Expos and tradeshows, anyone?

Anyone here has ever had a booth in such events? I could appreciate some pointers.

TIA

Done a heap of them.

Firstly, cover the stand. Don't just have the walls whatever colour the partitioning is. Pretty much everyone else will do that and it looks crap. You have to think of it as a space to decorate. Don't go overboard with a lot of props that don't sell, just cover the walls with something. I use cheap calico or felt type material. Most of the walls should be covered with pics but you want in between to look good and like you put some effort into it.

I just hang the calico by stapling it along the top edge then pull it fairly taught and secure the bottom edge. You can get double width Calico ( I use the warm unbleached stuff which is cheap as) which is a little taller than the stand walls. Coming off a roll, I do it all in one piece and just staple in the corners. Makes it easy up put up and take down.

The 2nd imperative is you need to light the stand.
Some shows will include 2 piddly little spotlights. I pump all the light I can in there and have the thing looking like an airport runway. Generally I put at least 1 500W flood on each walll and another over the front counter to light up the display albums. Great in winter with 3k of light and heat in there, you'll sweat like a pig in summer but that's the price of success!

If you are going to use a Plasma type TV, you can probably omit the light off that wall. I usually put mine at the front at an angle so I still have room for prints.
Before you cover the walls with fabric, run all your power leads. If you need more power, hook into the outlets for your neighbours. They rarely use all their allocation. Once all the leads and powerboard are run, then conceal them with the fabric or run them all along the top edges of the stand.

The 3rd imperative is Sound.
I make a CD of up to date upbeat music and have that playing through a decent portable sound system. I don't have it loud but I do have it bassy so it carries a bit. This works to envolve peoples senses and give them a positive feeling about your stand.
Bright lights and boppy music will pull people from all over the place no matter where your stand is located.

To hang prints I usualy use some decorative chain from the hardware store. Screw it in the top of the shell with a heavy screw and let it drop down the front of the fabric. You can then get pliers and open up some links and make hooks that will attach to the chain drop and hold the string on your prints. Take a small string line level with you so you can sit that on the prints and get them straight easily without having to go back and forth making corrections.

USe BIG prints.
I never do anything smaller than 20x30's with wide matts so they come out at 24, 36 I think it is. I use cheap aluminium black frames with cream coloured matts. This way you get a nice continuity throughout the display and the frams and matts go with any print. I just lightly tape the prints to the matts so they are easy to change when I want to show something new.
For the main print on the back wall I do at least a 40x60. Hard to get matts for this size so I generally have this one framed to suit the print. Also have extra thick glass put in it. when you are moving these things around at shows, it WILL pay off. I put the big frame in the back of my wagon and stack all the smaller ones on top and have never broken one yet. I think it's 5mm glass I get. heavy but it dosen's snap the first time you give the frame a twist like the 2mm or whatever it is does.

I usualy have a front counter with albums on it. I get some white melamine board and attach a 1x1.5" bit of pine to one end of the stand wall and support the other end. Milk crates stacked up are a favourite ( Dunno if you have them like we do) but you can also just butt screw another piece of board to the end for support. I screw the other end to the pine strip on the side wall for support and to stop movement.

I cover all that with some more calico and usually stack more milk crates underneath. This gives me like shelves to put thing in like brochures and general crap and forms a hard wall at the front where the customers stand. I can pick the crates up from the back of shops the week before the show and then return them when its finished so I don't have to store them.

Be Hyper sensitive about security of your valueables at these things. I have not done a show yet where at some point the organisers or security didn't come round asking if anyone has seen people walking around with multiple handbags or going behind exhibitors counters. People go to these things for the purpose of knocking stuff off so be on your gaurd. Don't be easily distracted to walk away or leave your stand unattended for any reason which you shouldn't do anyhow.

If you are going to do these things regularly, I suggest getting or making up a cupboard/ counter that is strong and can be locked. I made something like this up and it was great. Unfortunately when I left it at one show to take home the wagon load of stuyff I had, some arsewipe at the venue picked it up and threw it in the compactor. I was not gone more than an hour and had plenty of time before we had to be out so I blew a fuse at the organiser and they refund me plenty to cover it. Been too lazy to make another one since and use the crates, BUT be careful of valueables, particularly the womens handbags which seem to be a prime target.

Also on the front counter I have entry forms for a competition. I put questions I want to know and get feedback from the clients. I have in the past used 2 different forms so I could still keep the questions to 4 each but ask 8 questions. This allows people to fill in their details without being there too long.
Obviously you have a prize and a runners up prize for everyone else whom you data base and Contact ( I prefer email) afterwards to pull in the back end clients.

With the comp forms, DON'T have an entry box on the counter, have them hand them to you. I have 2 boxes, one for the fillngos ( Fill in the form without having a clue what they are entering or have any interest in before they go to the next comp) and one for the real interested people. That way I know who to prioritise in the follow up and who I'll most times ignore.... unless the show goes badly which thankfully hasn't happened in literally a decade.

