Discover how to improve your next trade show with our TEO scorecard

This is the first element that acts as the base for a successful TEO strategy. The idea here is to understand how your exhibition programme links to your business growth strategy and why you have decided to exhibit.  

The second element is understanding your attendee journey. At this point, you need to identify who your target audience is and identify their pain points and aspirations. It’s critical you understand what you’re looking for as you can start building a picture of how you would get them to your booth and start up a conversation with them.

The third element is hiring the right booth staff for specific job roles in the attendee engagement journey and to motivate them to achieve your objectives. You need to identify what tasks need doing, select the appropriate personnel to fulfil these tasks but more importantly enjoy the process. After all you wouldn’t want your receptionist doing your annual accounts. Equally for exhibitions you need professionals who can effectively engage attendees, build rapport and demonstrate your products and services.

The next step is understanding exactly how you will collect this data. A tried and trusted method we use is interactive toolkits that provide memorable and fun experiences which actively engage and educate your target audience. Furthermore, you should ask yourself how you would integrate this into your CRM and how it bridges the gap between saying goodbye and the first step in the follow-up process.

The final element of the TEO framework is your follow-up process. This element makes you think about the first step post-exhibit for your audience to re-engage with you and make you assess the key stages of your follow-up process. This includes what departments should be held accountable and how your sales cycle aligns with your follow-up process.