A few weeksI attended two different events that as an inventor / product developer I thought I would pass along.  The first was the Yankee Invention Exposition and the second was the Harvard Square Oktoberfest.

These are two wildly different events, one geared strictly towards inventors and one with a broad market appeal. The Yankee Invention Expo featured 55 or so booths containing inventions while the Harvard Square event had well over 500 booths featuring everything including artists, food and local businesses.

My upfront position is that if you are looking to bring your idea anywhere, you should do as much as possible to get exposre.  You can never tell where your next product champion, investor or key team member will come from.

A big question I always ask inventors at exhibits is WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF THIS, or in other words what is your MOTIVATION.  You could want to sell / license your idea, get investment, get a trial for get customer feedback, most want something along these lines.  These are all gets, and I always wonder about giving, give a great presentation, give inventors inspiration, give your vision to the public.

The nice feature of the invention focused show is that you can make better educated guesses about your potential audience.  They will be product scouts, fellow inventors, service providers and people looking for some fun over the weekend.  However, at the Yankee Invention Expo on their weekend day mid afternoon (should be the busiest) there was maybe a hundred people there.

The nice feature of the general show or festival is the amount of traffic.  There were thousands of people there and I would want high traffic over a focused and small group.  Of course this festival was named for beer, but it was instead filled with artists, food and music.  It was a great area of creativity, just not product based but I would expect that a great invention would have fit in nicely.

I attended the Yankee Invention Exposition this past weekend and was saddened my the many inventors who had traveled a long way, invested heavily in their product and had given up their time to go to a show that they were unprepared for. There are many companies that sell trade show services (for a hefty price), but that is not how we do things. We’ll share some low cost effective methods to help your next show be great

Consistent Message

One of the most important aspect is to deliver a consistent message. We will talk about engaging the senses, but if the brain gets confused by different messages the effectiveness will be lost. Having a consistent method will help prepare materials, pitches, responses to questions and all in all make for a better show.

Senses Matter

A trade show attendee, whether a visitor, buyer, investor or product scout experience the show through all 5 senses, so use them! Use color in your booth! You don’t need fancy banners, color printouts can be stitched together and be very effective without spending hundreds on a display. Pitch Loudly. Be excited and enthusiastic about your product. Make people who are walking by your booth want to stop and hear what you have to say. Think about walking down a city, (for me it is Harvard Square) and hearing a street performer that has a crowd and is making noise, I always stop and check it out. Try and get attendees involved with demos, let them try the product.

Represent Your Product

I don’t mean no fighting, but be at your booth mentally and physically. The best way to do this is to have atleast two people at the show. You are going to need a bathroom break, eat lunch and want to see other booths but if you leave your booth unattended, you might as well not be there.

Memorable Materials

Shows are somewhat hectic by nature. So when the attendee sits down later at home and is thumbing through the materials, make yours stand out. Have a brochure, make it in color. You can design your own easily and get it printed up very cheaply. Include your contact info and have a website behind it that builds on the same message. Giving out business cards is not really worthwhile, they just get lost in the mess. I still have a few of the materials from my first invention show, three years ago. That is memorable. Remember to protect your materials with a copyright notice.

Proven Message

Make sure that your message works. Practice pitching and make sure you are making sense. If you are not the person to make these pitches, then get someone else to help. A bad pitch can kill an show, especially if all of your materials are consistent with the pitch. A good pitch is a longer topic, but as a rule of thumb listeners should be engaged, and when it is over (yes pitches should have endings and not ramble on) you should be getting questions. The old saying about giving a talk and not having any questions means that no one understood (or is asleep) is true with pitching too. Being audience focused can be difficult, because there are many different types of attendees which is even more reason to keep practicing, revising and practicing some more (on real people)

Have a great show!