Making your trade fair stand too fancy can actually be a bad thing
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Interview with Andres Tarto, the Marketing Manager at hydrogen company Elcogen.
Previously, he has led marketing at Fotoluks, Levira’s TV division, the Estonian Internet Foundation, and several other organizations. He says his own journey as a marketer has taken him “from B2C to B2B, and from an Estonia-centered world toward an international direction.”
Elcogen is an Estonian hydrogen technology manufacturer. The company sells its products around the world to other businesses that integrate Elcogen’s technology into their own equipment, and it has raised a total of €140 million in investment.
Andres Tarto will speak about Elcogen’s experience marketing at trade fairs at the Parrot Baltic B2B conference taking place on June 4–5: https://www.marketingparrot.com/parrot
What are your tasks at Elcogen?
One part of my job is product-focused content creation for our digital channels. When I started in 2023, we had 2,200 followers on LinkedIn; today we have reached 9,700, all organically. We have not run follower-type campaigns, because those would mostly bring in low-quality followers.
Another area is trade publications. In our field, there are two or three publications where we try to maintain a presence from time to time with both sponsored content and advertising.
Then there is a whole range of ongoing tasks—visuals, presentations, and other materials. The goal, of course, is quality leads. To support that, I keep the gates open on both LinkedIn and our website.
In addition, we run LinkedIn campaigns in certain regions. We do not approach a person as a private individual, but as a representative of a company. Our job is to make it as easy as possible for them to pass our information on internally and “sell” us within their own organization.
We also keep Google Ads active in some countries, even though it is not as precisely targetable as LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, we can choose the exact industries and job levels we want to reach. You cannot do that nearly as precisely on Google, but we still keep that channel running alongside organic visibility. And then, of course, trade fairs.
How is your performance judged most of all? What makes people say you’ve done well—or not?
The most important thing is bringing high-quality sales leads into the company. Second, we look at channel metrics—website traffic, LinkedIn growth, and whether our message is spreading in international media. Third, naturally, successful trade fairs and whether they also generate leads. I do have other KPIs as well, but the real purpose of the job is still to bring us new leads. That is what truly counts.
But how do you make sure those leads are high quality? Not just people showing interest or random contacts, but genuinely relevant prospects?
Of course, there is also a lot of noise, but you can recognize a quality lead from the content. Industry acronyms and technological keywords come into play, and from those we can usually understand fairly quickly whether there is a fit or not. That technological filter is quite strong, and the people who write to us generally know how to describe their needs briefly and accurately.
So when someone has to fill in an open-text form explaining what they actually want, that already verifies a certain level of quality by itself. A short “interested” is suspicious. But if they describe a real need, that is a different matter.
How do you find those potential buyers or customers in the first place? There are many companies, and within them many possible contacts. How do you identify them?
We map potential companies, and they already exist in our pipeline at some level. We have not had the kind of need where we would start sending hundreds of highly targeted emails in a very systematic way, hoping that something comes back.
Instead, we keep the channels open and make sure we are visible at trade fairs. Trade fairs are definitely very important, because we also promote our presence in advance, and many people come to our stand already knowing about us. At the same time, the other side of the coin is that many people also come there trying to sell themselves to you.
What does the customer’s decision-making process look like? Once you have a lead and someone has shown interest, what happens next?
We get in touch quickly, try to understand the scope of the project, and involve technical specialists. This is a world of meetings, conversations, and close cooperation. It is difficult to use ready-made questionnaires or standard information packages, because often the companies approaching us are developing something new for themselves. This is not a conventional world where everything has already been done a hundred times.
You are describing a very technical and rational world. How important are creativity and distinctiveness in your marketing and sales?
Engineers naturally want to bring out as many nuances as possible, and often in language that is too technical. The marketer’s role here is almost like that of a translation bureau. More than that—a simplifying translation bureau focused on the value proposition. You need to understand what the real value and advantage are that deserve to be brought into focus. And one message at a time, because you cannot say everything at once.
I am a supporter of explanatory visuals—for example, in our case, showing what a fuel cell is, what a stack is, how these form a larger whole, and where our role is within that system. That kind of careful, calm explanatory approach works, in my opinion.
If these things are displayed large on the trade fair walls, then it is also much easier for our people to speak about the whole picture in front of them.
Do I believe in very abrupt or shocking B2B creativity? Honestly, not really. I worry that it can create confusion. On the other side, after all, are people from companies who have to explain our offering internally. If they are left with a strange feeling that they are not entirely sure whether this is a joke, or some very “cool” solution, or what exactly it is, then they lose the confidence to sell it further inside their own company.
Trust is number one here. Especially with expensive things, trust inevitably goes hand in hand with a certain conservatism. In B2C, you can be a bit more wild. In some cases, it can turn into parody or simply come across the wrong way. So for me, the key words are calm, explanatory, clear, and simple.
But standing out is still important. Otherwise how do you get attention among competitors?
I agree, but distinctiveness does not have to mean being silly or going over the top. It can also simply mean having some thoughtful accent that makes your visual language livelier and more recognizable.
And honestly, if you think about the old stock photos—the smiling stock-image people who used to be on every website—that is exactly the kind of clichéd boredom I would want to avoid at all costs. To me, that is completely yesterday’s world.
Let’s talk about trade fairs. How do you stand out there?
I have now been organizing about five trade fairs a year for the third year running. I am the project manager for them, I design them, order the required solutions, and so on.
In general, we have gotten into a pretty good rhythm with major trade fairs, but cultural differences naturally play a role. Organizing a fair in Japan or the US is somewhat more complicated than in Europe. There are many background-related nuances, and in practical terms some solutions are more difficult than, for example, in Germany.
The first simple trick for standing out at a trade fair: get a corner stand. It sounds banal, but if you have two open sides, you are immediately much more visible. If you are boxed in by two walls, you have physically and visually made yourself much narrower.
The second thing is the visual solution. We have placed our explanatory design large on the wall, left some breathing room around it, and added QR codes so people can immediately continue on the website. I later connected those to analytics to see how much they are used. A small thing, but practical. In addition, of course, there is a screen showing videos—product videos or visual slides about our topics. Dynamic content keeps people’s eyes on the stand.
The products themselves need to be well lit. From experience, I have learned that it is worth ordering a bit more lighting, because that makes the whole stand more visible and helps the product stand out better in the space.
And one more thing: making your stand too fancy can actually be a bad idea. At trade fairs, I have seen stands that look so impressive and overbuilt that people simply do not dare to walk in. It creates the feeling that maybe this is not for me. A bit like walking into a luxury brand store and suddenly feeling self-conscious—like, am I even supposed to come in here?
