In designing an exhibit that fits your needs, you have to ask a lot of questions. Here are 7 essential questions – and why they matter.
1. What kind of image do you want to convey?
Your exhibit conveys your company’s personality - worthwhile because it creates an emotional reaction with your customers, and people buy for emotional reasons. The shapes, materials, surface treatments, colors, images, and even typography you choose help convey your company image. A company that wants a high-tech, innovative look will end up with a completely different exhibit than one that seeks a professional, established image.
2. What are you trying to accomplish?
Believe it or not, your objectives can dictate the actual shape of your exhibit. If you want to generate a lot of leads, you need an open, inviting space that allows easy entry for attendees and open sightlines for booth staffers. On the other hand, if you’re looking to build relationships with a select number of key individuals, then you need an exhibit with conference rooms where you can spend quality time closing sales. Two different objectives, two radically different exhibit designs. Exhibitors that want to build their image tend to go for bigger graphic images and larger architectural elements to create a bigger impression.
3. What booth sizes are right for you?
Many companies use several booth sizes - island exhibits for their national shows, and then inline exhibits for their regional or vertical market shows. With foresight and planning, exhibitors can design one large exhibit that can be reconfigured for their smaller booth spaces. Not only do they save money by not having to purchase multiple exhibit properties, but they also present a more consistent look at all their shows.
4. How can you stretch your exhibiting budget?
Everyone wants the Taj Mahal. Yet everyone must come up with a justifiable budget. Balancing those needs is the goal of every exhibit designer. Skyline uses its compact, lightweight exhibit materials to deliver an effective exhibit that still saves clients thousands of dollars in operating costs compared to traditional custom exhibits. For some exhibitors who need to preserve capital or only exhibit in a big space once a year, rental exhibits help maximize the budget. And reconfigurable components let exhibitors create many exhibits from one.
5. What matters to your target audience?
Answer this question, then make sure that’s what you’re showing on your exhibit. You’ll get to what matters by determining the benefits your clients are seeking and then what your key advantages are. It can take a lot of discussion to arrive at this, starting with what your products are, moving to their features, then the benefits of these features, until you distill the message down to the key benefits that drive your buyers’ purchasing decisions.
6. What message do you want your visitors to get in the first three seconds? And what do you want them to remember after visiting your booth?
Do you want them to remember your new products? Your competitive advantage? Or your company’s brand image? Keep it simple. Designers who are used to creating brochures or ads have a tendency to overload exhibit graphics with way too much information to be effective in a trade show exhibit. Think billboard, not bulletin board. It’s better to go for impact -- less is definitely more in trade show exhibit copy.
7. What functional needs do you have?
In creating an exhibit, you’re also creating a temporary workspace for your booth staffers. What are their needs? You may need to create areas for demos, presentations, conferences, and storage. And still balance that with your need to create an accessible exhibit with graphic messages.
The average trade show has over 400 exhibitors, so how do you choose the best booth space for you? Most shows give space-picking priority to the exhibitors who have been with them the longest. Yet some studies have found that where you are in the show hall has no effect on the amount of audience you receive to your booth. For every veteran exhibitor that requires a space in the center of the action, or at the front entrance to the hall, or near their biggest competitor, there are veteran exhibitors who flee from the same locations. All the same, the size of your booth space is a very important decision, where you must weigh the need to stand out from your competitors with a large booth, and yet having enough budget to exhibit at all the worthwhile shows for your company.
Evaluating your show schedule for next year? There are many strategies for doing this.
Perhaps the least complicated is simply picking up the phone and calling your top 10 clients and asking which shows they will attend.
Other strategies:
Involve key stakeholders, such as product marketing and sales, in the decision. The information and feedback you get will be invaluable in not only selecting the show, but also in developing your show sales process. It will also guarantee that everyone is on the same page.
If 80 percent of those attending a particular show don’t match your target audience, give it a “B” status and go to “A” shows first. Never attend a show that has less than 20 percent of your target audience unless you are attending a vertical market.
When deciding between an industry and vertical show keep these four thoughts in mind:
Vertical shows, while smaller, are purer in target audience, providing more return for the dollar.
Are you satisfying one marketing effort or several?
