Powerful Exhibit Marketing

The Complete Guide to Successful Trade Shows, Conferences, and Consumer Shows

Barry Siskind

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780470834695
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780470675496
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

A complete guide to successful trade shows and exhibitions

Trade shows, consumer shows, product launches, sporting events, and other opportunities to interact face-to-face with customers have become an important part of the marketing mix. Recent studies show that the percentage of the total marketing communications budget spent on event marketing ranged from over 9% to a staggering 29%. In 2003, North America alone hosted over 13,000 trade and consumer shows, each one with hundreds of exhibitors, and thousands of visitors. Beyond traditional trade shows, there are countless other opportunities for exhibitors to interact with their customers directly and improve the bottom line, such as mall displays, corporate events, road shows, and permanent displays.

Well chosen and executed events can shorten the sales cycle significantly and put you miles ahead of the competition, but you need to have an exhibit plan that's well thought out, organized, and executed. While some large organizations have a dedicated exhibit staff, often the role of exhibit management lands on the desk of an unsuspecting, overworked, or unwilling sales or marketing person who needs to get results from their exhibit investment, but doesn't know where to start. The Power of Exhibit provides the step-by-step advice you need to exhibit successfully. This definitive guide to trade shows and other event marketing shows how to set objectives, budget for your event and measure its success in ROI, choose the right show and find the right audience, turn leads into business, design booths, work the show, gather information and intelligence, and much more.

PART ONE

Managing the Fiscal Resources

“Give us the tools and we will finish the job.”

—Winston Churchill—

CHAPTER ONE

Exhibiting Objectives

“Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.”

—Washington Irving—

Does this sound familiar? “We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here.” It’s not just the jingle we all sang when the big yellow bus with vinyl seats and a sticky floor pulled into the camp parking lot. It has also become the theme song for 80 percent of all exhibitors at trade shows.

Ask exhibitors why they invest in a trade show and you will hear:

• “We always do this show.”

• “We have to be there because our competition is there.”

• “My boss thought this might be a good place to be.”

• “If we don’t go our customers will miss us.”

• “We’re here because we’re here ...”

Investing in a show without setting clear, focused, measurable objectives is like piloting an airplane without a flight plan. Without a focus for all your activities, there is no way to know if you have achieved your goal.

You must establish your objectives before doing anything else. However, it is not as easy as it sounds. You may believe exhibiting does not fall within your marketing activities; you may have conflicting goals among your exhibiting partners; you may have non-sales staff who don’t see the value. So, let’s walk through the necessary steps to ensure that your next show has a clear focus.

Objectives are the “fundamental strategy of business.” Business objectives must be set in all operational areas, including marketing, innovation, human resources, financial resources, physical resources, productivity, social responsibility, and profit requirements.

Your first step is to gain insight into your organization’s “basic strategy objective.” This term, coined by management guru Peter Drucker in the early 1970s, is still something that organizations have trouble grasping. Your basic strategy objective answers questions such as: Why are we here? Who are we? What is our real purpose? Whether you are examining your purpose personally or corporately, the process is crucial because it examines the core of your being and establishes the logical beginning point of your discussion of objectives.

Some companies look only at profit. Obviously if there is no profit, the very survival of the corporation is at risk. However, an organization that defines itself only in terms of money and return on investment (ROI) is shallow.

Your basic strategy objective goes beyond profit to the very center of your corporate existence. When your business was formed, what purpose did your founders set out for themselves? What motivated them to choose their particular mode of business? Once you understand this, ask yourself if that original focus still has relevance in today’s economy.

Here are some recognizable, basic strategy objectives that will assist you in understanding this concept:

• Mary Kay Cosmetics: “We reach out to the heart and spirit of women, enabling personal growth and fulfillment for the women whose lives we touch.”

• Walt Disney Corporation: “To be the world’s leading producer and provider of entertainment and information.”

• IBM: “To be the best service organization in the world.”

• 3M: “To actively contribute to sustainable development through environmental protection, social responsibility, and economic process.

