Your exhibition stand needs to look professional and reflect the type of business you are.
If everyone around you has invested heavily in their presentation and your stand consists of a folding table and a tired pop-up banner, it may affect how delegates perceive your company.
But bigger isn’t automatically better.
It is possible to spend an enormous amount on stand design without solving the fundamental problem of getting people to stop and talk.
A beautifully designed exhibition stand with nobody engaging passing delegates can still be an expensive failure.
Try to balance visual impact with the elements that actively generate conversations.
9. Prioritise Qualified Leads Over Big Numbers
Would you rather leave an exhibition with 200 badge scans or 50 genuine potential customers?
The answer will depend on your business, but for many B2B exhibitors the second group is considerably more valuable.
Define your target audience before the doors open.
That could mean identifying people by:
- Industry
- Job title
- Company size
- Geographic market
- Purchasing authority
- Specific business need
Once you know who you want to meet, your team can focus its time on the delegates most likely to become customers.
Lead quality should matter at least as much as lead quantity.
10. Brief Your Stand Team Properly
Everyone working on your exhibition stand should understand three things:
Who are we trying to meet?
What do we want them to understand about us?
What should happen after we identify a good prospect?
There should be a simple process.
For example:
Engage → Qualify → Introduce → Capture → Follow up
If a team member starts a conversation with somebody who fits your target customer profile, they should know exactly who to introduce them to and what happens next.
Without that process, strong opportunities can easily disappear during a busy exhibition.
11. Measure Your Exhibition ROI
Trade show ROI isn’t always easy to calculate because an exhibition can influence a sale months after the initial conversation.
You can, however, make it much easier to track.
Tag every lead with the exhibition where the conversation took place and record this information in your CRM.
Then monitor:
- Number of leads captured
- Qualified leads
- Meetings booked
- Opportunities created
- Pipeline value
- Sales generated
- Average cost per qualified lead
You can also ask new customers how they first heard about you.
Over time, this gives you much better information about which exhibitions deserve another place in your marketing budget.
12. Consider Using a Trade Show Magician
This is where I come in.
A trade show magician isn’t there simply to entertain people on your exhibition stand.
Used properly, close-up magic becomes a way of starting conversations.
My approach at exhibitions is straightforward:
Stop. Engage. Qualify. Introduce.
I engage delegates as they pass the stand and use close-up magic to break down the natural barrier that often exists between visitors and exhibitors.
Once somebody has stopped, I can introduce the company, establish whether they are relevant to your business and, where appropriate, connect them directly with your sales team.
The magic provides the reason to stop.
The business conversation is the reason I’m there.
This can be particularly effective at busy trade shows where hundreds of companies are competing for the attention of the same delegates.
Rather than waiting for potential customers to approach your stand, you have somebody actively creating opportunities for your sales team throughout the event.
Want More Leads From Your Next Exhibition?
If you’re exhibiting at an upcoming trade show and want to make your stand more engaging, I’d be happy to discuss how trade show magic could become part of your lead generation strategy.
As a professional trade show magician, I work alongside exhibition teams to attract attention, engage delegates, identify potential customers and introduce qualified prospects to the right person on your stand.
Planning an exhibition?
Get in touch to check my availability and discuss how close-up magic could help you generate more qualified trade show leads.