How do I prepare materials for a B2B trade show so they generate leads?
Three pieces and a 37-inquiry case.
Quick answer: Trade show material has a single job: getting you contacted again once the show is over. You need three things: a piece the visitor wants to keep, an offer with a real deadline, and a reason to leave you their contact information at the booth. A trifold brochure designed this way by Keryx Design generated 37 qualified inquiries from B2B companies.
Everything is decided the Monday after the show
The booth costs thousands of euros, plus three days of travel and months of preparation. Then the show closes, and every visitor goes back to the office with a bag full of brochures collected around the pavilions. On Monday the bag gets emptied onto a desk: nearly everything lands in the trash within seconds, along with the memory of the handshakes.
Trade show material is designed for that exact moment, when you are hundreds of miles away and the piece has to work on its own. The question to ask at the design stage: why should the visitor keep mine? The three sections below answer it piece by piece.
One job only: getting contacted again
Awareness and image matter, and the booth does its part. The printed material, though, is the only piece of the investment that travels back to the office with the visitor: wasting it on an institutional flyer means leaving the aftermath of the show to chance. It's the most direct application of direct response design.
The three pieces to prepare
- The piece the visitor wants to keep. Content that's useful even away from the booth: a technical guide, an honest comparison of solutions, a checklist for buying well in your industry. Useful content survives the Monday triage and keeps your name on the desk.
- The offer with a real deadline. Reserved for those who met you at the show: an analysis, a site visit, dedicated terms, with an expiration date in writing. At a trade show the deadline is credible by nature, because the event really does end. Invented deadlines get spotted instantly by B2B readers, and from that moment they stop believing the rest as well.
- The reason to leave you their contact information at the booth. Visitors gladly trade their email for something: the digital version of the guide, the results of a quick test run at the booth, access to the reserved offer. A contact collected in person starts out warm, and frees you from hoping they'll be the one to reach out.
How to build a piece that generates inquiries, in detail: why the average brochure brings in no clients.
The case: 37 qualified inquiries from about 300 copies
The follow-up gets written before you leave
The aftermath of the show is prepared along with the material, with dates already set:
- within 48 hours: an email to every contact collected, recalling the offer and its deadline
- first week: a phone call to the warmest contacts, with the notes taken at the booth in hand
- at the offer's deadline: one final reminder, a single one
Whoever starts writing emails two weeks later finds people who have already forgotten the booth, the show, and the handshake.
Giveaways, banner stands, and the other questions
"How many copies do I print?" Start from the realistic number of booth visitors, with a margin. The case above came from about 300 copies handed to the right people.
"Are giveaways worth it?" They remind people you exist, and rarely give them a reason to call you. On a limited budget, priority goes to the piece that gets read.
"What about the booth graphics?" They serve to make people stop, and should be coordinated with the offer. The conversion work, afterward, is done by what the visitor takes home.
The timeline to arrive ready
A flyer or an insert takes 3-4 business days of design work; for a full brochure, the delivery date is set in the quote, in writing. If the show is a few months out, there's room. The first step is the Feasibility Analysis: for $147 we examine your material and your goal and tell you in writing what we would do, at what cost and with what realistic expectations. If the project goes ahead, the $147 is credited toward the deposit. Feasibility Analysis
