If you’ve already got a trade show in mind and want to get maximum value from this book we’d recommend using it alongside The Exhibitionist Project Manager Journal (available from www.inspiringexhibitors.com) which will give you the tools, templates and timelines all in one handy folder that will help you track your progress and developments as you plan a fantastic event.
There will be regular blogs on the www.inspiringexhibitors.com website which will give you any new ideas that we’ve come across in the trade as well as fortnightly podcasts with experts from within the industry to help give you even more inspiration and advice. You can sign up for the Inspiring Exhibitors newsletter via the website too. We’d love to hear your feedback about the book, your planning, what you’ve learnt and what more you need to know so please get in touch any time via Twitter (@ProExTraCo) or email [email protected].
Trade shows and exhibitions are always evolving, and this book is just part of a much bigger conversation. The basic framework for delivering a great show hasn’t changed much over the years, but the tactical execution, such as stand design and digital and social media are changing fast. The key factor in ensuring your tradeshows deliver meaningful and measurable results, is continuously building your company’s exhibiting capability. How best to exhibit at trade events has been debated for decades and has become more complex, with the body of knowledge on executing profitable trade shows exploding. However, it’s often hidden in pockets of excellence that in isolation don’t give a full appreciation of the end-to-end process. Far too few exhibitors are keeping up with the changes and seeking out the latest thinking and best exhibiting practices. Many companies are operating on an exhibiting model that is 10 years out of date where they all seem to know what they are spending, but too few know what they are really getting in return or how to better it. By reading this book and acting on its contents you will undoubtedly improve the chances of generating more profitable leads from your investment and maybe you’ll put your shovels away too and climb above your competitors! We wish you the very best of luck on your trade show journey.
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
—Plato, The Republic
PART I
WHY ENGAGE?
CHAPTER 1
WHY TRADE SHOWS MATTER EVEN MORE IN THE DIGITAL AGE
It’s hard to say exactly what it is about face-to-face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn’t yet been duplicated by technology.
—Paul Graham, computer scientist, entrepreneur,
venture capitalist, author and essayist
The digitally connected world
From a worldwide population of over 7.5bn in 2017, there are 3bn active social media accounts, with people spending on average 2.5 hours a day scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and every other existing and emerging platform. That’s 2bn active Facebook users, 500m of us on LinkedIn and over 1.3bn Twitter accounts plus Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and all the others. In addition to all this frenetic social media activity, it’s estimated over 269bn emails are sent globally every day with the average office worker receiving over 121 emails a day (Tschabitscher, 2018). The culmination of all this activity resulted in a staggering 2.3 trillion dollars of global on-line consumer spending in 2017 with predictions that this will grow to over 4.4 trillion dollars by 2021 (Statista, 2017). Therefore, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the internet was the holy grail for generating sales growth in our digitally engaged era, but the numbers only tell half a story. Dig a little deeper and all is not quite as promising as it first seems. Ninety-six per cent of people who discuss brands online don’t follow the brand itself suggesting that although they are being ‘talked’ about there isn’t necessarily a deep or sustainable relationship (Hainla, 2018). There are an estimated 270m fake Facebook accounts and of the 1.3bn Twitter accounts, only 300m are live, with only 1/3 of those being accessed daily. Whilst LinkedIn markets itself as a network for building business relationships, the average CEO has almost 1,000 connections (Sikandar, 2018), implying that whilst broad, the connections are unlikely to be deep or trusting. And remember those 269bn emails that get sent every day – almost 50% are registered as spam and never even make it to their intended recipient (Sikandar, 2018).
As a brand or service fighting to make itself heard in a crowded digital marketplace, the competition is tough with 65m business pages on Facebook, 500m daily Tweets, 300m company pages on LinkedIn (Sikandar, 2018) – not to mention the 95m images which are uploaded to Instagram every day and the 75bn ideas currently listed on Pinterest (Aslam, 2018). Admittedly, there are tools, software and agencies that can help ensure marketing content is generated and targeted so it hits the most relevant audience but that can suck up time, money and resource for any business regardless of size.
Digital revolt
In addition to the mass of noise on social media, there is a growing tide of disengagement, with suggestions that our love of (un)sociable media may be reaching a tipping point. Growing reports of fake news, tampering with political elections, invasive advertising, jealousy over aspirational lifestyles, invasion of privacy, trolling and cyber bullying are leading us to question whether as a population we’re starting to crave more human, emotional and meaningful relationships. Research from software provider Kapersky found that almost half of all respondents felt jealous when their friends’ posts received more likes than their own (Ismail, 2017). Unsurprisingly 72% of people were frustrated with invasive advertising that interrupted their communications or distracted them from a transaction they were looking to complete (Ismail, 2017). Millennials particularly seem to be deserting the social media channels they have grown up with, seeking instead more immersive brand experiences which they can feel a part of. According to Origin, a Boston-based market research group, 34% of Gen Z’ers are saying goodbye to social media while 64% have decided to take a break from it (McAteer, 2018).
This trend is flowing through into brand planning, evidenced by the significant growth in experiential marketing budgets in recent years with organisations instead looking to invest in real-life experiences to build relationships and drive loyalty. Experiential marketing covers a broad range of different tactics but could include consumer roadshows, sponsorship, trade exhibitions, pop-ups, permanent installations and even augmented reality. Campaign research reported that in 2017 Chief Marketing Officers expected to allocate between 25–50% of marketing budgets to experiential tactics over the next 2–5 years. The research showed that positive results were being generated from deeper interactions with customers in both the Business-to-Business (B2B), selling through a third party and Business-to-Consumer (B2C), selling directly to the end user, environments with almost 60% agreeing that live events create the opportunity for deeper and more sustainable relationships which drive more frequent and higher value transactions.