I Rig my competitions. You'll always get at least one person that will come up and talk to you and tell you how much they love what you do but probably can't afford it or tell you how much they would love to win something like that. I'f I'm going to give something away, may as well give it to someone who will appreciate it than someone who whouldn't even know what they won when you told them.
WE mark the forms when the people leave and generally you can write a note on the back or remember who the people were when you go through the marked forms after the show.

Have a Diary with you so you can make appointments at the show. Don't spend a lot of time trying to sell people there and then, get them into your studio after the event so you have all your marketing materials and the time to do a through presentation.

I have fake appointments writtn in the diary to look busy. I write these in pencil so I can easily identify the " Fillers from the real ones. I also write them in as day appointments when I know most people are going to want to see me at night after work. Don't go overboard, just look like you are steadily seeing people . You ought to be after the show!

Put a bowl of wrapped sweets on the counter. I have a big plastic cheap fish bowl I use and buy the bulk sweets in 2 or 5 KG bags and keep them topped up. You'd be amazed how many people will come over for a sweet and then while they are there looking closer at your prints and albumws, you have a chance to engage them in conversation and get them to fill out a comp form.

Slide shows are great to engage people. It allows you to incorporate your pics, maybe video snippets of things happening and sound which sets real emotion and attachment. Thats why movies have sound tracks through them. Make sure you put the sound throuth a good portable sound system rather than just the TV speakers which will sound tinny and crappy in that environment.

If you can, have someone handing out brochures and comp entry forms, outside the stand if allowed and directing them to your stand. I have had people book me that were handed a brochure and didn't even see the stall ( not surprising when I regularly have people lined up 5 deep in front of the stand) but found the brochure when she got home and wanted to book. That one client was a BIG sale and paid for the stand, the cost of all the brochures I had done which lasted me another 6 shows ( $1000 for 5000, $1100 for 10,000 so I took the 10 K) and made every other booking I took from that show pretty much 100% profit.

I print up DL size slips I put in the brochure with a show special on it. These are just on regular copy paper, nothing special I print myself now and insert. This way when the show is over I don't have to worry about throwing away the glossy colour brochures with expired dates etc. I also test different offers to see which is the most popular. Print so many slips with one offer and some more with another. Works really well to give out at multi day shows especially Or you can do some in the morning and some in the afternoon. This helps great with testing and tuning your offers so when you do the next show, you are that much closer to knowing what works best and people respond to.

After the show, be careful about answering your phone unless you have a message service that goes to message bank if it's busy. In the old days when people still used landlines, this was rare here. While you were spending 5 min making appointments, 3 people may have tried to call and couldn't get through or leave a message. I still prefer people to leave a message because then I have their contact details where it may be harder to get them if they speak to you directly.

I still very much prefer to be contacted by phone than email. I think the more genuine people call where emails are more " Throwaway " and in my experience have a higher degree of price shoppers than callers do. ALso I can sell much better on the phne through getting feedback from people as I go and being able to tailor the conversation to their interests better than is possible with emails.

Get the Biggest banner/ sign made you can afford with your name and 1 or 2 Killer pics on it and put it high above your stand. I had one made years ago which is 6 ft wide and 9 ft high. I get some metal curtain rods and secure it to the wall of the stand so it faces the entry point of the show .
The banner is attached to a thick wooden dowel rod with some chain screwed into the ends.
I get some electrical saddle clamps and screw them into the wall, usually the back but sometimes the side walls and use them to hold the curtain rods up. I clip the opened ends of the chain to the rods and then slide them right up so the banner is like 10 ft above the stand. I then tighten the saddle clamps and it's all good. Train a couple of spots or a big flood on the banner as well.

People bust a gut to get what they think is good positions at these Shows. I literally don't give a damn. What I usually do is wait till a few days or even the day before the setup of the show ( when I am familliar with them) and then ring and do a deal with the organisers for a stand at a fraction of the going rate.
They don't like to have empty stands and if I'm down the very back, I could not care less. When people come to my stand, I like to break the ice with a non sales/ threatening line. A favourite is " Have you seen anything interesting here so far?"

The amount of times I have been up the back in the corner and had people tell me " No, nort really, we just came in and saw your sign all lit up and could then hear the music we though we'd go past the crush at the door and start here". Yet all these other people bust a gut to be in what they think is a good spot, particularly near the entrance. HA!
Of course that is a great feedback to then start asking them if they like what they see now they are here and open up the conversation with a pre built rapport right there.

Of course you take the risk that the show will be booked out and you won't get in at all and if that happens, that's the price you pay. You also need all your materials ready and sorted. That's not been a problem for me because I did shows all the time and sometimes I only learned about the next one at the one I was at.

I was once helping a friend that imported ceramic homewares set up at a home and garden show. I noticed there were quite a few empty stands. I spoke to one of the show plebs and found out a stand was $3000. I offerd the guy $300 and basicaly got told to shove it. No problem, It was a longshot for promoting portrait and wedding work and I sure as heck wasn't going to spend $3k on that experiment.

