Making The Most Of The Water Industry's Tradeshow Season

Picture this. A young engineer walks up to your booth at WEFTEC and looks adoringly at the scale model of your latest piece of equipment. Your sales rep saunters over and engages the engineer by letting him know what he’s looking at, listing off the product’s features and asking if he can scan the engineer’s badge to follow up with some more information after the show. The engineer leaves and the rep feels pretty excited about another good tradeshow lead.

What he doesn’t get to see is that the engineer continues on his path, stopping an aisle over at another booth to admire another scale model of another piece of equipment where again he is engaged by a rep, his badge is scanned and he continues on his way. Another good tradeshow lead has been obtained.

By the end of the show, this engineer is now a “good lead” for a handful of exhibitors.

Each exhibitor then follows up with the engineer after the show by sending him a brochure about the new product and forwarding his information on to the local manufacturer’s rep to try to set up a visit.

Here’s my challenge to you. What could you have done to improve on the experience that this young engineer had with your company to outperform the other exhibitors he met with at WEFTEC?

As we head into tradeshow season, this is the question that too few exhibitors are answering in their pre-show planning. There’s a tendency in the water and wastewater industry to exhibit just like the next booth over. And that covers everything from booth design and literature available, to which members of your team represent you at shows. All of these things lead to tradeshow inertia. Maybe even apathy on the part of exhibitors. If you’re feeling and maybe hearing the sentiment that, “we’re only exhibiting to avoid our competitors taking advantage of our absence,” it’s time to rethink your approach to tradeshows.

I once went to a presentation where the speaker had sent out a cufflink to top prospects, letting them know that they could pick up the matching one when they visited the tradeshow booth. I’m not too sure how many of our industry are wearing cufflinks (more a financial industry show I think) but the example was presented to encourage us to “think outside the box.” While this was an interesting gimmick to get potential customers to the booth, it still didn’t predispose them towards the company’s products.

To do that, you need to be engaging your audience on a consistent basis with insightful content year-round. This is the essence of brand publishing. Establishing a brand identity early so that at the point of engagement, when our young engineer walks up to your booth at the show, he already has an idea of how you might be able to help him.