By
Christine Hilgert, CMP, Vice President
Meeting Expectations, Inc.
&
Lacey Damico, Sponsorship Development Manager
Meeting Expectations, Inc.
Meeting Expectations
3525 Piedmont Road
Building 5, Suite 300
Atlanta, GA 30305
+1 404.240.0999
www.meetingexpectations.com
11 Things
You Should Know
about the Exhibit Hall
When planning a franchise meeting with an exhibit hall component, your goal as organizer is to create a successful experience for the exhibitors promoting products and services, as well as your franchisees or other attendees who seek their offerings. This whitepaper includes the key principles to assist in your planning, and goes beyond the basics by delivering tips and ideas for effective layout, maximizing tradeshow sales, imaginative sponsorship development ideas and attendee-exhibitor networking suggestions.
As you plan your exhibit hall, consider forming an exhibitor advisory panel comprised of vendors who have participated in your show in the past. Formal or informal, this group can be incredibly helpful for discussing and debating plans along the way and their input can help maximize the success of the event for all exhibitors.
Without further ado, Christine & Lacey’s “Top Eleven” List:
1. Show Me the Money! – Optimizing Sponsor and Exhibitor Revenue
In order to maximize your sales of exhibit booths and/or sponsorship opportunities, you need to provide your vendors with the right information. Publish the most detailed demographic data available on your attendees so prospective exhibitors and sponsors can determine if your tradeshow is the right fit for them to invest their marketing dollars. A good source of information comes from the history of past show attendees. Create demographic charts to include in your sponsorship and exhibitor prospectus. Be as detailed as possible with the information you have on hand. Make sure your exhibitors’ expectations are on track with what the show can provide. Is it the kind of show where they can expect to close a sale on site? Or is this more of an opportunity to connect with and build relationships with potential clients? Publish a prospectus early on that builds a strong business case for their investment in your show and equips them with the information they need to decide. Going forward, include detailed questions on your attendee registration form that will help you create the compelling picture to lure that exhibitor investment. Go beyond location and job title by asking
2. What’s In It for Me? Sponsorship and Booth Package Pricing and Benefits
Valuing the cost of an exhibitor package is a delicate balance between giving them their money’s worth and making sure you don’t lose money in the process. There are some items that have a hard dollar amount, like the cost of the physical booth itself, the cost of signage, conference bags, lanyards, etc. that you do need to pass along. But there are some very valuable items you can sell to your exhibitors that don’t affect your bottom line – for example, adding their logo to your event website, or including them in email communications, mailing lists and online advertisements. Get creative –there numerous ways to give your exhibitors great exposure to the attendees that won’t cost you a fortune.
3. Extreme Floor Plan Makeover
As you envision the actual event, having the right floor plan layout for your exhibit hall is essential to a successful flow of traffic. Every exhibit space has its challenges, and one can never be quite certain of the best layout for a particular floor. Ask your general services contractor if they have worked previously in the space; if so, request sample floor plans. Better yet, when sending out your RFP for general services contractors, request for samples up front. The samples may not apply exactly to your event, but they may be a good start for laying out the space.
Once you have an idea how you want to lay out the floor, take a moment to consider yourself in each of the booth spaces. If you were an exhibitor, would you purchase that space? Can you envision getting good foot traffic there? If not, can a physical alteration make the difference, or could it be remedied by forcing traffic through that space through a promotion, special event or offer? Prepare in advance to address these questions and possible solutions with your exhibitors and be open to their feedback. This is another great challenge to bring to your exhibitor advisory committee. Ask them to review the floor plan and evaluate the potential success of each booth location. Get their input on how to maximize the potential of even the least desirable locations.
4. Hey Look at Me!!
Congratulations! Your exhibitor bought a booth, now what? Encourage them to spread the word! Provide approved event descriptions, logos and other materials that enable exhibitors and sponsors to send pre-show marketing communications to their current and prospective customers – these announce their participation and provide great marketing for your event as well. They should work to schedule meetings with prospects during the show, to increase new sales opportunities. Your show is a great chance for exhibitors to finally meet face-to-face with clients and customers they have only been communicating with over the phone or via email.
