Hello and welcome to today's podcast. My name's Melissa Robbins. Thank you so much for being here. Share with you just some of the mistakes that I see brands make when they're about to exhibit at a trade show. Whether it's their first, their fifth, their 10th, whatever it might be. We wanna avoid these mistakes to avoid wasting your time, energy, and of course dollars. And for those who've wandered dive really deep, I have a three part series on trade show bootcamp, how to get ready for that trade show. It is running live at the moment.
Click the link in the bio and you can find out some more details. I look forward to seeing you there live if you wanted to come to those sessions. Alright, so let's get into the 10 mistakes that you should try and avoid if you're exhibiting at your next trade show.
Mistake number one is treating your trade show like a market stand. It isn't a boutique market. Buyers are buying for bulk, ordering for their stores. They're not buying individual items for themselves. Your layout and your stand design needs to reflect that.
It needs to showcase your product, what it's gonna look like on mass, what it's gonna look like on their shelf. It's got to share the pricing, which we'll get to in another, moment as well. It's got to showcase how the collection fits together. It has to be. Set up to allow buyers to come into the stand, not block them at the front.
You're not, shouldn't be sitting there with a table in front of you and you sitting behind it waiting for the people to show up. It is about inviting them in to your space. So that's what your stand design should reflect, don't make that mistake.
It doesn't mean you can't use some of the same elements from your market stand. It might be that you set them up in a different way is all. Number two is assuming that buyers will just come, that they'll just be there, that they'll just show up.
Of course, there's buyers going to the show. However, just because you paid for the stand
Doesn't guarantee traffic. You have to build hype before the show. You have to work with the trade show exhibitor to try and get buyers to come. , You have to target them, you have to invite them,
whether it's through a physical invitation, whether it's through email, whether it's through sharing content on Instagram beforehand, you really have to make sure that you build hype before the show. , Make people aware that you're going to be there. Put it on your signature a month out, share stories of you building up that anticipation of you going to this trade show in the first place.
Really share behind the scenes of what it is. And make sure that you invite buyers beforehand so that they have brand awareness of who you are before you even get to the show.
Mistake number three is blending in with a boring stand design. Now, trade shows generally are a visual overload. There's so much to look at, so much to see. Buyers are consumed with aisles and aisles of different information, different stands.
You have to make sure that you stand out. You have to do something different. You have to do something bold. You have to look different to your competitor. We wanna look different to the person next to you. We really want people to look from a distance and think, what's that?
Stand over there. I wanna go check that out. That looks interesting, that looks different. How can you draw people over to you? And I don't mean with a megaphone or anything like that, but what elements can you have on your stand that's gonna make you pop and stand out?
We need good contrast. We need bold signage and something that draws people from across the room.
Mistake number four is not having any physical materials to hand out. People need to take away something tangible as a memory of your brand. They're not all gonna make decisions about your brand , while they are there. Not everyone wants a digital catalog.
They are there to buy things in person and they wanna take a physical memory away from with them as well. And again, not everyone is wants that. Not everyone wants something physical. You might have a really strong sustainability, value, and you don't wanna print something that's unnecessary. But I really recommend having at least one item that they can take away with them, whether it's a single postcard.
Or a catalog. I always recommend a physical catalog. It doesn't have to be big, and it shouldn't be big, but should have something physical for people to take away. I used to give away a gift bag when people had came to my stand. I loved giving those away, and people came from, miles would be like, where'd you get that bag from?
Or people would stop other people who had the bag to try and get them to get the back to come over to my stand to find it. So sometimes a little giveaway is a great idea.
And remember that, people don't always buy then and there, so having something physical to take away is much more likely. They'll remember you later, or they'll be looking at their, range in the hotel room that night before they make the decisions. So having something physical is a much better memory of you than just a digital QR code or another email that gets lost in the midst of everything else.
Number five is forgetting to price all your products. And when I say that, I mean making sure that you actually price with two prices, your wholesale and your retail price. You need to have both because as a buyer is coming onto your stand, if you are busy talking to someone else. If you don't have both of those things there, one, they don't know whether it is a wholesale or retail price.
Two, and I know as a wholesale trade show, but not everyone does the same. Price is the same. So you don't really know unless you actually ask the question. And two, you don't know your margin till you see both prices. So having things priced with both your wholesale and retail price you can put discrete tags, small, beautiful little signage, the little gold jewelry stands. It can make a huge difference and reduce friction with your buying process. Mistake number six is not preparing for buyer conversations. What is actually gonna take place. And I go through this in part two of my bootcamp where I really dive deep into what this means. You're gonna know your terms, practice what you're gonna say, practice your responses. Practice what you are actually going to engage with people when they come onto your standing in the first place.
