Question

Q1) What value can an exhibition add to a meeting or event?

A. What feature areas could enhance traffic on the exhibition floor?

B. What information does an exhibition organizer need to know about potential attendees?

Answer 1

Value addition of Exhibition

There’s a lot to gain from holding an exhibition as a business. They serve as a fantastic way to promote your business on a large scale, reaching out to large numbers of potential partners, staff, customers and suppliers in equal measure.

Exhibitions are a great feature include as part of a brand conference, where a business has stands to showcase their products and services, alongside potential exhibitions from partners and suppliers.

You might be running the conference and choose to have some stands to highlight new business or product developments. Or you might be invited to exhibit at a trade show or another industry conference.

Exhibition stands are a fantastic way to show off different aspects of your business and help you to create ways for people to engage with your brand. The theme of your exhibition and what you choose to showcase might vary depending on the theme of the event, the size of the stand or if you are about to launch a new product or service.

Exhibitions are open to a large and sometimes diverse range of audiences (usually the general public). This provides you with a platform to promote your product or service to a broader group that may have little or no knowledge of your products and services.

Depending on your type of business, product and market testing can be carried out at trade shows and exhibitions to gain industry or general opinion about your offering.

Being involved in a trade show or exhibition can provide you with opportunities to branch out to business-to-business trading and create a customer database from the visitors to your display booth.

1. What feature areas could enhance traffic on the exhibition floor

Drawing Traffic on the exhibition floor

• Plan Ahead - Trade show consultants and experts cite a statistic illustrative of the risk of leaving convention or show traffic to chance: Roughly 70 percent of show attendees plan a list of whom they're going to visit before ever entering the convention center doors. They say that number makes plain the power – and necessity – of pre-show outreach. The first would be to contact your in-house file – that's your regular customers, local contacts, and solid prospects. The other Registered attendees of the show.
• Offer an Incentive, But Be Selective- Getting a piece of mail into a potential client's hand isn't enough, though, Stevens says. They'll also need a solid reason to show up. If you have a new product launching – especially if there's at least an aspect of it that will be completely fresh to consumers – promote that.
• Be Aggressive, Not Abrasive- If you're debuting a product, and actually want a lot of general buzz and interest in your product and brand, the golden rule is: "If you have a product people can play with, make sure you can bring it," "The whole point of face-to-face marketing is so people can touch and feel things."
• Look Sharp- It's not just the shiny things inside your booth that can be a draw for attendees. The booth itself can attract visitors. This year's Exhibitor magazine exhibit design awards hailed mostly booths that created a calm sanctuary in an otherwise chaotic exhibit atmosphere. And doing something that stands out doesn't have to be expensive.

-       Be visible and legible from down an aisle on the showroom floor
-       Have words that give a potential client a good reason to stop.
-       Answer the question for a client: What's in it specifically for me?
-       Not use a lot of jargon, such as "exceptional interface."
-       Include a solution to a business problem.

B) What information does an exhibition organizer need to know about potential attendees?

When you’re looking at trade show attendance, you’re looking at two things: who attends, and who exhibits?

The attendees, your audience, should always be your number one consideration. Don’t just look at total numbers, but who is in the crowd? Is a large enough percentage of the audience part of your target market? In other words, are these the people who can potentially buy your product? And more importantly, are they the decision makers with purchasing authority?

1. Total Buying Plans (TBP) -The percentage of attendees planning to buy, within the year, one or more of the products or services exhibited at the show. Anything over 50% is considered pretty good.
2. Net Buying Influences (NBI) -The percentage of attendees who have buying or decision making authority. You want this number to be about 80% or more.
3. Traffic Density -This is a complicated number! It’s based on many different factors, but essentially tells you how “busy” a show is. The goldilocks zone here is less than 5 and more than 1.5. Anything above 5 visitors per 100 sq. ft. is just too busy, and below 1.5 is not busy enough.
4. Viewing Hours -The average time attendees spent actively viewing exhibits on the show floor. This is a tricky number, affected by a variety of outside factors, but you’ll want to watch for shows with a higher value, around 9 hours.
5. First Timers -The percentage of attendees who haven’t been to this show before. Since you probably want exposure to new leads, as well as seasoned buyers, you want a show that has about 35% First Timers
6. Representation -This can be a more difficult number to track, but if you can, find out what geographical areas your audience represents. Are they local, regional, or international? You want to make sure those numbers match up with your marketing plan!