Will your competitors be there?
What markets do you already own versus those you do not own?
Your long-term goal should be a balance of general, national and vertical shows.
With more than 9,000 trade shows, choosing the right one can be a daunting task.
Yet there are many sources that can provide the information you need to choose the shows that will be most productive for your company, and yield the greatest return on your exhibit investment.
A key source for the answers is the show management itself. But you can also get valuable input from exhibitors, attendees, industry associations, publications, and suppliers, such as installation and dismantle companies or service contractors.
Before talking with any of those sources, clarify your exhibit goals. Once you have your own objective in focus, you're ready to find out if a given show will help you meet that objective. One of the first questions you should ask: Who attended the show in the past?
Show brochures generally trumpet the number of attendees at the previous show. But what does that number represent? It's more important to know who is attending, than how many. Ask for the attendee profile. The demographic data a show manager provides can help you evaluate both the audience and the show manager's research
Comprehensive data is gathered by computerized registration systems used at many trade shows today. Those systems record attendee's company name, size, and location; the individual's job title, buying authority, purchase intentions, budget, and timeframe. Look for the facts behind the generalities.
Then again, if you want to keep it simple, ask 10 customers which shows they go to. If you hear the same show name repeated again and again, you know where to go!
We attend 40 shows last year, but three different types: large industry shows, medium b-to-b customer shows and smaller consumer shows. We finally realized that we needed to group similar shows together and compare leads and results within each of the same group.
We gather cost per contact and then work the show(s) the following year to get the costs down and lead counts up on under-performing shows. If we can't bring an under-performing show into parity with those in the same group we re-evaluate our purpose for attending, our costs, who is attending and what our activities might be. If a show routinely falls at the high cost/low lead end of the range of the group it might be eliminated and/or replaced with a bigger presence at those shows that do deliver results for us.
This approach also provides us with "ammunition" to use with event staff to negotiate better costs and better locations to drive our cost per lead to a desirable level. We now have quantifiable information that gives us leverage with show management.
To start, select the shows you want to exhibit at only after you have set your trade show objectives. Then dig in to do some serious background research. The best bet is to look at the trade shows in your industry and carefully weigh the options. Talk to your employees -- what shows have worked in the past? Where do sales people see the customer’s needs leaning? Look at whose going to be there. Talk to your current and prospective customers -- is this a show they will be attending? And even if you are comparing trade shows with a wide variety of audience sizes and interests, you can use the Show Selection Worksheet in this section to estimate what number of attendees would be your organization’s potential audience. Finally, after you have compiled all the information, weigh your options carefully and select the shows that will suit your needs best.
Many in the industry confuse and interchangeably use return on investment (ROI) and return on objectives (ROO). ROI is a quantification of the financial return on our exhibiting investment compared to sales that are generated from the event. ROO is an analysis of the return that is generated from objectives where sales are not immediately closed, such as demonstrations, live presentations, customer meetings and hospitalities. We can measure both objective and subjective show objectives, but we cannot generate ROI without sales from the event. According to CEIR, 86 percent of exhibitors exhibit to generate new leads for sales so let's look at measuring those results:
1. After generating qualified leads insert them in your contact management program's database.
2. Categorize leads” "A"-Hot, "B" - Near Term, "C" - Longer Term, maybe only information request.
3. Define the "good" leads and their sales potential with management to translate the leads portion of the equation as a base in forecasting potential sales resulting from the show.
4. Create a closed loop system for lead management and activity reports from the field.
5. Create a report that tracks the leads for the first 90 and 180 days after the show closes.
6. Use the experience of the last show as the benchmark for future events.
How do exhibitors measure trade show results?
Sales from leads: 63%
ROI: 33%
Literature distributed: 16%
Sales leads: 60%
Number of inquiries: 40%
Don't measure: 2%
Number of contacts: 43%
Outside research: 4%
Doing a mid-year assessment of your trade show marketing program can pay big dividends. Among the benefits are:
1. You can determine which elements are getting the job done, and which ones need help. For example, if you find that your exhibit was not pulling in the expected share of traffic from a show, it may be that you need to look at what is being used for pre-show and at-show promotions. On the other hand, if your exhibit is bringing in plenty of visitors, but the lead counts are falling short, you may need to concentrate on staffing and presentation issues.