. Buyers are going onto lots of stands. They don't wanna hear the same thing again and again from every single person and stand that they go to. Where's your store? What sort of store do you have? Are you gonna be buying now? Like jumping on them with all this information.
Practice what you're gonna say. Also, understand all the terminology that's required, or what buyers might wanna know. What is your minimum order quantity? When is your delivery due? What are your terms?
Really understand and refine those terms.
Number seven is projecting the wrong energy. It might be day four of the show and you are exhausted and you haven't had any orders and you are flat as a tack. That is not gonna help. Your mindset really matters. How are you gonna keep yourself up? How are you gonna engage with your audience every day?
How are you gonna keep your energy up? What are you gonna do to project the right information
and project the positivity that's required to be at a trade show for four days? No one wants to be sold to who's like flat or oh, desperate or. Frantic, like you gotta own your worth. Know that your product is valuable. Know that it's your right fit for some stores, you cannot be huddled up in a corner with the worst body language ever.
You gotta make sure you rest, you fuel up, you stay calm, you wear the right shoes. You bring the right help with you as well. Really make sure that you're projecting the right energy going into every day of your trade show experience.
Mistake number eight is making snap judgements, AKA pretty woman's syndrome.
Don't assume someone isn't your buyer based on how they look or what their store looks like. Or how cool their store seems. Some of your best stockists might actually surprise you. And I think this is just from being the game for so long. When I was a wholesale, national sales manager for a handbag company, some of my best stores had absolutely no social media.
They didn't even have a website. They were physical stores in regional towns, and they had a kick ass customer base. They had loyal customers who would buy from them again and again. They didn't need all those other things.
So the fact that I couldn't even find them on Instagram or they weren't a cool store to even look up, doesn't mean that they weren't the right fit. They were actually some of my best customers. So don't make a judgment just based on someone's social media, someone's, outfit or how cool their story is, or what other brands they've got in there.
You don't know what you don't know.
Mistake number nine is forgetting the long game treating customers like they are $150 order or a $300 minimum order. Some of your customers could stay with you for 5, 10, 15 years and be a 10,000, 20,000, a hundred thousand dollars customer with you.
If you haven't already heard me talk about the story, when one of the brands that I had in my retail store, I started out with a $300 order and eventually that became a 500 or a thousand dollars order that I did every month. So that was a $12,000 customer in a year, and I probably was with them for three to five years at least.
So you know that 300 order that I placed the first time became a $50,000 customer. Don't assume things and don't treat people like they are. Just that one time customer. Assume that people are gonna stay with you a long time, and how would you treat them differently if you knew that they're a $10,000 customer, a $20,000 customer?
Think the relationship for the long term, not just that transactional one for their first time only.
Mistake number 10 is skipping that follow up and the post show plan.
The show doesn't end when the doors close. Most of the gold is what you do afterwards, and I have a whole workshop on this inside my PR trade show bootcamp. So if you wanna get really deep into that. Come along to that using the link in the buyer, as I mentioned earlier. So what you do afterwards is really crucial.
And a lot of the time people don't buy at the show. Things have changed in the way that the economy's going, the way that people make the decisions about their buying. So they don't always make decisions at the show. They sometimes take 3, 6, 12 months to make the decision. So don't make assumptions about what is going to happen based on the end of the show that you've just finished.
There's not a lot that goes into a successful trade show,
And the difference between those booths and those brands that break even versus the ones that pick up 20, 30, 40 new stockers are some of these things that we just talked about.
If you're serious about nailing your next trade show,, you might wanna dive into the Trade Show bootcamp, which as I mentioned is in the show notes already. And then I also have a whole wholesale program just on. Helping you perfect these different things, helping you refine your catalog, helping you refine your outreach to people, helping you refine the way that you contact people, you find people helping you figure out if your brand is retail ready or how to get reorders from your stores again and again.
I am so passionate about wholesale trade show and having this be a really strong revenue stream in your business. If you want help with this, let me know and look forward to sharing more with you soon. I'll see you at the Life InStyle Trade Show in August in Melbourne, and also at the Reed Expo in Melbourne as well. I'll be speaking at both of those events and also running the business couch at the Life InStyle trade show. So I look forward to seeing you there.
For more details on all the things that I've mentioned today, just head to the show notes
And if you're about to exhibit at a trade show, good luck. I can't wait to hear how you go,