Trade Shows: Crucial Part of B2B Marketing
{"Image DocumentName": "Trade Shows: Crucial Part of B2B Marketing", "Image ImageDescription": "manufacturer can exhibit & demonstrate products to potential users. manufacturers can view competitors\u2019 products. opportunity to create sales & establish relationships with agents, distributors, franchisees & suppliers. Online trade shows. useful in difficult economic / political circumstances. poor substitute for live trade shows. Secondary marketing methods. - print advertising, catalogs, web sites, direct mail. Total annual media budget on trade events: Europeans 22% Americans 5% Trade shows provide the facilities for a manufacturer to exhibit and demonstrate products to potential users and to view competitors\u2019 products. They are an opportunity to create sales and establish relationships with agents, distributors, franchisees, and suppliers that can lead to more nearly permanent distribution channels in foreign markets. In fact, a trade show may be the only way to reach some prospects. Trade show experts estimate that % of the people seen on a trade show floor never have a salesperson call on them. Several websites now specialize in virtual trade shows. They often include multimedia and elaborate product display booths that can be virtually toured. Some of these virtual trade shows last only a few days during an associated actual trade shows. In difficult economic and/or political circumstances online trade shows become a useful, but obviously less than adequate substitute. Not even the best online trade show imaginable can make up for this apparent step backward in international trade and cooperation. The promotional problems encountered by foreign industrial marketers are similar to the problems faced by domestic marketers. Until recently, there have been few specialized advertising media in many countries, however, specialized industrial media have been developed to provide the industrial marketer with a means of communicating with potential customers, especially in western Europe and to some extent in eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and Asia. In addition to advertising in print media and reaching industrial customers through catalogs, websites, and direct mail, the trade show or trade fair has become the primary vehicle for doing business in many foreign countries. As part of its international promotion activities, the U.S. Department of Commerce sponsors trade fairs in many cities around the world. Additionally, local governments in most countries sponsor annual trade shows. African countries, for example, host > 70 industry-specific trade shows. Trade shows serve as the most important vehicles for selling products, reaching prospective customers, contacting and evaluating potential agents and distributors, and marketing in most countries.", "Image XResolution": "37", "Image YResolution": "37", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "SlidePlayer", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}