In these days of mass marketing, to stand out from the crowd it’s essential to have a story to tell. It can set you apart from your competitors, add depth to your business and offer some human interest above and beyond corporate logos and strap lines. While it can play an important role in your general marketing strategy, it can also play dividends when planning your presence at an exhibition.
Everyone in business starts somewhere. There’s an idea, a strategy, a service, goals and a journey. Quite often it involves a key person, the founder. It’s this story that becomes your personal branding.
We see well known celebrities use personal branding on a daily basis; capitalising on themselves, their backgrounds, stories and faces to market and sell their products. Think of Karen Brady, Delia Smith, Richard Branson, Bear Grylls, or any one of the hundreds of ‘celebrity chefs’ who appear on television, write cookbooks and sell branded cookware. The appeal is firstly the familiarity the consumer has with the individual, but it’s also the human interest to each of their stories of success.
While not everyone has the celebrity factor to rely on, we all still have a story to tell. It’s a busy market place, where all manner of competitors vie for the attention of customers, competing on product, price and service. So quite often the only thing that will set you apart, make you unique, is your business story.
When it comes to the exhibition space your stand will be hustling for attention in among a sea of other stands, some of which will be direct competitors.
While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend having a larger-than-life cardboard cut-out of the boss – though that’s not to say you absolutely shouldn’t – there are still some great tactics to bringing personal branding and storytelling to your exhibition stand.
If your company has real history – something that has been capitalised on by many businesses in their post-recession marketing – using this on the stand can help inform credibility, instil a sense of trustworthiness and position your brand as an industry forerunner. This can be achieved by showing a creative time-line as part of the backdrop to the stand, including large images from the archive to chart the progress of the company, or using AV to tell the story. Any of these elements should pin-point key milestones for the company, rather than give a detailed annual account of every transaction that took place.
Even if your company lacks years of experience, if the timeline is short yet rapid and studded with success, it still tells an interesting story.
Telling the story of a family business can also provide real human interest into the marketing mix. It can be used to punctuate the founding of the company, its family ethics and position it within the viewpoint of regular human beings. Therefore presenting itself more personable than the big corporate giants.
Having the people who count on the stand can be key with regard to personal branding. This won’t always be practical, but having some presence by the founder can be a real ace card on the exhibition floor. Understandably they might not be able to attend the whole event, but having some key times where potential customers can meet them personally is a great compromise, and even offers an element of exclusivity by offering limited bookable timeslots.
Sometimes there’s space for exhibitors to present seminars or workshops and using the face of your personal brand to deliver this can be a great way of showcasing your business. Putting a face to the name with the aim of telling your business story and driving footfall back to your stand.
And finally, but essentially, ensuring all staff members on the stand know the story and are able to recount it in an engaging manner – every business in the exhibition will have facts and figures, and you obviously need these too, but having a unique story tell can set you apart from the pack.
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