Within half an hour, the head organiser was talking to my mate wanting to know who was interested in the stands. He directed him to me and the guy said you want a stand for $300? I said that's what I'm prepared to give you for one given this isn't a show targeted to my audience. He asked what I did and said you know we oppen tomorrow? I said yeah, I have done loads of these, I need 2 hours to set up and I"m good. He said when can you pay for the stand? I said I'll bring back the cash when I go get my stuff and come back to set up. He said here, fill out this form, I'll do the stand for 300 on the gaurantee you tell no one. I said that's no problem, I don't want to spoil a good thing.

Turned out the guy had a double stand and asked if I would take that. No problems! I put up a heap of pics and Parked my Harley in the corner to fill some space and as a drawcard. I didn't think I'd get a lot out of that show as the demographics were all wrong. Mainly middle age people to retirees. I thought well if I pull 3 bookings I'm fine and If I do 5 I'm laughing. I did 14. Stoked! And, they were all real good clients.

The thing with these shows is to stand out, be different, be noticed and think outside the square. Do whatever you can get away with and hit the things hard and make sure you can benifit from the back end with follow up from the data base you get.

Make your stand different by lineing the carpet walls, light it up like Christmas, have some upbeat bassy music going you can still easily talk to people over and have a banner high above your stand that can be seen from the entrance particularly but also all over the show.

Do those things alone and you'll get plenty of attention to what you are doing. Follow it up with the other things I sugested and you'll do very well out of every show you do.
I certainly have! :0)

Sorry that got rather epic, hope you don't get too bored reading it all and there is something of help and value to you in it.

djphotosyd wrote in post #17057126
Done a heap of them. ...............
Sorry that got rather epic, hope you don't get too bored reading it all and there is something of help and value to you in it.

Well *I* found it interesting.

That's great djphotosyd. I may have more questions later, when I read it again a few more times. Running out now to get a quote on the banners.

The expo is in late October and it's only one day, from 1 to 7. Maybe that's not enough time or maybe that's OK. Dunno, first timer here.

Thanks a lot!

I've never found the ROI for expos to be anywhere close to other means of advertising I have at my disposal so I no longer attend them. My money yields better returns doing other things.

memoriesoftomorrow wrote in post #17057908
I've never found the ROI for expos to be anywhere close to other means of advertising I have at my disposal so I no longer attend them. My money yields better returns doing other things.

I think it depends like most things on individual situations.
There are some markets I wouldn't think of doing an expo for and there are others that have been my only and very successful promotion. One annual show in particular gave me my whole years work in that area. Certainly I wasn't shooting that every day ( nor would want to) but it added at least $75K to my yearly income and the profit ratio was far better than anyhing else I did.

That show got canned but has started back up again. The first one is next week so I'm going merely as a spectator to see how it's going to be done this time with a view to doing it next year.

I have done shows from 5 days ( uggh, too much!) to 4 hours.
For the investment, effort and time spent, the shorter shows tend to have a better ROI.
I remember doing a local bridal fair about 20 years ago. I sort of got roped into it by someone that refered me a lot of business that was organising it as a charity fund raiser. I got there and freaked how basicaly lame it was. Just like tables set up in the local commounity center. They hadn't even thought about partitioning or power let alone lighting. Some local High school girls modeled some pre loved dresses for the fashion parade and that was about it.

I figured ah well, heres $100 and a day down the drain ( show was only 4 hours) what can you do? What I ended up doing was beyond my wildest dreams! I pulled 8 weddings and 6 glamours out of that show and ended up with another 3 weddings from the glamour clients I booked there. Much to the opposite of my expectations, they were all above average earning jobs as well. I know I also got a few referals from the glams and weddings but I lost track of where they were coming from for a while there so can't say how many it was. Just know there were some.

I'll never forget that example of don't judge a book by it's cover. I'd have to rate that as the best show I ever did to this day. Zero effort, next to no time, the most basic, amateurish show I could ever imagine that was also the cheapest ever yet the ROI was off the charts!

I am also looking at doing some other small local shows begining next month. went and checked out anotehr one by the same organisers the other week and it's cheap and cheerful and again only about 6 hours but I have every confidence I can make it work.
The one I saw had about 10 shooters there but their style was all very different to mine and as I'm going to promote portrait not wedding at the show, It dosen't really matter to me.

If I pull 5 jobs, ( straight off plus what I can do later on the backend) it will be worth my while. You have to keep them in proportion. Obviously if I pulled 5 jobs from a 4 day I'd be freaking. I aim for 50 on those now but the numbers of people going through are totally different as is the effort and costs involved. It's all proportional.
Little shows are worth while in kleeping a steady flow of work and clients to you.

I remember the first MAJOR show I did. Was only discussing that with my sister in law through the week. It was 15 years ago to the month and I was showing my glamour work only.
I was into that one to the tune of about $4K all up with the cost of the exhibit, ( first and only one I ever paid full tilt for) Prints and framing, brochure printing, buying all the lighting and misc. assorted crap needed.

