By improving your nursing tradeshow marketing plan, you can improve you success rate of marketing your medical equipment, supplies or job opportunities to the nursing community. By creating a marketing plan, you will be able to improve your name recognition, communicate better with your customers and generate potential leads.

By having a booth at a nursing trade show, you are advertising directly to your customers and potential employment candidates instead of going through a middleman. But don't think that just by being there you will see increased business. Just like any other event, you should be prepared with a marketing plan. Make sure you:

1. Purchase nursing tradeshow advertising in trade magazines.

2. Create a great exhibit for your products and services and include great personalized nursing tradeshow giveaways to help build your brand.

3. Use nursing tradeshow follow-up services so you can contact potential leads after the show.

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

Explore targeted nursing tradeshow promotions opportunities before the event

Whether your goal is to attract new personnel or to promote your products to nursing and healthcare professionals, a focused search for the best opportunities to get the word out is a great starting point. Some resources also provide continuing education information which may be of interest in your search.

I recommend: Advance can help you identify the best upcoming events based on your own customized search criteria even before the show starts. The Trade Show Network can help you build a strategic marketing plan to help build your nursing trade show promotions. Also, consider placing nursing trade shows advertising in nursing trade magazines. Hire Nursing has a list of trade magazines often read by nursing professionals.

Offer nursing trade show giveaways to help with your company branding

Nursing tradeshow giveaways are some of the best branding tools available at the shows. Web-based companies such as HealthPromotionsNow specialize in tradeshow giveaways geared toward the healthcare industry. Personalized promotional tools such as nursing lapel pins and standing medicine spoons will be a memorable and useful way to stay on attendees minds.

I recommend: Buy personalized items to give away from HealthPromotionsNow.com, Motivators.com or Pinnacle Promotions.

Conduct nursing tradeshow follow up to see the results of your investment

The best time to foster the potential professional relationships you've developed is directly after the show while conversations are still fresh in attendees' minds. Also, you will want to follow up after everything is said and done to make sure that the trade show investment was worth it.

I recommend: Advanced Business Calls can follow up on your trade show leads for you, saving you the time and pressure of doing it yourself. Keep track of the success of your trade show investment by using the return-on-investment toolkit available through the Center for Exhibition Research.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Keep a sign up sheet at your booth to help you keep track of the nursing trade show traffic and help you with your follow-ups afterward.
• •  Make sure you leave room in your nursing tradeshow marketing budget for research into the success of the show. If it didn't generate leads, you might want to save the money next year or possibly go to a different show.