Hey everyone. This is Karen Waksman, Founder of Retail MBA. And today I want to talk about the five reasons to consider trade shows as a marketing strategy for your retail product business. So the reason I decided to create this particular training is because I’ve taught tens of thousands of product companies across the globe on how to make money with their physical products. And one of the things that comes up a lot is trade shows.

People always ask me, “Karen, I’m thinking about going to a trade show. Do you think I should do it? Is it worth my time? Like, is it a good strategy? Is that the right strategy for me and my business?” So I just want to walk you through that so that you can think through that for your business. So let’s talk about the five reasons to consider actually going to one.

So the first reason is that you will actually meet retail buyers there. So retail buyers go to trade shows. And so if you want to get into the big chain stores and so forth, a lot of times they are at these live events. And so you can find out in advance from the exhibitor company and learn about what retailers are planning to attend, because that is definitely important for these guys who put on these shows. So knowing which retailers are going to be there will help you ultimately, and there are so many strategies around how to make sure that they actually come to your booth and stuff like that. But the basic strategy is you’ll meet buyers at chain stores.

I’ve had one customer of mine learned some strategies, went to a trade show and he got a 500,000 unit order at a trade show. Now, this is not common. This is not typical. Don’t assume that, that’s going to happen to you. But I will say that, that’s pretty darn cool. It was a fairly new product. Started growing as business, learning about retail, getting into stores and so forth, went to a trade show and boom! It just shifted his entire business. So again, it’s not so common but it can happen to you. And I just, I love those stories. I mean, how fun is that?

Okay. The next reason you want to consider going to a trade show and doing that for your business is that, basically you can take a look at the marketplace and see what’s going on there. So what does that mean? Your competitors are there. People who have different products are there, all in the same kind of industry. So if you have a houseware product, if you went to the houseware show, you’ll see what’s, the trending is going on, what your competitors are doing, what things to consider. Maybe there’s some add-on that you forgot to add for your product business and so forth. You’ll learn a lot at these shows.

Very, very helpful to learn when you’re there. And so that’s one of the benefits of going to a show. You’re spending days with these people. You’re getting to know what they’re up to. Maybe you guys help each other out. Give each other advice and so forth. So it’s pretty cool at trade shows. It can be awesome.

Another reason you want to check out trade shows is because you can meet distributors. Distributors or third parties who have actually already built out their sales funnels essentially. So they’ve already built relationships with the retailers or companies, or whatever it is that they focus on. They’re essentially a company with a lot of sales reps, most of the time. And so for a percentage of sales they’ll actually plug you into their system, and then ultimately, that means that if they represent you, you can make lots of money with them.

The cool thing about distributors is that they will ultimately purchase the products from you and then resell it to their existing customers. So they are actually going to be your customers. So that is another opportunity for you to meet them at shows. So how cool is that? A distributor likes your product. They’ll buy the product directly from you. Then they deal with all the headache in terms of going out to the world. So that’s kind of fun.

Another reason you want to consider trade shows as a marketing strategy is reps. Sales reps go to these events. They’re scouring, they’re looking. And some of the best reps who are investing their time and their effort to be at shows, because it’s costly to go to these shows, these reps will walk these floors. And those are serious reps. I’ve met a lot of reps over the years. I used to be a manufacturer’s rep for many years. So I know the industry well. And I’ll tell you that not all reps are created equal.

The ones that are going to shows who are really digging around to see what’s hot and what’s next, are usually the ones who are a little bit more keen on making money, which means they’re looking for new products, which means that they could be interesting for you. So that’s another reason to go. And the last reason you want to consider trade shows as a marketing strategy is, well, you can actually sell your products on the spot.

So there’s so many strategies I can teach you about how to make sure that you convert at the live event, but you literally can have people write an order from you at the live event. People can buy it from you one-off or they can buy bulk, or maybe they’re from another country and they need to ship it somewhere, or whatever it is. They can buy from you on the spot. And that can be very cool.

So you definitely want to set up your booth in a way that’ll make people more enticed to buy from you on the spot. There’s things that you have to set up and so forth. But just think about that. I mean, you can literally make money at the live event and offset the cost of being there. So that’s another reason to consider trade shows as a marketing strategy.

So if you want to learn the advanced tips, tricks and strategies on how to actually execute an Epic marketing plan for trade shows, I actually created a very cool program called The Advanced Trade Show Marketing Secrets. And this little program is powerful. It’ll walk you through exactly how I help my clients get into the retail chains through trade shows. And also get all sorts of other deals and so forth through these shows.

These are tricks and strategies that sales reps and professionals know, if they were ever to go to a show and actually present products and so forth. The things that they would do to ensure success. So just very powerful and lots of information there about what you need to do in order to succeed at a trade show. So I highly recommend learning more. Otherwise, you go to a show and you could be one of those people who are sitting at the booth, waiting for people to come by. Things are not really happening. Things are converting not very well. I’ve seen this lots.

I speak at all the major shows. I’ve seen this time and time again. You don’t spend a little time on education, learning about your industry and what you need to do to succeed, to make money. You end up taking a lot longer with you and your business. So it’s always worth the investment, I think. Anyways, I hope that provided value for you. This is Karen Waksman with Retail MBA. The link to this Epic training program is listed below. Otherwise, please be on the lookout for the additional videos I create on how to make money with physical products. Thanks so much.