I went in thinking " Wouldn't it be great If I could pull 5 bookings out of this? What about if I got 10!!!!" Then the next thought was " Nah, cmon, keep it real otherwise you'll be dissapointed".
I had 54 deposit paid bookings by the time I left the show and over the next couple of months before I even got to working the data base, had another 17. I was so stoked I threw a pretty full on party the next weekend for all my friends and family that helped me with it. My sister in law minded the kids for the weekend of the show which was a huge help in itself. Many of my other friends helped me with set up and manning the stand, bringing prints to the show in their truck etc.

I remember at one point, probably the highlight of all the shows I have done, standing in this blindingly bright, hot booth looking out over this sea of people in front of me. Another exhibitor had complained to the organisers that I was blocking the walk way. They came and we got close enough to speak and the guy told me what the complaint was and I asked what did they want me to do? He said " Nothing!, You are not blocking the walk way, the crowd is. We wished every stand was this busy, it' makes our show look great! keep doing exactly what you are doing! The others are just jealous their stand isn't getting as much attention!" COOL!

I started talking to some of the people and a girl asked if she could make a booking and pay the deposit now? I said sure and pulled out the recipt book. Straight away somone else said yeah, can I book in after her and then someone else said I'll go next and someone else said me too and so it went. It was amazing. I literally could not take money and peoples details fast enough. I just booked people in for 50 Min straight till I got a break and escaped to get a drink and ask my friend who was handing out brochures for me if that really happened? Time I came back to the stand, my wife had booked in 2 more!
I had several people ring within the week after ths show saying they wanted to book but couldn't get close to the stand so got a brochure and were wanting to book then.
Never done anything like that since but once was enough for a life time memory.

The booking numbers for that show over the 9 times I did it were pretty consistant. One year we did 74 paid deposits but a LOT of them fell over. Normally a lot of people book to get the special I offer at the show and then get back to us with a date to do it. There were a lot of clients that we hadn't heard from so my wife started calling them.
Despite her getting back to some of them 5 times over the next 6 months and the fact they paid $130 deposit, they never came in. I think there was about 17 we lost that year. Don't know what happened , Normally we have 5-7 fall over but that year was odd for reasons I have never been able to define.

Generally these days I try to work to .1% of the crowd booking. That's on the organisers numbers which are always rubbery and inflated but they work out. If there are 5000 people going to the show, I should pull 5 bookings. 50 K, then 50 bookings plus the back enders which do vary a lot. Generally I get the majority of bookings at the show be they for actual portrait sessions or wedding interviews. I have done a couple of shows where I was very dissapointed with what I got at the show but the following week did well above average with people ringing. Generally you get the lions share of bookings or enquiries within a month of the show but others will dribble in through the following months. Often this is because brides haven't finalised dates when they attened the show or with portraits, people are waiting for the warmer weather to arrive and loose weight, get a tan etc.

The thing to remember about these shows are they are just putting yourself in front of people. You'll obviously pull more out of getting in front of 50K than 5K but a 5 K show is a great place to start. You get a feel for doing them, have time to fine tune your speil, offers and setup and they are less pressure. Like I said, I'm looking at doing some small 6 hour shows because I know what the numbers I need are to make them worthwhile and I'm confident I can get that. IF you don't do well on one show, particularly your first ( won't happen if you follow my suggestions! :0) ) then don't be put off. Look at them analitically and see where you can improve and have another go. It could be the show was poorly promoted or whatever, you never know how these things are going to be till you are half way through.

What are you actually going to be promoting?

Wow djphotosyd, tons of great information and insight in those couple of posts. Thanks for taking the time to write them!

vengence wrote in post #17058754
Wow djphotosyd, tons of great information and insight in those couple of posts. Thanks for taking the time to write them!

Glad you found them worthwhile and thanks for your kind feedback.

djphotosyd wrote in post #17058431
What are you actually going to be promoting?

It's a business to business expo. I focus on architectural and commercial photography, and I want to reach out to businesses. Hopefully there'll be several of the home building companies attending. I also want to promote corporate portraiture (headshots and the like).

I'm thinking of how to 'design' the booth. Yeah, I asked to be near the entrance. I'm thinking of having the walls decorated with aluminium prints. Your idea of having albums sounds attractive: I can't have all the photos in my portfolio printed on aluminium ($$$), but I can have a couple of albums on the table with them on. I don't have any helpers, so I guess it'll be just me manning the both. According to the local chamber of commerce (which are the event's organisers), the expected attendance is ~1000 people/businesses.

I did one of These BtoB expos a few years back for a friend. He was mainly event/ corporate/ architectural work and lived interstate so I went there for a working holiday.

We followed the same formula I use and it worked great However the show itself was bit of a bust. There must have been 3000 students come through from the local uni as part of whatever course they were doing. They were like a swam of locust taking everyones litrature and wanting to ask the same questions over and over while scribbling things down or shoving a voice recorder at you.
There were a lot of complaints from the exhibitors and the organisers put somone on the door by lunchtime the first day and told them entry was granted on the priviso they only take literature after asking and don't tie up exhibitors from talking to potential clients.
Luckily we weren't a business of interest to them but they did have a real negative effect on the show.

