Catering trade show marketing can land you lots of new customers. Trade shows are a great source of revenue for businesses in the food industry, from those who sell catering equipment to manufacturers promoting event scheduling software. Since these shows can be very expensive to participate in, you've got to fine-tune your catering tradeshows advertising abilities to make the most of the experience.

To maximize your sales and leads at the show, you'll have to set up a great exhibit that will attract potential customers. You'll also need plenty of marketing materials to give out. Lastly, you have to follow up on leads. Here are a few tips for increasing your sales from the caterer trade show traffic you get:

1. Create a great exhibit with caterer tradeshows advertising materials. This includes large displays as well as flyers and handouts.

2. Stock up on catering trade show giveaways. Get your logo printed on these items and hand them out to everyone who passes your booth.

3. Follow up on the leads you get. Turn your attendees into customers using your post-caterer trade show sales skills.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Attract potential customers with catering tradeshows advertising

At a trade show, your advertising concept should be twofold. First, you'll want to attract customers to your exhibit to begin with, then, you'll want to sell them your product or service. So, you'll need large-format banners and displays as well as smaller brochures and flyers to give out to attendees once they get to your booth.

I recommend: Announce your presence with the overhead displays at Camelback Designs. Have custom brochures printed up at VistaPrint and put them in the display stands available from Displays2go.

Make attendees remember you with caterer trade show promotions

Potential customers will see literally hundreds of vendors while they're attending the trade show. To help them remember your company, give out customized promotional products with your logo on them. You can give out small items to every attendee who comes to your exhibit and you can also do a raffle to give away larger items.

I recommend: Motivators has a great selection of customizable giveaways, like food and wine pairing wheels, spatulas, beer steins and aprons. Consider cooking up some samples to give out; you can get custom-printed boxes made at First Impressions Printing to put the samples in.

Ensure that you do a caterer tradeshow follow-up

After the show, you've got to follow up on the leads you gained. You can do this with sales calls, but it's less expensive, and less intrusive for the customer, to send out postcards. These serve as no-pressure reminders of your business.

I recommend: Browse through the industry-specific postcards at Postcard Mania. You can also find lots of food-related templates at PostcardBuilder.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  If you have regular clients who expect to see you at trade shows, you might want to send out marketing mail before the event. You can use any type of direct mail or email to let your clients know that you'll be attending a specific event. This can drastically increase your catering trade show traffic.