Little-Known Marketing Roadshow - Tradeshow Strategies To Boost Sales!BY: Sant Qiu
A friend is going to set up a booth in a roadshow selling T-Shirts, and he asked for some tips to increase his sales. On top of the standard promotional stuffs like dressing up the booth, having great salespeople, distributing flyers around the booths etc, I thought I'd share some other strategies you can apply if you are going to do some roadshows. Here they are: - Are you doing this with potential for long term, repeat business? If yes you absolutely MUST capture prospects details for back-end products. One of the best and simplest way to do this is to have a lucky draw. Of course it makes more sense to have a long term business plan than just a one time sale thing. But if you are not, if this is just a "hit & run" opportunistic thing, focus on getting as much sales and profits on the spot. Apply up-selling strategies. Instead of selling just one item sell a package. You can also do cross-selling by tying up with some other booth owners who sells relevant products. Add in scarcity by giving "Limited Offer", "One Time Offer", "Next 10Mins Offer", "Today Only Offer" - Know who are the target market and sell the product according to how they want to be sold. You probably sell differently to different target. Eg. Tourists look for different things compared to aunties from the heartland. Also consider what is the roadshow about? Is there a theme to it? If there is, play up the theme and do your best to be the most stand out booth around. OK, so far pretty standard suggestions. Here's Highly Leveraged Strategies That Are Rarely Mentioned: Do A Pre-sale Promo! Most people doing roadshows do their marketing and promotions on the spot. You should do it BEFORE the roadshow starts. Personally, if possible I'd like to know I am making guaranteed profits before going into a venture. There are many ways to do it, but one simple way is to pre-sell: OPTION #1: Will the roadshow be promoted by the organiser? If yes, asked whether you can be included in the promotional materials they are distributing. Offer the organiser a good reason to include you in such as you are giving away FREE lucky draw thing. This is a great way to: 1. get huge coverage 2. get people to visit your booth (cos you mentioned it in the organiser's promo materials) 3. be seen as part of the main draw of the roadshow & partners of the roadshow organiser OPTION #2: If the organiser is not promoting it, ask them to pay for your promotions. Here's what I mean: Talk to the organiser and tell them you want to distribute flyers BEFORE the roadshow to promote it. As this will create awareness for the roadshow itself, ask them whether they are willing to sponsor part of the costs for the distribution of the flyers. OPTION #3: Sell the idea of distributing flyers to some of the other booth sellers in the roadshow. The flyers will advertise the few booths so they will have better exposure. Divide the costs of distributing the flyers among those who advertise. You can either advertise on the flyers for free (cos you are the one who come up with the idea + organise it) OR, You can make some profits from it (by charging a little more) OR You can share the price of the distribution of flyers and have minimum expenses OPTION #4: Create as much awareness of your up coming roadshow using the available free promo tools such as networking sites, blogs etc. You can also do pre-order for early birds. So you already made some sales before the roadshow starts. This gives you more budget to do more promotions. OPTION #5: Depending on your merchandise, it is possible to sell on bulk basis. Eg. invite purchasing execs from corporations to take a look at the quality of T-shirts you have and possible customization options. Lots of companies are now into teambuilding stuffs. What better way to show team spirit by wearing a corporate T-shirt. Sell them the idea and offer something different than just the same-old polo T. - Again, depending on your goal for this roadshow, it is important to have a strong "hook" to draw the right target market. The sexy girls selling T-shirts is a proven and great sales technique. But don't just leave it at that! If you are doing this for a long term business, leverage on whatever things you are doing for the future. Eg: Since you know you are going to have sexy girls... Do a press release and send it out to the media. Invite the media to check it out by giving them an interesting angle. An interesting angle such as "Sexy T-shirt Dealer Swears Under Oath She Didn't Use Sex To Get Branded T-shirts So Cheaply!" can work great as a press release AND a flyer! The New Paper loves to cover such stuffs. Record the whole thing. Take lots of photos. Post them in blogs, social networking sites etc... It will create a huge publicity for your company (if it is a long term biz). Of course when you got interviewed, talk about creativity and entrepreneurship, on top of the sexy hot publicity There are lots of ways to spin off an event like a roadshow... most importantly, leverage as much as you can! By the way... all of the suggestions above costs you ZIP to implement!
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