Usually when a show opens, you get a rush. Sometimes it's the media wanting to cobble up a news story, sometimes it's the crowd. This one there was nothing. I'm sitting there hanging onto the table waiting for the storm and there wasn't so much as a bit of cloud. After a while wondering what was going on, I asked the dumb question that I somehow had missed so far " Umm, how many did they say are coming to this thing anyway?" 3K? Ohhh shiiip!

There were over 250 stands at this thing in the citys biggest convention centre for 3 days so it threw me. My mate had put a lot in this and If I knew the numbers were that small, I'd have told him not to bother. Time to pull the rabbit out of the hat.

There were a lot of exhibitors at the show who were our ideal candidates so I said we'll work the exhibitors hard and see what we can get here.
The one thing my mate came up with during the whole process ( he was very lost not having done one before) with was doing pics of the other exhibitors stands/ personell and printing them onsite with his name/ logo and phone no on them and handing them out. Brilliant!
Onsite printing was one thing he was pushing for the corporate/ event work so it was nothing at all for him to do. He shot a few stands at a time then printed them then took them back and handed them out. It was a great idea and worked fantastically well. Soon we had bunches of people coming to our stand and asking about all sorts of things.

We got huge interest and people kept asking him questions he wasn't prepared for so he'd get me to go talk to the other exhibitors. Luckily his GF was off that day so we got her to come in quickly and then my friend would shoot and I'd take the pics back and chat and stitch up the people for a meeting to discuss how "we" could help them.

We hooked up with a bunch of Island holiday resorts, the city council, ( 3rd largest in the country) had us shooting work for them the day after the show, Other major businesses interested in him covering golf days and corporate balls etc, some building companies wanting shots for their sites and brochures..... So it went. What my mate got out of it was completely overwhealming.

Unfortunately it was a bit too overwhealming. He got quite a bit of work stright off out of it but both didn't know how and didn't have time for the follow up. He got a lot out of it but lost a lot more. I helped with the wheeling and dealing where possible but there was so much only I could do, particularly with me haveing come back to another city 1000KM away. That bit was dissapointing and I felt like I let him down by not better prepping him for it and working on the follow up beforehand.
The ones that really stick in my mind were the holiday islands. There were 4 of them really interested in him coming and covering the huge money eventsthey did for some of the biggest names in the country and the world for that matter. He just didn't know how to handle that with airfars and time and product etc. One co ordinator kept ringing me as she couldn't get much out of my mate and eventually gave up. I should have taken that one myself in hindsight but at the time I was trying to get him to man up and work it through.

He wasn't good at business and I knew that and should have thought things through better for him. He was totally over the moon with the work he pulled out of it, I spose I should have been happier but knowing what he lost still gives me regrets today.
ATM he's flat out constantly so I guess all good in the end and I know 2 of his regular clients he still has come from that show.

So the lesson here is bone up on your business skills if you need to and know what you want out of the show and also know your prices. Like really KNOW them. If someone comes up and asks you how much to do head shots for their 50 employees, Have an answer, don't be just standing there umming and ahhing thinking " I'll have to put up a how much do I charge ?" post on a fourm.

You don't have to give a specific price but at least have an answer worked out. " Well it depends on a few factors but ballpark if they are all done at the one time you'd be looking at something around $xxx. That's just a rough guide of course. What would be best is if I got back to you after the show and got all the details and then I can quote you an exact rate. Do you have a card on you and would mornings or afternoons be best to call to set up a meeting with you?"

If someone wants a product shot of a new Bulldozer for an auction web site and brochures or someone wants their new fashion line of sports toenail clippers photographed in Tasmania, HAVE an answer for them even if it's a political type answer that dosen't actually address the question but sounds like you know what you are talking about.
It's imperative.

You can even take some basic details of what people want and work it out a bit more from there before you get back to them.
Never say " Here's my card, give me a ring". YOU get their details and ring them.
This sort of thing is where business skills are about 99% more important than your photographic skills.

I would also strongly suggest going very well dressed. I usually wear a suit. Not always a tie but certainly pants and Jacket. I don't believe you can be over dressed and lets face it, most shooters look like I do after working in my fathers wrecking yard for a day.
Presentation is EVERYTHING, especially so when dealing with corporates. Take your old clothes to set up then before the show starts, wash your face, comb your hair, put on the smelly stuff your best britches and jacket.

I would really reccomend getting some help. Prefrably a woman, youngish and attractive dosen't hurt either. I have found that I can be standing in front of women in my booth and they will direct a question to my wife or a friend further away. Probably because I'm an extremely unattractive man and smell bad but it happens all the time no matter what. My mate was a much younger better looking guy and I noticed that people, women in particular would still direct questions across to his GF who would then have to bring him into the conversation. That seems to work fine, there just seems to be an amount of people more comfortable with initially engaging another woman.
Naturally the guys prefer talking to a pretty girl as well so it's a double win there.

