Inventors struggle with marketing for lots of reasons.  It’s expensive, difficult to understand and hard to measure.  Attending a tradeshow is the fastest and least expensive way to gather the critical information that you need to successfully get your product to market.

When you are looking for the right tradeshow, it should be a professional show, one that is not open to the general public.  You are looking for the professional show that is for your particular industry, not an inventor convention (these are a feeding frenzy and you are the main course).  Don’t plan on being an exhibitor.  You are going to walk the floor and to learn.  At some point in the future, you may decide to exhibit; but, for the first and maybe second time, you need to walk the floor and learn about other manufacturers, distributors and products.

I travel to tradeshows for or with my clients.  We have our strategy mapped out before we go to make sure we get the most from the show.  Different shows have different requirements for attending.  Remember, at the early phase, you are not going to try to sell anything.  You simply want to learn. 

Learning how to get into these professional shows can be a challenge; however, a good tradeshow will provide you with all the contacts and information you need to start successfully marketing you invention.  Your other alternative is to spend millions of dollars on advertising or months, maybe years, of time trying to get past the gatekeepers to talk to the decision makers.