How can you optimise your presence at trade fairs?
Events dedicated to companies and professionals have always been an important meeting opportunity.
They can help in the search for partners and the creation of new business relationships: customers, distributors and suppliers could be among the participants at the event planned by our company.
We have used the conditional not by chance: it is not certain that companies in line with our goals will be among the exhibitors or visitors at the fair.
However, there are solutions to get the most out of these events, exploiting their full potential.
Before we look at them, let us delve into the advantages and limits of trade fairs.
Trade fairs: a classic solution
Regardless of sector and size, trade fairs represent the most classic of solutions for a company aiming to expand its business.
Whether it is a matter of finding new buyers, changing suppliers or studying competitors, they are a real point of reference. Certainly, taking part in a trade fair has its advantages. Here are some of them:
- Opportunity to create direct relationships with other companies, e.g., through participation in business matching meetings.
- A chance to get an overview of an industry and its innovations in terms of products and services.
- Direct support for lead generation activities by collecting business cards from managers and other professionals.
Alongside the benefits, however, these events have their limitations. Anyone working within a company knows that the costs for a stand are on average high, as is the time to organise one’s participation.
It usually takes weeks to define all the materials, participants and logistical aspects, which is certainly more demanding in the case of a foreign trade fair.
To make this easier and maximise the return on investment, however, there is a solution: market analysis.
Let’s see how these tools can make participation in a trade fair more effective.
Market analysis to optimize trade fair participation
The concept of market analysis might seem foreign to trade fairs.
However, what one does at a trade fair is precisely a study of the market and its composition.
Walking around the stands, collecting brochures, attending workshops and offering your business card: these are all activities familiar to anyone who has ever attended a trade fair in their professional life.
These actions are apparently different, but with one common thread: getting to know the evolution of a sector, its players and their features, while at the same time giving visibility to one’s own company.
This ‘manual’ analysis carried out can be backed up by another, carried out thanks to technology.
What do we mean?
Today, digital technologies give the possibility to quickly analyse national and international markets, identifying companies with specific characteristics.
This is the case of the solutions developed by Matchpat, capable of combining Artificial Intelligence algorithms with a worldwide database of companies to classify them in real time according to their activities, products offered and much more.
This is real market profiling that allows you to make the most of your trade fair presence. Why?
Because, as we have already mentioned, it is not certain that all the companies suitable for our purposes will be present, but by identifying them beforehand it is possible to invite them to the event, setting a series of appointments in line with our goals.
Let’s see the advantages of this approach.
Market analysis and trade fairs: all the benefits
Imagine a company preparing to attend a trade fair in Germany. The travel costs are not insignificant, as is the budget for the stand.
Considering this, the company decides to map all its potential customer companies in the country. Obviously, after consulting the list of participants at the trade fair, it notices that only a small percentage of them will be present.
After selecting the most interesting companies, it contacts them to invite them as guests to its stand, increasing the initial business opportunities.
This results in:
- A higher conversion rate: contacting companies in line with one’s offer makes it easier to do the work that could have been done by relying only on trade fair participants.
- A quicker return on investment: identifying more potential customers than expected allows you to quickly repay your trade fair costs.
- Better networking: expanding the number of stakeholders allows you to develop an increasingly comprehensive network of contacts with whom you can do business (not only customers, but also suppliers, distributors and partners).
For all these reasons, relying on the results of a B2B market analysis is a good choice if you want to make the most of the potential offered by trade fairs.
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