If you’re a restaurant owner, you’ll know how important it is to have regular expos and get as many eyes as possible on your business. You can make a slew of announcements, connect with your audience, and make a lot of revenue, but only if you’re able to run a successful expo and meet all of your goals, and while that can be tougher than it seems, a great plan will make it more likely that you’re able to hit those targets.
Understanding your audience
The key to getting the attention of people who are going to attend the expo and expand your customer base is to understand the people you’re already servicing and what they love most about your brand. Each restaurant has a strong image, and whether it’s the uniqueness of your dishes, the spice you use, or the image you portray, there’s a reason your core base keeps coming back for more – you’ll need to identify this aspect by getting feedback from your customers and show off that feature of your business more when you’re at the expo. For instance, if your restaurant is known for having a colorful personality that stands out from the crowd, reflecting that in the design language of your booth is a great way to show off your individuality.
Creating the perfect booth
The next step in creating the perfect expo showcase is to intricately design the booth you’ll be operating in since it’ll be your center throughout the event and how you’ll be interacting with any new people who are interested in coming to your business. Incredible tools like trade show displays are perfect for this task since you’re able to show visually interesting and intricate designs without ever being too loud or distracting your customers from what your business is really about. Once you’ve settled on a design for your booth and its displays, you’ll be able to calculate how many people you’re able to attract throughout the event.
Promotional efforts
While standing out and catching the eye of explorers that are already at the convention is always a great idea, it works best if people know you’re going to be at an expo in the first place. That requires using key performance indicators to track the success of your event and marketing both before and after the event, for which you’ll need to make use of social media and even physical media, plastering fliers around the city the expo is going to be in to spread word of mouth. You’ll only achieve significant success through the right promotion since a lot of the foot traffic you’ll get will be from customers who came looking for your booth.
Collaborating with influencers
As previously mentioned, promotion is an integral part of any great result at an expo, but in the modern age where social media is king, that includes partnering with influencers, too. These people have millions of followers online, many of which are in the same city as them and are more likely to check out their recommendations on everything from food to fashion. That means if you get influencers to shout out your business or booth on their accounts, or better yet, get a major influencer to host your event, you’ll get a major shot in the arm.
Creating new items
Expos are the place to be if you’re an exciting new business, but part of drumming up excitement if you’re already established is to offer something new to the public. This means having a new item on sale, whether it’s merchandise, a utensil or tool that can be used in cooking in some way, or a new menu item. If you choose the latter, you’ll be able to bring samples with you, too, and the people who try those samples will immediately be far more likely to visit your business in the future.
Conclusion
A successful expo encompasses a lot of things, like creating the perfect venue and setting for tons of people to filter through, displaying your business and standing out from the pack, and creating a strong demand for your services and your restaurant. Expos are complicated, which means it will take a lot if you want to reach your goal, but if you use the information in this article, you’ll have a much easier time.
