Are trade shows worth it? The value of B2B trade events

Do B2B trade events still offer businesses any value in the modern digital world? Or are they an overpriced relic from the past that isn’t worth the investment?

For decades, B2B trade events were a primary means through which businesses could showcase their products and services. They were a chance to meet potential customers, offer demonstrations, build networks, boost brand awareness, and make the commercial connections essential to long-term growth.

However, in the modern digital age, they can start to feel obsolete. After all, we can do all these things online.

With digital marketing and social media marketing up our sleeves, it’s understandable if we believe that we’d be better off investing our limited budgets in these areas than physical trade shows.

Here at Marcom, our team of marketing experts understand the wants and needs of the modern consumer, monitoring which strategies deliver the best results for your business.

That’s why we believe that attending or hosting B2B trade events remains a powerful and savvy approach that helps raise brand awareness, boost networking, generate sales, helps to humanise your brand, bring a face to your company and offer the chance to get hands-on experience with your product or service.

In this article, we’ll be explaining why B2B events still offer value in the digital age and how you can make them work for your business.

Why exhibit at B2B trade events?

Let’s start by looking at some of the benefits of attending B2B trade events and how they can help you generate long-term results.

1. You’ll build valuable business relationships

When you attend a B2B event, you’ll have the opportunity to network with industry professionals, potential customers and key decision-makers. Unlike emails, video calls, LinkedIn messages and social media communication, you’ll enjoy face-to-face interactions with these people, enjoy meaningful conversations and create genuine connections.

This can lead to excellent long-term business opportunities including collaboration and sales, while you help meet the modern customer’s need for connection, authenticity and real human interaction.

If you can also participate in networking sessions, panel discussions and social events, you can build your professional network while positioning your business as proactive in your industry.

2. The opportunity for real dialogue

While digital tools such as Microsoft Teams can facilitate remote discussion at a distance, there is an artificiality about these conversations. Often, remote meetings can turn into a monologue with one contributor dominating the discussion, with the other contributors reticent about interrupting or adding their contributions.

During face-to-face discussions, ideas are more freely exchanged. Body language can be assessed allowing for more agile and focused responses. Ideas spark, and human creativity can take discussions into interesting and potentially fruitful new areas.

The dynamic nature of face-to-face dialogue can open new avenues to develop and grow your business, build relationships, and realise new opportunities. Exhibitions allow you to do this.

3. Your customer can experience your offerings first-hand

Trade shows allow you to physically demonstrate your products and services in real time so they can better understand what you offer and how it can solve their problems or benefit their lives.

This is more impactful than simply writing product descriptions or creating social media posts as your customers can ask you questions, interact with your products and see the value for themselves.

By showcasing your products this way, you can create buzz and excitement about your product, service or brand and generate more sales.

4. You’ll boost brand awareness

Trade shows aren’t only about making sales. They’re also a great opportunity to build and reinforce your brand in an environment where your target audience is going to be present. This helps you increase brand awareness, generate leads and position you as a leader in your field.

For best results, consider how your brand is represented at the event, ensuring that your stand or booth design, marketing materials and other touchpoints reflect your brand’s values and demonstrate your market position.

5. You’ll enjoy long-term benefits for your business

Networking at a trade event allows you to create opportunities that could lead to future partnerships, collaboration and business growth.

With the extra exposure that they offer, you’ll be more likely to increase your market share and industry recognition and lay the foundations for future growth and business success. Time and money spent at a networking event can be seen as an investment that has the potential to deliver both in the long-term as well as the near future.

6. Confirm your position and increase your visibility

Building long-term business success often requires being actively involved in industry events. It’s essential that businesses who are looking to establish themselves as key players in their sector are present at industry-specific B2B events. If you’re an already established business, not attending an event may lead others to conclude you’ve either gone out of business or can no longer afford it. It could create a vacuum that a challenger business could occupy.

It’s worth remembering that just by being present, including the size and design of your stand, you are physically as well as commercially positioning yourself in the industry. Your presence leaves an impression on the minds of other exhibitors, delegates, and attendees.

