You know the sentence: when you have a hammer, all problems look like nails?

On shows most exhibitors think they are here for visibility. And so they spend their time and money trying to fix their visibility.

They spend weeks obsessing over the banner, the lighting, the branded tote bags, the display screens looping their company reel. They book the biggest stand they can justify to the CFO. They print thousands of brochures. They show up on day one with their marketing gun fully loaded, feeling ready for the visibility battle.

And then? Nothing happens. Or worse, the wrong things happen. A stream of students, competitors, and tire-kickers fill up their hours while the people they actually came to meet walk straight past.

These exhibitors were not invisible, they were visible. They solved the problem, but the wrong one. Visibility was never the right problem to begin with.

The broadcast trap

Visualise a fishing net. It catches everything in the water, right? It does not distinguish or select what it catches. It can catch the right fish, but also the wrong fish, and everything in between. When you use a fishing net, you spend the rest of the day sorting through what you caught and throwing most of it back in the water.

When exhibitors try to solve the visibility problem, they try to have a bigger net. Attract more visitors. But if they are successful at it, they will spend the day trying to sort out if they caught the right fish.

Net vs Magnet

A magnet does not work like a net. It does not pull everything towards it. It pulls in exactly what it is designed for and pushes away the exact opposite. No need for sorting. The magnetic field does the sorting.

Now here is the truth: most exhibitors think their shows should be nets, not magnets. And that is where the problem not only is, but begins.

Why do I say begins? Because this single idea, let us widen the net, leads to a cascade of wrong decisions that will make the show more expensive and less efficient. More of a chaos to control, rather than more of an order to enjoy. Yes, shows done right are a pleasure.

The cascade of wrong decisions

Mistake one: show selection

When you believe shows are nets to be thrown in the water, you want to cast the net where there are a maximum of fish. And so, exhibitors who believe in the net approach tend to pick large shows. And that is their first mistake.

Imagine a technology show like Vivatech. Who does it attract? Technology professionals. But technology is large and vague. It can apply to a smartwatch as well as to a submarine drone. If you sell a technology that addresses the smartwatch market, you do not care about the submarine visitors, and vice versa.

But it goes further. Even within the same company, if you need to talk to the CMO, the CFO is of little relevance. When the show is broad, it attracts both. And when the net is broad too, it catches both.

Why most exhibitors pick the wrong shows is an article you can read here. And why they keep coming back is another one you can read here.

Mistake two: the wrong marketing spend

But it does not stop here. The fish net mentality does not only make them select the wrong shows, it leads them to the wrong marketing decisions.

When a company wants to attract attention from every direction and appeal to the broadest possible audience, it takes a certain type of marketing investment.

Picture: central location, large designer booth, plenty of giveaways , tote bags, pens (more about them in giveaways: costing you the conversations you came for), and in-hall advertsing.

Now marketing in itself is not bad. It is a tool. But used the wrong way it is costly and inefficient.

When the cast is broad (broadcast) the marketing has to be broad as well. The messaging has to cover every segment. And the larger one casts, the more generic they have to be. Now you have been in business long enough to know the paradox: when you speak to everyone you resonate with no one.

And that's why you find large booths with huge budgets that fail to attract visitors because their marketing is so broad that no visitors recognize himself in the message. There is a difference between saying "Supply chain managers, fix your bottle neck in 15 min" and "bottle necks no more". The latter is too generic to generate resonance.

Mistake three: burning your team

But wait, it is not over (I know it's a shit show).

As said previously, when you use a cast you catch something, anything, actually everything under it.

And that leads to a third costly mistake: they use up their human resources to filter the noise they brought in, instead of talking to the ones who were designed to receive the message.

So the team now has to triage, instead of talking business. These exhibitors just exhaust their good teams talking to the wrong people. And exhaustion is just one side of the coin, the other is discouragement. When teams show up to meet up with the wrong people, they easily conclude "shows are a waste of my time". And that's how these exhibitors will find it harder and harder to get teams to volunteer for these shows.

 The coup de grace

And the problems do not stop here. They go downstream, all the way to the after show, to the follow-up.

Think about it. They spent three days catching a lot of wrong fish. So they have three options: follow up on all of them (because nobody wants to admit they wasted three days), but that will be a waste of resources, spend time doing triage, that will also mobilize teams, or give it all up, and that would be turning the show from an opportunity in potential to a total loss. That should have never happened, but it did, and it stemmed from one single problem upstream: using the wrong marketing strategy, that is the net.

 

What to do instead

If you want to understand what to do differently before your next show, How to get your trade show booth marketing right walks you through what changes when you stop thinking fish net marketing and start thinking magnetic marketing.

And if you feel ready to see a complete trade show system in action, not just covering booth marketing, my free masterclass covers everything in one session, and you will get to discover in it the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting® formula, the most complete framework to turn your trade shows around and make them really profitable.