A great source of insight into which events might be most appropriate for you are your existing customers – consider asking them which their ‘cannot miss’ events are. Quite often exhibitors focus only on meeting new prospects at trade shows, completely forgetting about their current contact base. Trade shows provide a fantastic platform for showcasing your latest product or service and building relationships with customers, as well as demonstrating your investment in the wider industry. The opportunity for your senior team to meet several contacts in one place over a couple of days can be massively more efficient than trying to organise individual one-to-ones in the field. Equally, busy stands always attract more people – we’re generally pretty nosey people in business and scared of missing out, so if you invite existing customers to your stand it all helps to make it look busier and attracts more passers-by. Referring back to our previous point about exhibiting where your competitors are, it’s worth researching which events they are investing in to see whether there is any potential for your business.
(Thimmesch, 2013)
Where?
These days international events are much more achievable (see Chapter 7) and the opportunity to sell to global markets is more attractive than ever. Before you take the plunge and sign up to exhibit abroad, however, remember that the majority of visitors to most shows will be from the domestic market. If you’re not able to service the market, or if the market doesn’t exist in the country you’re looking to exhibit in, then it’s worth seriously considering whether that’s the right trade show for you. If you decide to exhibit at an international trade event you will also need to clarify exactly who you’re looking to connect with at the event – is it a distributor or agent or are you looking to service the market yourself directly? It is also worth considering which markets international visitors are coming from and whether you have the resources to service these markets – if 40% of visitors are coming to a show in Europe are from South-East Asia but you don’t have the capacity to service that location, would it be worth you investing in a show that for 40% of visitors you cannot supply? Aside from just the implications of visitor origin, there’s also significant additional cost and complexity involved in exhibiting at shows outside of your domestic market, so any investment needs to work harder than ever.
How?
In researching potential trade shows it’s useful to understand how the event organisers advertise and recruit visitors and how hard they are going to work on your behalf. Event organisers want you to have a successful event as it increases your likelihood of rebooking, as well as acting as an advocate to other organisations in your network – so don’t be afraid of asking relevant questions. Organisers should be happy to share what they’re planning on doing and how they’ll get people through the door, as it’s all part of the package you’re paying for. If they’re reluctant to talk about what their marketing plan is or give your vague references about campaigns it might be worth questioning whether they are a partner you want to work with. It’s worth reviewing who their previous exhibitors were and even asking for contact details so you can get some feedback from companies who have previously exhibited. GDPR regulations permitting, if you can get the details of a couple of visitors to speak to about their experience and what they are wanting from the show this will also add insight to your decision.
Reviewing the list of speakers at an exhibition will give you a good indication of the how well the event is respected within the industry – are the speakers likely to be of interest to or influence the type of customers you’re hoping to meet at the show? If it’s not in the public domain then ask the event organiser to send you through the seminar programme and speaker bios of previous events – if nothing else, this gives you details of industry leaders that you might want to contact ahead of the show and invite to your stand if you do exhibit. In these initial engagements with an event organiser you should also get a sense of their culture and how supportive they are going to be in helping you achieve your objectives. In the budget planning section, we will talk more about how you can stretch your budget through asking for added value elements such as speaker slots on live features, or inclusion at networking events and these initial discussions with organisers will give you a flavour of how open they are likely to be to such requests. All good quality event organisers will be keen to work in collaboration with you to help you achieve your objectives rather than just sell you space – after all if you add value to their show by being creative, it all benefits their visitors.
In addition to the general marketing campaigns that the event organisers will run, it is also useful to research who the media partner is. If there isn’t one, this eliminates another channel through which you can publicise your participation in the show and it is worth questioning why the relevant trade publications aren’t covering the event – is it not seen as credible, is it not newsworthy? If there is a media partner this gives you a fantastic opportunity to speak to a broader audience about why they will benefit from coming to see you at the show as well as driving brand exposure to a much wider audience (see Section 3.8, pre-show marketing).
Researching a show is going to take a bit of time and some clever questioning of the event organisers, customers and previous exhibitors but if you are thinking about investing significant sums of money then you want to be sure you’re investing it where you have the highest potential returns… which brings us neatly onto budgets!
3.3 Budget planning
We may have mentioned it before, but trade shows cost money, there’s no escaping the fact. When it comes to budgeting it’s not about how much money can you save, but ensuring you have a realistic budget in the first place and making every single penny work as hard as it possibly can. Trade shows aren’t the place to cut costs as it will show in every element and reflect on your brand image, but they are the place to get creative and find efficient solutions.
(Skyline, 2010)
Trees provide a useful analogy to think about budgeting for trade shows in demonstrating the amount of invisible cost that goes into delivering an event. Yet only with solid roots and investing in some of the non-visible elements can the branches and leaves flourish.
Whether you’re a business owner setting your own budget or working in an organisation and having to influence a senior team to invest, it’s crucial to consider the root costs that can all have a huge impact on your