In an era of dot.com startups and digital media, it’s easy to limit your interests to pixelated landscapes. Travel trade shows haven’t lost their importance, though. Marketers and brand titans still use them to network, learn, and evolve. These events offer a unique environment for marketing your business. Arrive prepared, with technical specs and selling points in hand, and your profits will soar.

You can turn your exhibition space into your own roaming storefront. Every event has its own unique flavour and blend of attendees. Exhibitions have one particularly useful superpower: they gather brands and people who have an interest in the travel niche, so they’re a particularly potent form of events marketing.

Bringing Customers and Colleagues Together
Trade shows give brands an opportunity to mix with colleagues who work in their industry, so you’ll get the chance to forge new deals that could benefit your business for many years into the future. You’ll network with suppliers, logistics teams, and contractors who may offer better deals than you’re working with currently. That comes with its own return on investment, helping to reduce your expenses and maximise your efficiency. Large-scale exhibitions tend to attract the best in the industry, so you’ll be able to meet with contacts on one exhibit hall floor. Some conferences attract global travel associations and social entrepreneurs, while others attract keynote speakers who lead the industry. Every conference has its own culture, whether that includes adventure brands or travel-related products. Niches are diverse, sometimes covering luxury travel, fashion and sometimes, backpacking.

If you’re a service professional or executive, you might meet with media giants and analysts in your sector. Arrive with a goal in mind, and you’ll enjoy better results, whether they entail finding mentorship, angel funders, or the hottest talent to employ. You’ll be able to pitch your own business concept to companies looking for services such as your own, and if you have your own product line, there’s no faster way to get it rolled out en masse to outlets across your region.

The Power of Marketing
The biggest tradeshows are often some of the most important industry events in the work year, so it’s critical to leverage their marketing potential. Arrive prepared with branded swags, gifts, and flags for your event and you’ll drum up more publicity in one week than you’ve managed all month. Trade shows achieve on two fronts: through return on investment and return on objective. ROI is a direct return on participation costs, while ROO includes non-sales objectives like angel funding, marketing research, or R&D. The former requires you to put your marketing smarts to use through branding and company culture. The latter demands a little more thought. Before the conference kicks off, develop on-site interviews, questionnaires, and surveys that will keep your objectives well-aligned. Most brands prepare long before the figurative ribbon is cut on launch day, so don’t be afraid of doing a little networking ahead of the conference date.

The Digital Side of Conferencing
These days, no form of events marketing is completely divorced from digital media, and travel trade shows are no different. Most conferences help attendees to gain exposure through Twitter hashtags and Facebook events. Their online feeds gather a larger audience than the event itself, so your exposure will grow considerably this way. Leverage your conference hashtags well, and you’ll be able to chase down vendors and contractors who share your values. Most will include links to their booth numbers and websites in their social channels, so you’ll be able to do plenty of research during the quiet moments between speeches and niche events.

TweetDeck and similar platforms will help you to post from several accounts in one fell swoop, gathering retweets and followers along the way. Consider running a few Facebook or YouTube live events to involve online audiences in your conference. This is a compelling way to turn interested parties into buyers and buyers into loyal return clients.

Direct Returns
There are two ways to improve your conference ROI: By raising your profits and reducing your expenses. Trade shows can achieve on both fronts through advertising, publicity, research, and business partnerships. This is one of the few environments where potential buyers are open to direct sales, so arrive with product samples and creative merchandising. With the finest members of your employment team out in full force, your company culture will become a powerful part of your conference marketing strategy. Participate in presentations, integrating video into your efforts, both online and off.

Tradeshows demand a holistic, carefully thought-out approach, but every seed you plant has an excellent chance of taking root. This is your opportunity to present your brand to your industry. Grab it with both hands.