Elevating your brand at trade shows

Trade shows are a proven platform for engaging directly with your target audience and developing relationships that can open up opportunities for your business. Whether it’s shouting about your latest product, building industry connections or driving leads.  

And investors also see the value, with Partech CMO Keji Mustapha commenting in our ebook, Investable: How founders can raise their profile to boost attractiveness with investors, that “Events help build your brand awareness with your key audience and helps build your credibility”.  

However, with hundreds of technology conferences held around the world every year and thousands of delegates attending – from media to potential buyers and investors – cutting through the noise and getting your brand seen can be tricky without the right approach.  Here are our five essential tips to make an impact before, during and after the show: 

Get ahead of the pack 

 As an exhibitor striving to enhance your visibility, grabbing early opportunities will help you maximise your media presence and engagements. This could be applying for awards that are hosted during the event or reaching out to friendly journalists before the event to see if they are attending and want to meet during the show. For example, we engaged journalists from Bloomberg, WIRED and The Economist to meet with our one of our clients at MWC 2025 – sourcing the media list from the event organisers and pitching them a month in advance.  

Touching base with journalists from media partners who are sponsoring the show will also give you a chance to see what features they are planning and set up introductions and interviews for your key spokespeople during the event.    

Consider the role of paid social 

Of course, the main reason for exhibiting at trade shows is to meet prospects and fuel the sales funnel. The ideal situation before the event kicks off is to already have some of those meetings set up or people registered for after-hour socials to take the pressure off of generating those all-important leads.  

Running paid ads on LinkedIn a few weeks before the event can help drum up interest and encourage delegates to register for meetings or your own side events in advance. We did this for AeroCloud at Passenger Terminal Expo and helped drive over 100 individuals to registration pages – read about it here.  

Launching news 

If you are planning on launching news at a trade show, timing is critical. During the show itself, journalists are often on the move and tend to not be as available for news updates as they would normally be. You are also likely to be up against significant competition for their attention. A better way to gain traction is by sharing the news just before the event, then using on-site meetings with journalists and prospects alike to discuss its value in more depth.  

On-the-ground engagement 

We’ve already touched on the value of organising on-site interviews. But it’s not the only way you can encourage journalists to engage with your brand at the event. For example, if one of your spokespeople is hosting a keynote or participating in a fireside chat, preparing a short media alert to promote the session and the key points they’ll be exploring is a good way to pique the interest of media outlets and encourage them to attend.  

Maintaining momentum 

Just because the trade show has finished, doesn’t mean your campaign has to. Use all that you have learnt to create a post-event plan that takes on board feedback from meetings and experience.  

And go beyond your experience and take learnings from your competitors’ efforts. Trade shows offer insights that can reveal the most relevant topics for future thought leadership, what product marketing assets your sales team might be missing, and what messages are landing best to inform your next big campaign.