How To Plan a Trade Show and Find Vendors

You’ve probably attended a lot of trade shows but, as an event producer, it’s important to plan a trade show properly from the beginning and focus on best practices and three types of clients: your attendees, your vendors and your event sponsors.

Trade shows offer a chance to boost business but don’t guarantee success, so it’s critical to find a market that you can promote positively and where you can make the biggest impact.

Once you’ve identified the right show (or market), create a strategic event plan that highlights the branding and sales opportunities for your business, your vendors and event sponsors.

10 Best Practices To Plan a Trade Show

1. Choose a niche so you become the expert in that area and so it’s easier to build strong relationships with attendees, vendors and event sponsors
2. Know your event objective so you know the purpose of the event and can easily share with vendors and sponsors
3. Book a hotel or conference center at least 6 months in advance so your vendors can start planning right away
4. Target a specific audience for your trade show
5. Ensure you have the correct shipping information for your vendors – many venues have a specific address for shipping
6. Dress to impress – before, during and after your tradeshow
7. Set up a stage so vendors have an opportunity to speak and grow their audience
8. When you plan a tradeshow, know the benefits and features so it’s easier to sell booth space
9. Be persistent. Don’t confuse this with being too aggressive. It’s said that your audience needs to hear/see your message 7-9x before they’ll take action, so create a plan and know how you’ll market your trade show
10. Provide your audience with specific information and statistics.

How To Keep Event Vendors Coming Back

As my guest today says, “it’s about creating a sense of community.”

As an event producer, you have the power and skills to plan a trade show that allows your event attendees, event vendors and event sponsors to collaborate and add value to the event experience. Licia Tobias, event producer for Sole Power Productions, is a living demonstration of how to merge your love of event planning with your organizational and communication skills to plan a tradeshow that has vendors coming back year after year.

In this episode of EventPlanning BlueprintTV, you’ll learn:

1. How to find the right vendors for your trade show
2. Tips to creating a great trade show booth
3. How trade shows make money
4. How to promote networking between your vendors

I’d love to hear from you.

If you’re ready to plan a trade show, what niche are you focusing on and what is your biggest hurdle? As always, thank you so much for your comments and for sharing our posts.

Remember, links to other posts and videos are deleted because they appear as spam 🙂

Have an amazing week!