Building Brand Awareness for Small Business Owners (Tips as an Exhibitor)

motivation women-owned-business Mar 19, 2023

Commerce Lexington’s EMERGE Conference brings together Central Kentucky leaders for a full day filled with activities and exhibits with the goal of bringing together and impacting the community. The EMERGE conference featured guest speakers like Kiana Baker and Sharina Fox as they had their DEI workshop. There were also dynamic breakout sessions focused on professional development, community education, and lots of networking!

SavvyChic Design was an exhibitor for the EMERGE Conference that was held last March 7, 2023 hosted by the Chamber of Commerce in Lexington. Our very own Ms. Joann Sherrow brings the banner of SavvyChic Design to educate and spread the word about our services!

And one helpful tip that we’re spreading is about building brand awareness for small business owners like you!

Building Your Brand and Brand Awareness

Let’s face it, sometimes the ROI is not immediate and maybe results won’t be seen right away. BUT just being able to spread the word on what you do, who you serve, and where they can find you is already a huge step up in creating better relations with your potential customers, and hopefully, getting better results in the long run.

And also what better way to get your brand more traction than by interacting and forming relationships with others! Or in other words, try out networking!

Why You Should Go Networking

What we love about conferences like the EMERGE conference is that it gives us such a perfect opportunity to branch out and build relationships with others.

We love to form relationships, especially with other professionals and business owners. Not only is it fun to talk to other experts, it’s also a great way to gain visibility, gain a strong support network, gain more knowledge about the industry, and gain more impactful connections.

It’s just like being friends with the cool kids in high school, except with this one, you’d be making business partners. And with great business partners comes great referrals. Through professional connections, especially referrals, you’d be having better opportunities that are otherwise out of your reach!

Take this as an example, you’re stuck on a project and you don’t know how to move forward. Sharing your problem with other business owners through a brainstorming session can help the gears turn!

And also, it’d look good if you have each other’s testimonials on each of your webpages.

Tips for Exhibitors

Being an exhibitor for a local event, you’re gonna need to have a few things you need to take care of. Even though you’re not an exhibitor, the following information is still really important should you come across a similar event. In which case, you have to showcase what you do!

So make sure to get a checklist and follow these important things!

Get a standee!

You can’t really showcase your business if you’re not really showcasing anything, right? What better way to showcase what you do by putting up a big standee that lets people read and see the services that you offer! Designing one is simple enough with the right tools. We personally used Canva with our tarp during the EMERGE conference.

If you want to know how we ordered a tarp and how we designed it using Canva, you can find it in our video here!

Flyers

Even if you’re not at an exhibit and you’re just trying to make your business known, handing out flyers is pretty much the basics of the basics. It’s cost-effective, almost effortless (when using the right tools *cough* Canva *cough), and it’s tangible!

Tangible you say? Yep. Fun fact! The human brain easily trusts the things that you can touch, so flyers develop trust in people’s minds. Spice things up with a high quality print finish to make a really big impact when your customer’s grabbing it to read.

Business Cards

They’re like flyers, but wallet sized! Put your name, logo, contact details, a tagline, combined with a minimal yet striking design with a nice printed finish, and you’re good to go!

Candies! (yes, candies)

Surprisingly, having candies in your booth, stand, exhibit, actually attracts a lot of people!

Initially, some (well, maybe most) would just go to your booth just for the candies, but once you’ve got them there, you’ll be able to catch their attention quickly!

A Monitor

To make things even better, why not put a monitor on your exhibit’s table facing towards the people? That way you can showcase what you do even better! Add in a slideshow that showcases what you do, or maybe even a video! You can use your creativity on this one!

If you want to see more about the EMERGE conference 2023 and how we did our exhibit there, you can check out our video here!

If you find this blog helpful, you can check out our other platforms for more tips as well!

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