• McDonalds: “To be the world’s best quick-service restaurant experience.”

• Wal-Mart: “To deliver quality products at outstanding values.”

All of these are examples of highly profitable corporations. In each case, their mission holds a greater purpose. Profit therefore becomes the result.

But, as Drucker explains, these basic strategy objectives are not real objectives. Rather, they are intentions. The dictionary defines intention as “something that somebody plans to do or achieve.” Intentions become the rudder that steers a ship through the voyage and a statement that rallies the crew. It is motivational, purposeful, and fulfilling. Without a basic strategy objective, corporations tend to float aimlessly like a ship without a destination.

Setting basic strategy objectives is only the beginning. Unless you take the important next step—setting a clear direction on how to transform intentions into actions—basic strategy objectives will never be achieved. Your marketing plan answers the question, “How do we communicate our intentions to those who will benefit from its message?” You have many traditional choices, including print, television, radio, packaging, direct mail, telemarketing, billboards, flyers, brochures, the Internet, seminars, your sales force, and, of course, exhibitions. Each marketing tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Each must be examined and chosen carefully to ensure that your corporate message reaches its intended audience.

Exhibits hold a special place in the marketing mix. Doug Ducate, CEO of the Centre for Exhibition Industry Research, has referred to exhibitions as “the last vestige of face-to-face marketing.” It is important that you choose the tool that gives you the most bang for your buck. While some of these marketing tools are face to face, such as your sales force or seminars, exhibiting is a magnification of the process. At a well-chosen event, you can reach more people in a shorter time than with all the other tools combined. Answer the following questions to determine if exhibiting fits into your marketing plan.

• Why do we want to meet our customers face to face?

• Do we have the resources to do it properly?

• What return do we expect from the exercise?

• How does face-to-face marketing reinforce our overall marketing plan?

• How does our overall marketing plan complement the basic strategy objective?

As a result of answering these questions, you may learn that your exhibit program has more than one objective. At this point it is important to look at each one. You might discover that not all objectives can be satisfied at all shows. In your show selection you may now choose some shows to satisfy objective A and other shows to satisfy objective B. While it’s possible to get more than one result from a particular show, with a diversity of visitors attending, the most likely outcome is that you will have to attend different shows to achieve different objectives.

THREE LEVELS OF EXHIBIT OBJECTIVES

As if things were not complicated enough, we now look at exhibiting objectives on three separate levels: corporate, departmental, and individual.

Corporate objectives such as branding, awareness, or image tie the overall marketing plan into a particular show or group of shows. These objectives dictate the overall look and feel of the booth and the message it conveys regardless of the number of internal partners that share the same space. When visitors approach a well-known exhibitor, they recognize the name or brand. Reference to individual departments at this stage can lead to confusion. For example, if you are IBM with forty or fifty different departments, your public knows your word-mark colors, and the look of a typical IBM booth. At first glance, the difference between one department or another is irrelevant. Now here is where you have a delicate balancing act. Your objective at this level is corporate, but it must also be show-specific. While the corporate identity is crucial, it must also answer the question—What is IBM doing at this show?—which brings us to the second level of objectives—departmental objectives.

Each department has its own objectives, which justify their investment in the show. Such objectives are often focused on a specific product, service, or industry need. Whereas IBM has a corporate brand to support, individual departments may be promoting personal computers, property management services, small business solutions, or networking software.

These first two levels of objectives—corporate and departmental—can be found in the following list of 100 reasons to exhibit. As you read through these objectives, identify those that fall into each category for your exhibit program. Ultimately, they fall into two basic categories that are appropriate for your exhibit program—sales and communication.

Sales objectives are those that lead directly to greater profitability. These include increasing sales, gathering qualified leads, and setting appointments. However, some exhibitors decide that sales are not for them and choose a communic...

Table of contents

• Praise
• OTHER BOOKS BY BARRY SISKIND
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART ONE - Managing the Fiscal Resources
• PART TWO - Managing the Physical Aspects
• PART THREE - Managing the Human Resources
• Index
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR