Trade shows and expos can be absolutely vital events at which businesses can showcase their products and services to an audience of people buying exactly what you sell. Some of the largest events attract tens of thousands of visitors over the space of just a few days. Attending these shows as a trader is a huge opportunity for companies to interact with potential customers, generate leads, and increase brand awareness. Attending these shows as a customer is a great chance for people to see the products up close, speak with the people behind their favourite brands, and to make an informed decision about whether or not to make a purchase.
For a business, these events are a significant investment, with some huge pressure to make an equally significant return on that investment, and so they need to make the most out of them. One way to do that is through professional photography. In the first blog of a two-part series exploring the impact of professional photography on a trade show experience, we will look at how professional photography can make all the difference in maximizing your expo impact.
The Importance of Trade Show and Expo Events for Business Growth
Trade shows and expos are essential for businesses to promote their products and services to a targeted audience of relevant prospects and customers. These people only attend the expo because it is something they have a business interest, or a personal passion for.
They are an opportunity for companies to interact face-to-face with those potential customers and to generate leads that can be followed up on after the event. These people represent a good portion of your ideal customer base, and therefore they can become some of the most qualified leads you might gain for your business. This is why they are such great opportunities, and usually pretty expensive to attend, and why you need to be looking very closely at the way you present your stand. With so many companies participating in these events, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd.
The Role of Brand Visuals in Trade Shows and Expos
Brand visuals are an essential aspect of trade shows and expos. Your shell stand, booth or space-only design, display materials, and marketing collateral should reflect your brand identity.
For example, if your marketing materials and social media present you as bright, light, and friendly brand, then bring that out in your stand design. If you’re a rough and ready, spit and sawdust kind of a brand, then bring it out in your design.
Consistent branding across all materials can create a cohesive and memorable experience for attendees. By working with a professional photographer to get high quality images of your products, you can capture these brand visuals and help to reinforce your brand messaging. Equally, you might want to bring some brand personality to the table, and have an informal team photography session to show the people behind the business.
Something else that a professional photographer will bring to your trade show materials is technical quality. Your photographer will provide images that are of the highest possible quality so that they can blow up to huge sizes without blurring or pixelation. There’s nothing worse than buying a load of promotional hardware, like a 2m high backdrop that stretches across 3m or 4m, and the images have pixelated out of all recognition. By working with a photographer, you’ll get optimised images that can blow up to any size you need.
How Photography Can Make a Difference to your Expo Presence
Professional product photography can capture the essence of your business. Done well, it can become an extra member of your team, to effectively work alongside the staff you have at the expo, to present your brand in the best possible way. It can showcase your products and services in the best light and make them stand out from the competition.
A professional photographer will capture images that highlight the unique features of your products, which can be used in marketing materials such as roller banners, and other exhibition hardware such as backdrops and step-and-repeat banners.
They can also be used on social media to promote your presence at the expo, particularly if your photographer is a professional who understands the importance of capturing product and people photography in ideal positions to provide the negative space for captions and logos.
These images can grab the attention of potential customers, giving them something to remember and creating a lasting impression.
Put short, working with a professional photographer ahead of your expo attendance can be the difference between breaking even and making a substantial ROI.
Incorporating Video into the Trade Show Strategy
Depending on the size of your pitch, you may not get the opportunity to bring each and every one of your products for your customers to see and feel in person, so it’s a good idea to have professional videos that dig in and around the products, providing a full 360 experience of your products, without them necessarily being available on the stand.
Having a large screen TV would be particularly beneficial. Have it playing professionally captured and edited videos that give in-depth looks at your products, with a strong suite of features, advantages and benefits to really drive home the value of what you do. Not only will it show your products in the best way, but it will present you and your brand as one which takes the quality of its marketing seriously. If you take pride in your presentation, then your visitors will surely recognise that you take just as much, if not more pride in the products that you supply.
Professional Photography in Marketing Material
We’ve mentioned the use of professional photography on trade show hardware such as banners and backdrops, but there are also various different marketing materials you’d be taking with you. Think leaflets, flyers, trade show-specific brochures and catalogues that highlight show prices. All of these assets will need to effectively represent your brand and your products in the best way possible. What’s the point of spending thousands of pounds to attend and on the eye-catching banners if your brochures don’t stand up to the effort?
The great thing about having these images is that they can be used after the show in digital form too. Repurpose each and every one of your photographs on your website product listings, on social media posts and in other ads. Great photography can be a timeless addition to your marketing arsenal.
The team here at Picture Perfect Photography have attended many different trade shows, seminars and expos, and the stands that have stood out the best have always been the ones with crisp, clear images. We know what makes a fantastic trade stand.
With over twenty years of photography experience, Picture Perfect Photography have worked with clients from many different industries, capturing professional quality product photography, lifestyle photography and corporate-use photography. This material has been used on countless marketing materials, from digital avenues such as social media and websites, to printed promotional literature and expo stand hardware.
We offer great one-off photoshoots and video to capture everything you need, including a planning session before the shoot to fully understand your objectives and to provide expert advice that comes from our decades of experience in our game. We will work with you to build a priority capture shot list, which can you stress and save time during the event or shoot on the day and then allows us to focus on capturing as many great images as possible of your business, brand or event as it unfolds.
Added to this, we include professional image editing with each shoot. We offer professional video production services through our partners over at Big Sky Creative, and we offer creative social media strategy and management services to help you to promote your attendance at any trade show and increase engagement before and after the event, which can help you to maximise every penny of your investment.
To chat to the team about your forthcoming expo photography needs, just click to book a discovery call, and let us help you to take your brand visuals to the next level.
