If your primary goal at a tradeshow is brand awareness, I’d stay at home!

Let’s face it, brand awareness is a pretty standard issue answer and if you can change this one thing about your exhibit campaign. By making this primary objective more laser focused, you will transform your exhibition campaign (said with the highest respect, and as a friend).

If you fall into this catgory I don’t mean to pick on you, but I really want to challenge you on this one! When I hear brand awareness is the main goal, I do cringe a little. (I’m sorry if I’m offending people).

Brand awareness is really important and there is definitely a place for it in your exhibit campaign, my issue with it is that it’s just not easy to measure. I’m willing to bet it’s part of a deeper goal that you’re not sharing with your stand builder.

For instance, if you’re a new product to market there’s a good chance you’re going to want to get more leads. And if it’s just brand awareness your after, if you just went and you wanted people to learn about your brand, that’s wonderful but at the end of the day you’re there to make some money.

These shows cost a bit so you want to be able to measure your results so that over time you can nurture leads, track them and compare the success of future shows and activations. More importantly, you see what your ROI is for each event!

If you’re struggling with this and thinking “Jess, that’s great, you just said brand awareness is a crappy goal, but how do I change it?”.

OK, do this one thing and I promise you it will really help!

Something I always ask clients to narrow their focus is, this: “What is the one thing you want everyone to walk away knowing about you?”

If you ask yourself this question, what you’ll find is that you really get to the crux of what your aiming to do at that exhibition or conference and how you need to speak to your audience and how you can personalise the experience just for them. It really will help.

From a stand builders perspective, we can do so much more to help you with your design and have a much more focused strategy.

So, together you will find that it will spill out over onto your communications, stand messaging, how you manage the stand and how your staff speak to visitors. It’s really so important and I really do believe that clarity on this one thing will really transform your attendance.

If you’re looking for a little bit more help and handholding to knock your next exhibition out of the park, get in touch we’d really love to help you throw some ideas around!

Jessica Turnbull
Tradeshow Strategist
The Exhibit Company
+61 02 8093 3806