Making the Most of your Exhibition Stand

Part 1: Understanding the Benefits, Establishing your Objectives

Over the next few issues of WNIM this comprehensive series of articles will cover all aspects of the exhibiting process from planning to follow-up.

We will give you plenty of extremely useful tips which, if implemented, will help you to improve the effectiveness of your next exhibition, enabling you to attract more people to your stand and improve both the quality and quantity of leads generated.

The Benefits of Exhibiting
There are many companies who apportion a large percentage of their annual marketing budget to exhibiting. This is because they have discovered that there is an art to successful exhibiting which, if mastered, generates immense rewards.

So why are exhibitions, next to the internet, the fastest growing medium for sales promotion, and, in what ways can exhibiting be more beneficial than other forms of marketing.

A neutral environment
Firstly, an exhibition provides, a uniquely neutral environment where clients and prospects do not feel intimidated and feel able to hold open, honest and productive business discussions. It is, in essence, a serious business environment that is disguised as a social occasion.

Developing relationships with prospects
Exhibitions are one of the few marketing activities where your first contact with prospects is face to face therefore you can very quickly develop business relationships and gear your presentation to the prospect's interests and needs. The prospect is there because they are looking to make or influence a purchase. The atmosphere has heightened their awareness and captured imagination. They are interested and do not feel under any pressure.

You are armed with sales aids, product samples, your best support staff and a welcoming smile. You may have a seat or a drink to offer them and a brief respite from the surrounding hustle and bustle.

You immediately have something in common to talk about because you are both in neutral territory and can share opinions on the exhibition itself. With the right words and an air of hospitality, bonding is guaranteed and the sales process has begun.

Your face, your personality, and the benefits of your products and services will be indelibly imprinted on the minds of the visitors and your follow up call will be warmly welcomed. As you have already carefully qualified them, you will know exactly what needs to be discussed and what hot buttons to concentrate on.

Compare this with the reception you receive when making cold calls or even following up an advertisement or direct mail enquiry.

Building client relationships
Exhibitions give you the perfect platform to further develop your relationships with existing clients. You can conduct some valuable research, get first hand opinions on your products and services and even collect some valuable testimonials. Sometimes it presents you with the opportunity to introduce your satisfied customers to interested prospects thereby cementing a sale.

With the right incentives you can encourage a good percentage of your customers to meet with you each day of the exhibition and introduce them to additional products and services from your portfolio. You may find that many of your customers were completely unaware of the full extent of your product range and further sales can result. Sometimes the most productive use of an exhibition is not to find new customers but to sell more of your products and services to your existing ones!

A wealth of opportunity
There are few other sales forums where prospects and clients come to you and where you can meet so many of them in a single day. In the THREE DAYS OF an average SHOW YOUR representatives CAN LITERALLY SEE 10 - 50 TIMES THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE THAN they WOULD making SALES CALLS and no time or money is wasted travelling around the country.

No wastage
Unlike mailing or advertising where the majority of recipients have no interest, with exhibiting there is little or no wastage. People who come to your stand do so because they are genuinely interested. It doesn't mean they necessary have the authority to buy, but in the majority of cases they will be able to influence the purchasing decision.

High Impact
Exhibitions are uniquely a multi-sensory experience. They reach out and capture the interest of prospects in a way that no printed literature could ever achieve. Nothing beats the impact of live demonstrations, the bustling, enthusiastic crowds, the prize opportunities, the electric atmosphere, the stunning visual aids, the motivating music, the colourful imagery and beautiful people. They can also see, feel and try the very latest products and meet up with old friends within the industry.

A myriad of applications
At an exhibition you can hold many different events which would otherwise have needed separate dates, venues, personnel and promotion. For example you can conduct a product launch - after all the press are normally already there! You can run regular demonstrations. You can conduct seminars for customers or prospects. You can undertake market research. You can distribute samples, literature or newsletters. You can have or make sales appointments. You can cold call. You can entertain clients or host a business lunch.

One event, one investment - a whole host of promotional activities. Make the most of it!

Establishing your objectives
So you have decided to exhibit, but why? Certainly there are the benefits we've just mentioned but what do you want to achieve?

Some companies get into a habit of exhibiting simply because they did it the previous year before or because their competitors are present. Unfortunately for them the results of exhibiting are just as immeasurable and undefined as their objectives.

The successful exhibitor has very firm measurable objectives with a specific plan on how they are to be achieved.

Your objectives may include:
Make direct sales
Generate leads
Meet and entertain clients
Increase corporate awareness
Increase product awareness
Introduce existing clients to other products or services
Reinforce client relationships
Launch a new product or undertake market research

Whatever the objective make it measurable. This is essential if you want to assess and analyse the effectiveness of an exhibition and accurately gauge your return on the investment.

To show how objectives will determine the entire planning process we will concentrate on "lead generation", as whatever your objectives are, this will normally feature among them.

Firstly, make the objective measurable by deciding how many leads you would like to collect each day. You may decide to base this goal on the number of leads you've collected at previous exhibitions or the number of leads you would normally expect by spending the same amount of money on other marketing activities such as advertising or direct mail.

For example, if the budget for your exhibition is, let's say, £10,000 (taking everything into consideration), how many leads do you currently generate by spending £10,000 on advertising in a national newspaper or your local trade journal. Divide this by the number of days of the exhibition and this is your daily goal. Of course, you may want to add to this to ensure that exhibiting is even more successful. Of course, you must always review the goals as the show progresses but a goal must be there from the moment the show opens, so everyone knows exactly what they must achieve.

Reviewing the goals throughout the show is extremely important, because if the goal proves to be far too high you can quickly demoralise your staff and if the goal is too low you need to review it upward to make them increasingly more productive.

Now let's get specific. It's not enough just to collect leads, what you really want is well-qualified leads.

Now this begins to generate the planning process, because to reach this goal you will have to ask yourself some important questions.

For example, what constitutes a well qualified lead? Is it someone who leaves a business card? Someone who requests a brochure? Someone who is a decision maker? Someone who has available budget? Someone who is going to buy in the very near future? Someone who is considering placing a large order? Someone who represents a prestigious company? Someone who was so interested he has asked for a sales appointment? Or all of the above?

Having decided which of these criteria are important you need to plan the qualification process, how are you going to rate each prospect, and how are you going to quickly record this information in sufficient detail to make follow up effective.

Will you be supplying each member of staff with a qualifying questionnaire or simply note pads? Will you be hiring a light pen to scan visitor badges or do you want them to type leads into computer screens? This is the beginning of planning the lead generation process and the stand accessories.

Who is most able to generate interest and qualify the prospects? This will help you determine who to have on your stand.

How are we going to generate enough interest to reach these targets? This will inspire ideas for stand promotion, visitor approaches, open questions and stand design.

How am I going to motivate my staff to reach these objectives? This will determine the use of incentives, bonuses or other rewards.

So by focusing on your objectives the questions will continue to flow, thoughts will be stimulated, ideas generated and planning will commence in earnest!

Let's quickly see how planning would differ if your show objective was a product launch.

The staff would be more likely to include PR personnel to deal with the press or technical personnel to answer difficult questions. You would concentrate far more on pre-show publicity would be aimed at getting people to your stand at certain times of the day when the launch events take place. The emphasis on entertainment or glamour may be higher. The stand may need to have a larger open area, a larger AV display or be situated nearer to the press office or entrance way. A completely different planning process would begin taking your stand and staff in a completely different direction.

As you can see your objectives will influence the stand design, position, promotion, personnel, space, budget and logistics and must therefore must be decided before any effective planning can take place.

Next Issue: Exhibition Planning and Preparation