You may be able to advertise on craigs list for someone or offer to pay a friend or their daughter. I have actually had past clients man my stand. That's the best of all. People see a pic on the wall, say is that you and they say yes and explain the story. You can't get better credability than that.
I would at least try to get someone else into the stand so you can get out and talk to other people at the fair as much as people come to you. If they are too busy to talk, grab a card, leave your own and follow up after the show. Networking is a great side benifit to these things.

With the throughput of this show, you need to make the most of it. 1000 people is very few going through so work the other exhibitors whom are good prospects anyway as well as the " Crowd". You should have plenty of time to talk to them at least but attracting interest in your stand will be important. If it stands out with lights and banners and music etc, that creates a great impression for business people straight off.

I would be VERY careful with the aluminium prints. At the bridal fair I went to the other week it seemed everyone had them like the labs had been giving them away.
For commercial useage, they may not go down so well. I think I'd be more having normal prints and a few aluminium ones so as not to pidgeon hole yourself. If you have all aluminium, people may look too much at the effect and not enough at the photography. If they don't like the aluminium look, you have pretty much blown them away because then even if you talk to them and they don't walk on by, you are effectively trying to unsell the things. Not a good position to be coming from!

They may look great to you but to people not used to seeing them, they may just look weird. They will also be looking at it from the POV of their customers and they sure as ship arent going to be geting headshots printed on ally or in brochures.
Again, I'd play it safe and think of things from the potential clients POV. Don't ask them to do the mental calculations of how this would look printed in a brochure or on the web etc.when you are showing them something different. Id' suggest you think it through carefully and that the safer road may be to have normal prints with a few " feature" allys to show the effect but avoid people thinking thats what every pic you take looks like.

Lots of good info and tips, thanks djphotosyd. I wish I had seen your posts two weeks ago.

We just did a B2B trade show this past Thursday. 3.5 hours long, about 500 attendees (business owners, not general public), learned a lot, saw a lot of new faces, handed out a bunch of brochures, collected a bunch of business cards. Now it's time to sort through all our new contacts and see if we can convert some into clients. Monday morning I've already had a couple of emails trickle in, but at the show I tried to direct most of them to my wife's contact info since she does the scheduling.

This was the second show we've done, and we went in with the intention to stand out. We knew that there were at least three other photo/video/media/bran​ding companies in the show - one that's a friendly competitor with whom we often collaborate, and two that we didn't already know. I think we succeeded in standing out and being memorable, so I count that as a win. I'm a little concerned that we may have gone too far; that our booth was memorable but our brand & product was not. Time will tell.

The show was already pretty silly and out-of-the-box, with a "Christmas in July" theme, a fully dressed Santa & Mrs Claus at the back of the show, and attendees were encouraged to wear Christmas attire, tacky Christmas sweaters & neckties, etc... and, tequila samples from a local shop. So, we figured, go big or don't go at all! Since our (unrelated hobby) performance troupe had recently done a circus-themed show, we set up our booth with that circus set dressing, props, costumes, snacks (animal crackers & bagged popcorn). I was on stilts, and my wife and our business partner were wearing ringmaster outfits. I'll see if I can dig up a picture, they're all on Facebook.

I agree with the above advice of printing BIG booth-decor pieces. Bigger than you think you need. I had printed 13x19 poster-sized prints, the biggest I could print on my Pixma 9000, and they looked downright small when hanging in the booth. If I had to do it over again, I would have made a 40x40 (at least) print of our logo & business name, to hang high up in the back of the booth, so that our branding was right there, unmistakable. I also had a selection of 8x10 and 8x12 loose prints scattered around the table, those seemed to be about the right size to show off during an up-close conversation. I should have had a couple portfolio books, but since videography is the bulk of our business, we also had a TV playing a highlight reel. (I wish we had had external speakers for the TV, as it was SO loud in the room, you couldn't hear the TV at all)

A big logo/name banner (like 6'x9') is a great idea too, if you have a way to put it up. Just get your name up there, big. Bigger than you think you need, because in the booth, in the expo room, it'll look much smaller.

I agree entirely that you need to be ready to do business. This is still a tough part for me - I can do the work, but doing the business is hard. I'll probably miss as much as I make from this show, but I'll get better at it. Some people will ask your prices, and you need to able to tell them SOMEthing off the cuff. For instance, I had a residential Realtor asking me how much to shoot a home, and I didn't have a hard answer, but I gave her something to the tune of, "My hourly rate is $x - if you deal in small inexpensive homes, I can probably knock it out in an hour; if you have a two-million-dollar mansion, then it might take all day to really do it right." Maybe not the best answer, I dunno.

