There’s A Lot Of Trade Show Marketing Power In Getting Right To The Point
November 22, 2022 by Dave Haynes
It drives me nuts when I walk around trade shows and see software companies with stands that don’t make it immediately obvious what they do on the stand’s backdrops or headers, so I made a point of telling the Kitcast guys they did a great job at DSE last week of making it super clear what they were all about – Digital Signage Software For Apple TV.
If that intrigued someone, they’d likely stop. If that’s not a road the buyer or solutions provider wants to go down, they don’t waste their finite time or that of the software guys.
I used to go to a lot of trade shows, pre-COVID, and now I’m back on the road. It’s not a particular challenge for a lot of hardware people, because they have physical product on show. But I have seen so many software stands through the years that are either coy about what they actually do, or play buzzword bingo and don’t indicate anything useful to pull people in. More established brands can get away with it because they have awareness, but show-goers should not have to walk into a stand to ask, “OK, what is it you actually do?” or “I know you do software, but what makes you different from the pack?”
Making it obvious is smart.
Side note: I knew Kitcast has a lot of roots in Ukraine. I asked if all was OK, and they’re people are in the U.S. But they have family back there. The company is donating 10% of its revenue as humanitarian aid to Ukraine
Drives me nuts, too. One of my biggest beefs while walking then show.
Not confusing attendees at shows is key. We use ‘Digital Signage Made For Education’ when we attend the BETT Education Show and it works great 👍
This is one of my biggest pet peeves in business marketing. One of my mentors, nearly 25 years ago said: “Tell me what you’re selling and what you want for it.”
For a long time now we have tried to apply a 2 second rule to booth design. If someone walking past cannot work out what we are promoting within 2 seconds then we haven’t got our messaging right.
Sometimes it helps to ask to who they send the invoice and for what…
Thanks, Dave! We really appreciate the mention. And it was great to meet you at DSE.
Getting right to the point is important, especially at busy trade shows. We’re doing our best to present our software.
Cheers from the Kitcast Team!