I love vendor booths. And Every time I hear someone say, “Vendor booths just don’t work”, I tell them, “No, the way you are doing your vendor booths doesn’t work.”
It’s as simple as that. Vendor booths can be a powerful part of your marketing and sales plan if you understand HOW to be successful.
- Vendor booths are a much stronger lead collection tool than they are a sales tool. Businesses who sign to do a one time sale are seriously missing the boat. The majority of the business you do at a vendor booth will happen after the event ends.
- Make your booth interactive. The worst thing you can do is have a booth that people can just walk right past. Consider getting a prize wheel. Or have a big jar that’s full of something and do a contest for who can guess the amount. We have a chalk wall where guests can come and write their dreams and goals. At one of my events, a vendor has a mannequin dressed like a zombie with a sign that said, are you tired of feeling like a zombie every day? Be creative and come up with a way for clients to come into your space and do something. Drawing them in is the first win.
Do a drawing for something visually appealing. Most vendor booths do drawings. However they often do the drawings incorrectly. It needs to be something tangible that a passerby can look at and want. I have a product that does not translate at all to vendor booths. You can’t see coaching or touch a strategy session. So instead, I go to a local bakery, have them put together a mouthwatering gift basket and offer it as my freebie. Your goal in this vendor booth is to get leads. The way we get them is by enticing them with something they can see and touch.- Call and email after the event. After a vendor experience, the potential client is bombarded with emails from all of the booths they contacted. They will likely get 2-3 emails from each vendor booth and then nothing else. So you will want to be different. Get on the phone and follow up within the first week. And consider starting your emails 2 weeks after the event. They will no longer be competing with the droves of emails they received from all the other vendors. Yours will be more likely to be visible in their inbox.
- Everyone’s a winner. The reason my vendor booths are always so successful is because we use the everyone’s a winner approach. We give away the grand prize drawing to one person. And then we come up with some valuable experience each eligible participant can win. On our enter to win forms, we ask questions that will help us determine who our ideal clients are. Once we separate out our qualified leads, we make them each a runner up winner. The runner up winners are each given an opportunity to choose something of value. It could be a class they can attend, or an abbreviated appointment. It could be a gift certificate. You’ll need to get creative with this because the sky is the limit. But you will want it to fit within this criteria:
- The gift creates an opportunity for the user to get to know your product or service.
- The gift creates an opportunity to upsell the client into your core product or service.
- The cost of the gift can be recouped easily by upselling into a higher program.
- It does not create a “grab the gift and run” scenario. You want to build relationships.
- It sounds fun and exciting to your prospective clients. No one wants to win a boring prize!
- Make sure you are doing the right vendor events. If you sell cosmetics, you do not want to be at the Gun Show. If you are a plastic surgeon, you do not want to be at a homeschool convention. If your audience is not at the event, it doesn’t matter that 20,000 people are there. You will still likely walk away with a bad investment. Find the events that serve your target market.
Do a drawing for something visually appealing. Most vendor booths do drawings. However they often do the drawings incorrectly. It needs to be something tangible that a passerby can look at and want. I have a product that does not translate at all to vendor booths. You can’t see coaching or touch a strategy session. So instead, I go to a local bakery, have them put together a mouthwatering gift basket and offer it as my freebie. Your goal in this vendor booth is to get leads. The way we get them is by enticing them with something they can see and touch.
I’ve used vendor booths as part of my marketing strategy many times. And my clients have great success using vendor booths to grow their business. Bringing in the right strategy will dramatically increase your results.