Definitely get at least one helper (two, if you can swing it). Teach them a short pitch, not necessarily a sales pitch, just "here's who we are, here's what we do, are you enjoying the show, what sort of business are you in" - someone who's keen enough to pick up on whether the person they're talking to is genuinely interested, and either collect their specifics or hand them off to you. At our show on Thursday, there were times when all three of us were separately engaged in a conversation with an attendee, with more people nearby waiting to talk or look (or just to get animal crackers, I dunno). With a six-hour show, you need a second body, even if only to talk to passersby and watch your stuff while you take five minutes to go to the restroom or have a drink.

I love the idea of printing up general brochures, with a temporary show-specials insert. This being our second show, we learned a lot from the first show. First time, we printed full-color flyers that were specific to THAT show, and we went home with about 2/3 of them in hand - lots of waste. This time, we printed up general-information brochures, we handed out about 100 of them and still have a couple hundred for our next event. A show-specific special insert might have been a good idea.

If you do aluminum prints, make sure they're lighted; they'll look dull under the high-overhead sodium or fluorescent expo-floor lighting, but with a spotlight on them they will shine and pop. At a minimum, get some clamp-on lights from IKEA, and direct them at all your prints.

Great idea on the entry forms as a way to collect and mark useful contact information. We had a raffle and a business-card drop, but didn't have a good way of keeping the interested people separated from the "fill-n-gos" (I like that term).

nathancarter wrote in post #17061992
The show was already pretty silly and out-of-the-box, with a "Christmas in July" theme, a fully dressed Santa & Mrs Claus at the back of the show, and attendees were encouraged to wear Christmas attire, tacky Christmas sweaters & neckties, etc... and, tequila samples from a local shop.

I have never done a themed trade show like that. I have done corporate events that were themed but never a trade show. That's experience you have up on me.

The other thing is to have enough pics.
When I did the show for my friend, I told him what we needed before I got up there but he decided that was too many and didn't get them done. Of course as soon as we did the stand, he said " We don't have enough do we?" Umm, no. Luckily his work was exceptional so we easily got away with it but the stand did look kinda barren.
Measure out your stand and if you have to, work it out on the wall at home and use cardboard cutouts the size of the prints to illustrate the spacing and positioning.

YEP! You need some decent sound system. THe TV speakers just sound tinny and don't have the grunt, they just sound distorted and noisy. I bought myself a portable Boom box thing with detachable speakers and external inputs years ago for this very purpose. It's worked well and has enough grunt without being to big to locate in the stand.

I'm not so much about the branding, rather showing what I do which I think gets me remembered. Maybe I'm more used to doing personal than Business shows but my prefrance is to have them remember the work rather than instill the name. Maybe I'm on the wrong track with that?

I did a LOT of shows and spend a LOT of money on them to get my formula right. I felt my way along and picked up tips as I went from things saw other exhibitors do and spent a LOT of time fune tuning. Always you have to be tweaking the dials. I have something that works Very well but I always think there are things I could do to make it work better. The trick is not to "improve" what you do so you end up with less return every time, ( common pitfall in the advertising industry) but rather just try little things you can MEASURE ( very important) without changing your whole approach and potentially undermining what is working well.

I wish I would have been able to get on the net and have someone tell me do it this way and be 95% right from the start, boy it sure would have made and saved me some money. Maybe I should go into consulting on this? I walk around these shows and just cringe at every one of them. The organisers don't care what you get out of it, they already have their money and when I researched the last time years ago, I found no practical info. Jump in the deep end and swim or sink. Story of my life!
I see a lot of small business people going into these things without a clue and just as many doing multiple shows making the same mistakes. The shows I am looking at ATM are very keen to book people in for multiples. I think they know there is a big fall off with people who do them.

This is what I find so easy about sales!
You know 99% of customers are going to ask the very same 5, maybe 10 things at the most. Before the sale, you sit down and say OK, when someone asks my prices, as they surely will, whats my answer? And you sit down write something out, say it out loud, run it past friends and polish it to a fine gloss. Then you say Oh, I hate it when they ask about that cause I never quite know what to say. Well figure it out!
Talk to someother sales people and run the same one by them and see what they say then use that to formulate your own response.

Next thing, You aren't hiding in the corner cringeing someone is going to ask you that question you hate. You're hoping they do because you know if you get that one, You have worked out such a good answer and follow up, they are as good as booked!

Now by the time you get the first 5 sussed with the replys that roll off the tounge and you can rattle off as naturally as " Good Morning", You have enough from each one to answer pretty much anything you didn't seem coming with snippets from the other replies you are now familliar with.

And really, how many times do you hear the same questions from every client?
How much, What do we get, what's your packages, Whats your turn around time, do you offer bulk discounts..... It's all the same! Have a standard answer that you can rattle off as you say and then as need be you can adlib it.

Couldn't agree more!
You just need some bodies to answer the most basic questions and tell people the 10 sec version about you and that's a lot of the PR covered right there. ANd what you say about seperate conversations and the hand off is spot on as well. When I have had past clients or friends helping me, they can talk up what I do but when it comes to pricing etc, its " This is the photographer, this lady is interested in xxx, can you talk to her about that? Sure!" It works to get you further down the line to " Can I make a time for you to come in and discuss this further with you when I have time to go over it to make sure I'm throughly on your wave length and have a think in the meantime about some suggestions I can offer?" Easy!