2. See how well your measurement systems are doing to deliver useful information. If you are using measurements that are appropriate to your goals and objectives, the information in your show reports should be clear and easy to read. On the contrary, if the information does not seem to apply to what you need for assessment and decision making, then you may need to look at what information you are gathering and its relevance to guiding your management efforts.
3. Apply performance related adjustments to the second half of the year to increase the efficiency in your year-end outcome. Take what has been learned from the first half and alter your game plan to do better.
4. Look ahead to 2009 budgeting issues, using the freshest data available. It will give you a much stronger base to build your program for next year.
Like the major-league sports, use the mid-year slowdown as your own “all-star break” to adjust strategy, do some coaching and plan ahead for the remainder of the season. It could be your year for the championship trophy.
Below is a list of questions you can ask yourself and others in your organization as you evaluate the design of your next exhibit. These questions focus attention on the visitors to your booth – which is why you exhibit at shows!
Is your organization name professionally presented and located at the highest possible point in your exhibit?
Are your graphics easily read from 10-20 feet away?
Is the exhibit theme easily read and presented with memorability in mind?
Is the key point in your graphics prominently positioned?
Are your tables the right height for the planned activities?
Are the video screens/monitors large enough and at the right height for easy viewing?
Is the demonstration area large enough for planned activities?
Is the lighting adequate for easy viewing of the exhibit?
Is there adequate storage space to eliminate a cluttered exhibit?
Are the photographs and backlit transparencies easily read from 10-20 feet away?
Is there adequate table space for lead-generating activities?
Do the colors attract the eye? Are they pleasing to the senses?
There are a lot of variables that drive success in the trade show and event industry, and one of them is YOU.
Maintain peak physical and mental condition
Be conditioned physically so you can withstand the rigors of 10-12 hour days, exhibit set-up and tear down, and the "work all day, fly all night" schedules. Have the mental agility to bob and weave with the variety you face day-in and day-out.
Master the skills of the profession
Be a student of exhibiting. To be in control of our exhibit and event programs, you need to master skills such as planning, budgeting, marketing, project management, elements of design, and logistics. You need to be a life-long learner.
Be tough on yourself
That doesn't mean work your self into a stressed-out condition that leads to burnout. It means setting goals, identifying what is working and creating plans for growth and professional expansion.
Work hard and smart
To achieve top performance you cannot just work hard. You also need to work smart so you have time and energy left to live the remainder of your life.
Maintain a positive attitude
To maintain balance and achieve the performance you desire, you need a positive attitude. We're not talking about "looking at the world through rose colored glasses." We are talking about glasses being half full and not half empty. We are talking about strategic thinking that allows you to work out issues logically and rationally, not emotionally.
At the end of the day, what would “success” actually look like? What things would have had to happen that would make you think this event was a good one?
Experience has shown that there are four areas that serve as the cornerstones for nearly all show objectives - and, for that matter, all marketing ventures. These are typically tightened down with measures and assigned strategies that enable reaching them.
The four:
1. Increasing sales and reinforcing market share
2. Increasing share of customers and getting current customers to buy more
3. Introducing new products
4. Positioning or repositioning your organization, its brand and products
Most exhibit professionals are known as logistics experts who ensure that exhibit properties get to the show on time, take care of making hotel and airline reservations and order show services within the deadline period. Candidly speaking, too many exhibiting companies fail to do their homework about shows. They fail to set objectives, fail to measure results and fail to follow up on leads. Too many exhibitors go to shows for vague reasons such as showing support for an industry or an association and no other expectations. Or they go because their competition is going which, by the way, can be measured but most don’t do so. They go because they have always gone and again have no expectations other than wanting traffic in the booth as a measure of “being seen.” In fact, less than half of the companies who exhibit actually set out formalized measurable goals, so like the old adage says, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. In most cases, there is a major communications disconnect between what senior management expects and what the exhibit manager thinks they want to hear. Nine times out of ten, this disconnect is due to senior management’s failure to communicate what results are expected if budgets are to remain intact.