7. You’ll spot new market trends and competitor activities

If you’ve ever wanted to better understand your competition and how others in the industry are positioning themselves, attending a trade show can help.

With numerous industry professionals, all gathered under one roof, it offers a great opportunity to understand the market and see how your business can differentiate itself.

8. You’ll gather feedback

Speaking to customers and industry peers face-to-face allows you to gather valuable feedback about your product, service or business.

You can then use this information to tweak your products, improve your services and align your business strategies with current market needs and trends. You can build up a fuller picture of the challenges your customers face and then refine your offer to meet them.

What about the costs of hosting or attending B2B trade events?

We’ll admit that trade shows do require an investment of time and energy. You’ll need to budget for stand/booth rental, design, setup, perhaps travel and accommodation, marketing and any extra fees. This often deters businesses that aren’t convinced about the value that trade events offer.

However, trade shows are an investment, just like other marketing strategies. Do it right and you can generate immediate leads, valuable brand exposure, build key relationships and position yourselves as leaders in your field. Here are some tips to help you maximise your ROI.

1. Set clear measurable objectives

What do you want to achieve by attending this trade show? It could be generating leads, closing deals, boosting brand awareness, networking for new partnerships, and so on.

Consider this first, ensuring that your objectives are clear, measurable and timely, then consider using tools and software that can help you compare your results against your costs.

When you’ve done this, consider what budget you have, calculate your total costs and allocate effectively.

2. Start planning your trade events early

Save money by looking for early bird rates for the trade event, transportation and accommodation to reduce your overheads and free up more of your budget for marketing purposes.

3. Generate a buzz with social media and digital marketing

Create a solid social media and digital marketing strategy that helps get people excited about the event, understand the benefits of attending and maximise reach and engagement.

By using targeted pre-event marketing campaigns, you’ll attract more qualified leads to your booth and could potentially improve your ROI.

4. Design your event stand and marketing materials

Make your booth or stand attractive, compelling and exciting by taking your time to develop them before the event. Do they attract attention? Do they encourage potential customers to explore your offerings? And, do they represent your brand effectively?

By taking time to do this, you will better position your brand, generate more leads and foster meaningful conversations.

If you can include interactive displays and live demos or do something different such as making your stand hybrid so that you can host in-person and virtual demonstrations, you’ll be more likely to generate results.

5. Network with others

Attending a trade show isn’t only about generating leads or making sales.

It’s also a fantastic opportunity to build meaningful connections with others in your industry and develop future collaborations that could significantly benefit your brand. Visit the stands of your competitors and suppliers and encourage your team members to do the same so that can get a feel for the industry and gather business intelligence.

We always encourage our clients to engage with other exhibitors, attend seminars, look for speaker opportunities, ask questions of other speakers and participate fully to build these face-to-face relationships and sow the seeds for future business growth.

6. Follow up on those leads

If you don’t feel confident about your sales pitch, then get some sales coaching on how to engage your audience at the event and to attract people to your stand. If you get it right, you will capture valuable leads at the trade show you attend.

Make the most of these opportunities by developing a streamlined strategy that helps you keep the momentum going. Once the trade show is over, you can focus your energies on turning these into sales.

Summary: Are B2B trade events worth it in 2024?

While trade shows may seem like an old-fashioned marketing strategy, they still offer valuable opportunities for businesses looking to grow their sales, scale their businesses, boost brand awareness and develop new partnerships with like-minded industry professionals.

Even in this hyper-digital age, trade shows still allow customers to enjoy face-to-face interactions with the companies they buy from, building trust and brand loyalty at the same time.

By strategically planning your trade show, developing measurable goals, optimising your results and following up with leads afterwards, you can enjoy maximum ROI while helping to lay the foundations for long-term success.

Want to attend a trade show but not sure where to start?

Our team of experts at Marcom can help you develop your marketing strategy and maximise results. Contact us today for help.

Podcast by Marcom: April 2024[/vc_column_text]