A good plan starts with good goals.

Not only will they help in designing your trade show booth and strategy, they’ll give you a metric to measure your success by.

There are several types of trade show goals you can make.

Do you want to make sales and create leads? Or maybe you’re launching a new product and want to give the public a chance to check it out?

Other goals could include meeting and making connections with VIPs in your industry. Or establishing a strong reputation, separating your brand from the competition as the best of the best.

Before you make the leap from the planning to the execution stage, you should make sure you – and your whole team – is ready.

• Did you do your research on the show you’ll be attending? Do you know the type of businesses and people that will be attending?

• Is your whole team on board and on the same page? Do they know about and agree with the goals you set?

• Have you arranged for the needed staff to be available on the event date?

• Do you have everything you need for your marketing campaign? Ex. Business cards, brochures, product samples, website, social media page, etc.

In short, this is where you cross your t’s and dot your i’s. Because once you commit to registering for the show and building your booth, you’ll be investing time and money that you won’t be able to get back.

That is, until you follow through and knock it out of the park, like we know you can.

There are so many things that go into a successful trade show, from pre-event planning to following up on leads after the event is over.

However, everything basically lives and dies on your booth. An awesome, well-designed booth and activation will make a big impact, even if the rest of your marketing strategy is a little weak. On the flip side, even the tightest, most well-planned marketing strategy won’t make up for an uninteresting booth.

In short, booth design can be the difference between getting tons of foot traffic and very little, between creating an excellent impression and a mediocre one.

Again, you don’t want people to just notice you from afar. You want them to actually stop by, stay for a while, and hopefully turn into a sale, prospect, or new contact.

That starts with a really fun activation. But there are other ways to encourage foot traffic as well.

Giveaways and other freebies are popular choices. Just make sure your freebies are interesting, not just a pen with your logo on it. It should be something people will actually value, that they’ll go out of their way to get – and not just toss in a trash can a few booths away.

Competitions are also good, especially if you combine them with that awesome activation we mentioned earlier. Think trivia or games, both virtual and physical.

People love to compete with one another in a friendly environment. It’ll encourage them to stop by, hang out, and even come back later to check the new scores.

Of course, you could always use your hot new product to bring people in. Most people visit trade shows specifically to try out new products, so if you have one, it’s a great way to kill two birds with one stone. It’ll drive foot traffic and create direct interest in your brand at the same time.

Really, there are more options for attracting visitors than we have space to mention here. The important thing is that you provide real value while standing out from the crowd.

If creating leads is one of your goals for the event, you’ll need a good way to capture them. Because most people who stop by won’t immediately make a purchase or hand you their contact info.

Fortunately, people at trade shows are there to be sold to, as we highlighted earlier. You just have to nudge them in the right direction.

Lead capture could be as simple as an iPad or touchscreen setup, where they type in their info. If you go that route, just make sure to have multiple devices, so people don’t have to wait in line when things get busy.

Or you could do something a little more fun, like the Social Media Vending Machine. Visitors use social media engagement, in the form of likes or posts, to get prizes. Not only is it fun, it gives you a way to contact them later.

You generally have three options for staffing your event. You can use your own team, you can hire a team, or you can use a combination of both.

For instance, you can get some really unique activations through VirtualRealityRental.co, and we’ll provide an event manager to help you run them. We’ll also work with you to create a plan for the event itself.

So, if you’re hiring another group, you’ll have to make sure they’ve got a day-of plan that you can be confident in.

As for your own people, you’ll want to ensure that everyone’s on the same page and understands their role. Are they doing sales? Or are they simply there to engage with and help guests? It’s also a good idea to have someone to supervise and take charge when necessary.

Hopefully, you already know your team’s strengths. Just make it clear what you expect from them beforehand, since things can get a little confusing with visitors coming in and out, asking questions.

Now that you’ve gone through all that trouble to build leads, what are you going to do with them?

Follow up, that’s what!

This follow up could take a variety of forms, from an email, to a social media request, to a hand-written note or personal phone call. You can choose based on a combination of factors:

Your normal sales and marketing strategy. How do you usually follow up with leads? How can you adapt that typical sales funnel to your trade show prospects?

The way you gained the lead. For instance, if you used something like the Social Media Vending Machine at your booth, that should influence your follow up.

After turning those leads into sales, the most important part of your post-event task is to figure out what worked, what didn’t, and how you can improve in the future.

That all starts with calculating your return on investment, or ROI, for the event. Usually, we find financial ROI with a simple formula:

Net Return on Investment / Cost of Investment x 100

You’re then left with a percentage. So, for instance, if you invested $5,000 in your booth and made $25,000 in sales, that comes to a 500% or 5:1 return on investment, which is quite good.

If you’re smart – and we know you are – you’ll also learn from what other businesses were doing, especially your competitors.

What did they do well, that you can steal… ahem, borrow for your next show? If you were paying attention, you should have seen what worked for them in terms of drawing in visitors, making an impression, or generating leads.

On the other hand, they probably did some things that didn’t work that well. Maybe they got less foot traffic. Maybe people didn’t care about their freebies. Or their booth just wasn’t as impressive or professional as it could be.

You can learn from that stuff too, so you know what to avoid in the future.

With your post-event evaluations completed and the next trade show approaching, we start back from the beginning. Yep, it’s time to do it all over again.

However, this time your planning will be supercharged, since you have all of the cold, hard data we discussed above. You can keep the stuff that worked, ditch the stuff that didn’t, and hopefully create an even sleeker, snazzier, and more effective presentation this time around.

That being said, there are two basic approaches that you can take:

• Trying completely new ideas, whether it’s how you design your booth or the type of activities your provide

• Doubling down on the same stuff that worked for you and your competitors

Both have their advantages. But if your next booth is too similar to the last one, it does run the risk of getting stale. For example, that design or activity that was really unique and engaging the first time around may not be as popular next time.

On the other hand, doing something new is always a risk, one that might not pay off.

In the end, you want to strike a balance between trying new things and doing what works. If you change too much, you could hurt your results. But you could also lose impact by staying too formulaic.