Many a time, exhibitors are confronted with a persistent common query – ‘Of what purpose would it serve to participate in Exhibitions. What makes it better than Cold Calling’?
The answer is simply put there can be no comparison between the two. Cold calling can at best supplement as a part of a marketing strategy for exhibition shows. When you’re in an exhibition event, you come face-to-face with your audience. This presents an opportunity to cultivate them as qualified leads. You also get to display your offerings in-person and communicate their key message to the audience. Better still, you get to leverage unlimited networking opportunities.
What exactly is Cold Calling?
It refers to communication with potential leads or shortlisted leads done after thorough research. The call is done by marketing or sales staff representative to different prospective customers with effective sales pitches.
Although Cold Calling does not produce immediate positive results as the person’s reaction on the other end is mostly unknown. Besides, such calls are unsolicited in many cases.
However, including them as a part of sales and marketing strategy can pay off in the long run.
According to a research study, 82 percent of event attendees prefer to attend an exhibition show. They also confirm attending them helps them make informed decisions. This revelation clearly indicates as to why Exhibition Shows hold a significant edge over Cold Calling.
BENEFITS OF EXHIBITION PARTICIPATION
For businesses, an exhibition offers tremendous benefits. More importantly, the significance of these benefits last for a long time.
You get to expose your brand and offerings to a wider audience that’s mature. This way, you stand to earn useful feedback and a reliable pool of prospective customers that you can reach out to after the event.
That’s not all. You also stand to harvest the following benefits.
1. DRIVES FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTION
An exhibition event presents a viable platform for networking opportunities. You come face-to-face with your audience and connect with them personally, culminating in many cases fruitful relationships.
To give them the reason to interact with your brand, it’s essential to have a compelling booth design that instantly strikes a chord with their aspirations and get them to interact face-to-face with your brand. The resultant opportunity can be leveraged by your sales team to connect with them on a personal level and cultivate their favor.
Cold Calling on the other hand involves connection over a telephone call rather than face-to-face interaction. This can result in challenges at times. The telephone conversation can get interrupted or cut short. Then, there is also the possibility of failing to capture effective attention.
2. BUILDS BRAND IMAGE AND RELEVANCE
Unlike cold calling, an exhibition event offers a platform to engage in direct, meaningful interactions and provide enriching immersive experiences. This will help to market your brand’s value and relevance to interested attendees.
If you’re clever enough to capitalize on opportunities, you can even leverage advertising and sponsorship opportunities to the maximum.
All that is required is an attractive booth designed to get the audience to your stand. Once that’s done successfully, they will automatically connect with your brand. They will become more brand—familiar and develop brand loyalty.
At this stage, you can cash on the opportunity to strengthen the bond deeper. Engaging them with branded activities and giveaways will help to deliver memorable experiences and build brand relevance.
3. GIVES INTERACTIONS A HUMAN TOUCH
When you take part in exhibitions, you get to directly engage with your audience. Everything is done in real-time, face-to-face. You also get to know them well, what their preferences and requirements are and what they feel about your competitors’ offerings. Most of the interactions will be with your target-audience. A meaningful interaction with them can lead to better chances of conversion.
All of these are not possible through cold calling. In cold calling, you interact with your audience through digital platforms or a telephone call. At times, you get to converse with them through different marketing activities that are mostly one-sided communication.
4. ELEVATES BRAND AWARENESS
Taking part in an exhibition event, you can significantly enhance awareness of your brand among the audience. They come face-to-face with your brand. This plays a key role in facilitating greater conversions. As a result, they will not have second thoughts about it while selecting your products or services.
All that is required is the inclusion of eye-catching graphics as a part of your booth design or display of your products around the stand. They help to attract more audience to your stand.
Besides, when brand awareness is combined with in-person demonstration, it becomes easier to acquire new customers. Whatever concerns your audience might have of your brand or offerings; they can be swiftly clarified on the spot with effective first-hand information.
Cold Calling on the other hand, is more of an organic communication. To convert leads into customers, the whole process can take a few months or even years on occasions.
5. DRIVES BETTER INDUSTRY LEARNING
Exposiciones are not just about demonstrations or presentations. You can experiment with varied tactics and strategies to drive better interactions with your audience.
To make this effective, you just need to be thorough with the exhibition show schedule. Some shows will have in-person seminars where top industry professionals speak about the industry trends. They present you the opportunity to be a part of interactive sessions and workshops. This way, you get to stay abreast with the latest industry trends and developments while building up more leads.
For an effective impact, have your stand designed to portray your brand image. This will attract audience’s attention and help gain new customers.
All of these aspects are not possible with Cold calling. Although you have virtual seminars, they cannot be spoken of in the same league as in-person exhibition shows.
6. SEE COMPETITORS UP-CLOSE
Exhibition shows bring leading names of the industry on one platform, including competitors. Taking part in such events will give you the chance to study competitors up-close. You get to learn what makes them tick, how they design their stands for better audience-interactions, what kind of sales pitches they use, and what makes their stand designs so attractive to the audience.
Cold calling on the other hand does not offer such an opportunity. If you’re participating in a virtual show, you might get to observe competitors. But that’s a different thing altogether and not comparable to seeing them up-close in-person.
There is no doubt that Exposiciones offers plentiful benefits compared to cold calling. They provide an interactive platform that can be leveraged to deliver lasting immersive experiences. All that’s needed is an attractive stand design with a cohesive marketing strategy to reap maximum benefits.
When compared to cold calling, they are an indispensable marketing tool in a competitive landscape. Cold calling can only at best supplement them within the ambit of marketing strategy and contribute to a high ROI.