Well that was one I thought up or ripped Off more like it, straight off. Back when I did my first shows colour brochures were EXPENSIVE! I had experience with magazine advertising and printers and they always produced whatever crap they could get away with and that was it. I already knew the basics of advertising and marketing so I knew what I did and didn't want. I also learned through unpleasant experience that the only way to get what you wanted was do it yourself. So I did.

I got a hold of Quark express, bumbled my way through that and produced a 3 fold A5 brochure for the glamour work. I wrote all the copy, did the layout, ran it past friends for checking and sent it to the printers with the note, print it and don't change a bloody thing.
I knew I wanted to put offers in the brochures and an offer had to have a date. I also knew if I had a date, the brochures were only good for one show or I'd be trying to put tacky stickers over the things or whatever. There was a printer across the road from me who was advertising cheap single colour,black, red or blue printing. My wife had been handed something at the shopping centre and said why don't you....
Bingo!

Went and asked the guy over the road what format he wanted the layout in, did it and got them done. I think they were like $20 for 1500DL size at the time and the guy did them for 40 for 3500 because his anchient machine was playing up and he ran out of ink so half were black and half were blue.

Now doing about 10 times better on that first show than I ever thought possible, I ran out of slips on the 3rd day. With those 3 days feedback in my head, I thought what the hell, I'll change the offer and see how that goes. I changed the brochure and set my printer going and tired as I was, got up every hour to feed the thing. I think I had another 500 sheets of 3 slips by morning and took the printer with me and the bulky computer and set it going in the stand. One of the organisers saw what I was doing and offered to run a heap of them in thier mega photocopier. That was a great help.

Anyway, That 2nd offer had loads more appeal than the first one, even though I was actually giving and costing myself a lot less. On that last day, we booked as many people as we had the first 3. The crowds were bigger but the offer was far more popular as well.
I have since done shows where I have done 2 offers. 2 bites of the cherry as it were.
The 2nd offer from the first show has always seemed to have the most appeal though and seeing it's net cost to me to this day is $20, It's been a great promo.

Yeah the comp and data collection was one thing I was told from the start and have done it every time out. On the big shows it's a bit double edged. You get slammed afterwards. Generally as much as I try to space it out, I'm booked solid 7 days for 2-3weeks afterwards. I can't do that anymore now. Nearly killed me 10-12 years ago!
Then you get the people ringing you that saw you at the show and that will keep you pretty busy for a couple of months shooting 2-3 a week.

There is at least a day and generally more in doing the data entry. My wife usually does that in the evenings and it's a HUGE job. The thing is, if you don't get onto these entrys they go cold. If you get onto them too early, you are trying to book people in a month ahead and they either don't know what they are doing or you end up with a lot of reschedules because something came up in the meantime.

The last few I basicaly do a email with a cut off date and see what that pulls. Although I try to keep close track and measure all my enquiries, I'm not really sure of the effectiveness of that as they mix in with the rest of the enquiries and I never seem to get the data collated to see what I got. Whatever it is, It's not a great amount... FOR ME.
Other people I have spoken to rely on it as their main return from the shows. They do little at the expo but get a lot from the database and follow up promos.
I have used the database for special offasions like Christmas and Valentines day and pick up a few but hardly a bun rush.

Maybe now it's time to look at things like Texts. A friend of mine who is a marketing manager for a big IT company was telling the the other day that corporates get so many emails these days they allot a certain time to do them and only look at the ones from people they know or are expecting. I think everyone still pretty much looks at texts.
I - think- there is software you can get to do it but it may be cheaper and easier to email the database to Mumbai or Delhi and get them to send it.

Stupid question, this, but then again, in this era: you've never had a problem what with playing the music in the booth? As in copyrights-related problem?

Had plenty of other problems with different things but never that.

I can't say wether this is just another blown out of proportion internet rubbish thing or it's valid in your area but in mine, it's not even close to an issue.
There are probably 10 other people playing music around the show and I very much doubt if the producers of all the floor shows even worry about licenceing the music they use.

Things may be different in the Sue S of A or they may not. All I'd suggest is before believeing everything the moral highground internet gods say, Check for actual evidence in your area if anyone has got into problems with it or anyone actually gives a damn.

I have never heard of the Music police here. It would also gauranteed bring about more negative publicity if a record company tried sueing a single man operation over playing a song than they would want by a long shot.
The worst that would happen is you would get read the riot act and let off with a warning.
Even that seems unlikley.

We used some upbeat stock music. After almost two decades in the video-editing trade, the wife has a huge library of royalty-free stock music and stock video footage.

At a trade show, you could probably "get away with" playing whatever music you like. However, we have to lead by example: It's very common for a copyright-uneducated client to want to use "real" music in their projects, and we simply won't put unlicensed music in a video project for a customer.