If you’re in the B2B world, then you know that trade shows are one of the best ways to showcase your company to industry leaders, potential customers and investors. Maximizing buzz around your company before, during and after the show is a big key to trade show success. These # tips, pulled from PRoC’s parent company, Swyft, will help you do just that.

Pick the Right Trade Show

There are trade shows for all things B2B. Each serves a specific niche in the market, so having your company attend just any B2B trade show would be unwise. For example, a company that specializes in security systems would fare much better at the Smart Home Expo than they would at the International Roofing Expo.

In other words, do your research! You can’t generate buzz amongst your target audience if you attend an event that they won’t care about.

Assess Your Potential Competition

Another question to consider beyond type of expo is the size of the expo. There’s more local, “tabletop” expos, and then there’s the creme de la creme of expos, like SXSW or IBM Think. Each comes with a different price tag – and different sized competitors – so it’s important to consider who you can realistically take on when it comes generating buzz. If you’re just a small business attending the same expo as Microsoft, you’ll have to spend much more money on maximizing buzz than you would at a smaller event.

Tell People You’ll Be There

The pre-show prep can’t be overlooked. Letting people know you’ll be there before the trade show even starts is a great way to build anticipation. In order to make sure you’ve generated the most buzz, it’s best to communicate with your followers and prospects via every channel you have at your disposal at least once. That includes email, blogs and social media – but especially email! Just don’t overdo it.

Your communications about the trade show should increase as the day gets nearer, but don’t copy and paste the exact same information in every email because people will be less likely to read them.

One email could be about a special suprise announcement you’ll be making at the trade show, another could just be your schedule of events so that people know when to block out their schedule just for your company.

Don’t Skimp on Booth Design

A well-designed booth gets people talking all on its own; “Have you checked out that booth yet?

Further, when you go to a trade show, which booths are you paying attention to? The thoughtfully designed and aesthetically pleasing booths, or the all-white booths that exclusively use Times New Roman font (or worse, Comic Sans) on all their materials? Probably the thoughtfully designed ones.

Therefore, you should make your booth an inviting space that trade show goers will actually want to stop at. Once you’ve caught their eye, then you can tell them all about your life-changing B2B product.

Thoughtfully designed, however, does not mean huge. Sure, a huge booth would be eye-catching, but it’s also more expensive and unnecessary. You’d be surprised what you can do to make a traditionally sized space just as impressive as a giant one. When it comes to maximizing buzz, aesthetic is much more important than overall size.

About Weslie Oeftering: Weslie is a student at The University of Texas at Austin and Swyft’s resident PR and marketing intern. She supports clients with social media, blogging, and tech PR activities. Swyft is a tech PR agency in Austin with offices in Denver, Houston and Antwerp that provides integrated PR and marketing services and trade show PR support for tech companies around the world. Some of their services include media relations, content and inbound marketing, CPC campaigns, and marketing automation consulting.

Featured Image: Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash