The Show Is One Input in a Longer Process

I look at a trade show the way I look at any system: what goes in and what comes out.

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The stand and the staff time go in. A list of conversations and badge scans comes out. In a lot of the businesses I've worked with, whatever the sector, that list then stays in a spreadsheet on someone's laptop for three weeks, while the buyer talks to four other suppliers.

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Work out the cost per quote. Take the full cost of exhibiting and divide it by the number of show conversations that turned into a quote. For many firms the number is uncomfortable, and the cause is usually the follow-up.

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For an engineering business, one specification win can decide the supplier for a whole programme of work. A missed follow-up can cost far more than the stand did.

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Shows still matter. Some engineering buyers want to see a machine running, or meet the people who will handle their project, before they put a supplier on an approved list. The question is what happens to the people you meet there.

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Before and During the Show

The firms that get the most from a show arrive with meetings already booked. Two or three weeks out, send an email to your customers and target accounts with your stand number and a specific reason to visit, such as a new process or a live demo.

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Include the customers you already supply. A meeting on the stand is an easy place to talk about their next project, and it costs you nothing extra.

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Use LinkedIn in the same weeks. When we worked with marine engineering firm PB Asher at IMPA London, social posts revealed parts of the stand design a piece at a time, so the stand was already on visitors' lists before the doors opened. A small LinkedIn Ads budget aimed at the job titles you want to meet shows your name to the same people that fortnight.

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A badge scan gives you a name and a company and nothing about what they wanted. Agree before the show what the stand team records for every conversation: the application the visitor is working on, and when they need a supplier.

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Whoever has the conversation enters it on a phone, straight into the CRM, before the next visitor arrives. A QR code on the stand that leads to a page built for the show, with a short form and your demo videos, collects details from the people your team never got to speak to.

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After the Show: Follow Up Within a Week

In the week after a show, buyers are still comparing the suppliers they met. A follow-up that refers to the actual conversation, with the drawing or test data they asked about, arrives while they are still deciding. Without the record from the stand, every visitor gets the same "great to meet you" email, and buyers delete those.

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After that, contacts move into a longer email sequence. An engineering buyer may not have a project ready for six or nine months, so a monthly email with relevant project work keeps you on the shortlist until they do. Retargeting on LinkedIn reaches the people who visited your show page and never got in touch.

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Tag every contact with the show name in the CRM, so you can trace any quote back to it later.

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Between Shows: Make Your Trade Show Marketing Last

Gartner's latest survey of B2B buyers found that 67% prefer a rep-free buying experience. An engineer with a new project searches for the capability and checks the supplier's website before deciding who to call.

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So the website needs a page for each capability you show on the stand, written around what engineers search for, such as the process and the material.

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The show gives you material for those pages. Photos and video from the stand, and short write-ups of the demos, give your website and LinkedIn page new content for months. PB Asher's stand kept producing content long after the show closed.

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Where I Would Start

If Advanced Engineering is in your diary this year, there is still time to email your target accounts and to agree what the stand team records.

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The bigger change comes after the show. I'd treat the show budget and the year-round budget as one plan, measured on one number: quotes issued from contacts the marketing produced, whichever channel they came through.

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Measured that way, most engineering firms find the show performs better, because the work around it finally gets done. The same number lets you compare shows with each other and with Google Ads or LinkedIn. It will tell you which shows to drop, and that is worth knowing before you sign next year's stand contract.

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If you want help building that plan, see how Solvi Digital approaches engineering marketing.

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