Exhibitors: key planning considerations
The power of exhibitions
If you take time to plan ahead...Exhibitions allow you to further virtually all of your strategic sales and marketing goals at once, from sales and brand building to market research and media relations.
Other companies will all be vying for the attention of visitors, i.e. your customers, but by planning your exhibition and following a few simple steps you can ensure that nothing gets between you and your prospects.
Know your objectives
Even a company that knows nothing about exhibiting would find it difficult to come away from a busy show without generating new business. After all, the business comes to you.
However, those companies who put more effort in, reap bigger rewards. So plan your entire show campaign before you start, beginning with setting realistic, quantifiable objectives for participating.
Objectives give you a way to review results and assess the success of the Exhibition. Consider how the Exhibition fits in with the rest of your marketing strategy and then decide on specific and measurable goals.
Some of the main objectives are:
- Lead generation and building a database for sales
- Cross or upselling current customers
- Building customer relations
- Educating new customers
- Market research; testing a new product, analysing market perception/awareness
- Brand building; raising awareness, market positioning
- Product launch/showcase through demostrations or workshops
- Identify new distribution channels or partners
- Generate coverage on relevant media / industry channels
Set a Budget
Once core objectives are set, determine the tasks to be done and estimate the costs involved so that a detailed budget can be drawn up. Don’t make the mistake of blowing your entire budget on stand design – remember to allow sufficient funds for promotion, staff training, subsistence and post show activity for following up leads.
Design your stand to meet objectives
Choose a design that fits your brand (and budget) and your stand will say a lot about your company. The key is to attract attention amongst all the other stands and your competition. This doesn’t mean that you must have the biggest double decker stand with expensive event technology. Clever, simple design can be just as eye-catching.
Some considerations for your stand design:
- Not everyone knows your brand; say what you do
- Promote benefits, not features
- Less is usually more; simple and clear will stand out
- Ensure essential text is at eye level or above – not hidden behind a table or sofa
- Plan where your furniture will go to compliment your stand – inform your designer of plans before he/she starts to create ideas
Attracting visitors to your stand goes beyond design.
If your objective is for C-level meetings on the stand have you planned your furniture or meeting room set up accordingly?
If your objective is to meet as many new leads as possible, do you really want lots of comfy sofas for people to lounge about on?
If you are launching a new product have you thought about how best to represent this; maybe through video demos, on-stand presentations, invited one-on-one trials?
How will people remember you and your company over the competitor; humourous staff, pretty promo girls, fun gizmos, personalised gifts, on-stand engaging entertainment, the best lunch spread?
stand staff
The amount of stands you walk past where staff are disinterested, too busy chatting, or eating smelly food are too numerous. Don’t be the exhibitor that let the visitor get away because they were put off by an employee who didn’t have the answers to their questions.
It is estimated that 80% of the success of your stand is down to
the people fronting it, so make sure yours are suited and well trained for the job.
Choose your team carefully
The number of staff manning the stand and mix of skill sets should be goal-driven; do you need technical staff to explain the detail? Top managers to meet blue chip clients? Energetic sales people for maximum engagement?
Don’t skimp on numbers
Exhibitions are hard work. Allow for adequate cover during busy periods and rest breaks and the costs of bringing one or two more people will be outweighed by increased productivity. Rule of thumb is to allow 1 person per 5 sq. metres, double in busy periods.
Stand selling is a specialist skill
Set aside a day to teach the fundamentals of how to encourage visitors onto the stand, how to open and close conversations and how to qualify visitors. Visitors fall into 3 categories – the really interested, the curious and the don’t want to knows. Staff have to be able to approach all 3 groups, categorise them immediately and allocate when and who will follow up.
Use incentives to motivate staff
Targets will depend on your show objectives but encourage staff to exceed them by offering incentives and light-hearted competitions.
Plan your lead taking and management
Think about the type of information you want to collect from prospects at the show – how you are going to get it, record it, store it and follow it up. Do you want a scanner to do it automatically (usually rented by the organiser)? Or will you have ipads for staff to complete while with a prospect? Or will you simply collect business cards and have a way of filing them at the end of each day?
Don’t waste your expensive exhibition time by not having goals for the team. Your sales team should come back to the office with business cards, prospects, follow up meetings and a juicy report for management to prove the ROI of the event.
Promote your presence
Research has shown that 83% of the most successful companies at a range of exhibitions (in terms of business generated and leads collected) were ones that took the trouble to inform their prospects and customers before the show.
Don’t rely on visitors finding you on the Exhibitor list – there are hundreds of other companies all vying for their attention.
1. Send a personal invite by email to relevant customers, prospects and partners.
2. Invite people to your stand through your social channels, clearly stating your stand number.
3. Include a banner on your website, e-newsletters, social platforms up to 6 weeks before the show.
4. If you have something newsworthy send a press release to the trade media – or work with the organiser PR team to help do this.
5. If you have a large budget, promote your brand and products by advertising in the show website, catalogue or daily paper.
6. One step further could be to take a sponsorship package to really splash your brand in front of your audience, through multiple channels pre-show, onsite and after the event. Usually these can be tailored to meet your objectives.
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So what do you do nextt?
Get started! Draw up a timetable of key tasks, and working backwards from the event to determine who is responsible for what and deadline dates for completion.
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