There are several ways to get this word out – direct mail, email and social media. They can post their schedule of tradeshow engagements and a link to your event on their company websites and promote their involvement in e-newsletters, sales presentations, PowerPoint slides and any other marketing communications they will produce ahead of your event.
One word of caution – consider reserving email access to registered attendees as a benefit for high level exhibitors and sponsors only. Making the email list available to all exhibitors can result in the overload of your attendees’ inboxes, and they will surely blame you for the inconvenience.
In your own event marketing materials, be sure to highlight interesting activities taking place within the tradeshow.
5. Education Breaks Out of the Classroom
While educational breakout sessions are the norm at any conference, the tradeshow floor can be a great place to create even more educational opportunities. Create some designated spaces on the show floor, perhaps in a theater-type setting, that can be used by exhibitors to educate your attendees. You can offer this space and time on a fee-based, first-come basis. Allow the exhibitors to talk about their products or services, but decide on a time limit to make sure their audience stays
6. Creative Networking Opportunities
What is the goal of your show? To have people visit as many booths as possible? Or to showcase the sponsors that paid top dollar? Whatever the goal is, keep that in mind! When creating networking games or opportunities within the exhibit hall, focus the activities towards achieving those goals. Some examples: scavenger hunts can direct traffic strategically to certain exhibitors. “Passport to Prizes” programs reward booth visits with stamps that translate to raffle entries or credits to use in a silent auction. Today’s location-based gaming applications, like Foursquare, SCVNGR,
DoubleDutch and others, offer great opportunities to get your more technically-savvy attendees and exhibitors networking.
Beyond games, you can structure your exhibit hall to facilitate informal networking. Serve meals in the hall ”birds of a feather” style – post a discussion topic on each table so attendees and exhibitors alike can share a meal and a conversation on that particular issue.
7. A Little Birdie Told Us…
Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are growing and becoming valuable tools to enhance the attendee experience at tradeshows. Not sure if social media will work?
Think again. A tradeshow floor is a prime opportunity to dive into the social media world. As a show organizer, you can use social media for pre-show marketing and announcements; facilitate networking by starting conversations with and between attendees before the show that will continue on site; offer exclusive promotions to your followers and provide quick-response customer service. These are just a few ways social media provides value. Use these tools to highlight exhibitors and drive traffic to even the more faraway reaches of your show floor through giveaways and offers specific to each network.
8. Don’t be “That” Guy….Exhibit Staff Training
With anything in life, you get out of it what you put in. The same rule applies to exhibiting. If someone sits behind their table on the show floor, busy on their computer or Smartphone, people are going to pass them by. Encourage exhibit staff to be approachable and to create a booth that is open and inviting.
Schedule a webinar or a conference call and invite some influential members of your conference audience to a panel discussion along with your exhibitors. Ask the panel what they like and don’t like about being on a show floor. Ask them what would make them stop to engage in a conversation with an exhibitor, what would make them buy something, or what would make them run the other way. Create a list of questions and provide them ahead of time so your panel has time to prepare answers, but also provide ample time for open question-and-answer with your exhibitors so they can hear first-hand from the target audience and discover on their own how to approach the exhibiting experience.
9. Lead Generation –
Know your exhibitors’ goal: to maximize new leads through booth traffic by collecting business cards or using a lead retrieval unit. Though it’s up to the exhibitors to generate leads, it is your responsibility to educate, inspire and equip them to do so. Be sure your exhibitors, in turn, educate booth staff and set specific goals to be achieved at the show. Exhibit teams should be equipped with qualifying questions to ask attendees to start conversations. You can provide exhibitors ways to capture response either through a lead retrieval system or by writing notes on the back of a business card or in a notebook. Consider using an online tool that allows attendees to access a map of the show floor and plan their visits with exhibitors; these online applications typically include robust reporting tools to assist with show leads. Smartphones can also be used for lead generation – modern conference badge technology now allows for each attendee badge to include a barcode that is scanned by exhibitors/sponsors to transfer contact information. Provide post-show lists with
10. There IS such thing as free stuff!
For attendees, at least; after all, what drives an attendee to a booth? Free stuff! Stuff could be information, giveaways or even a raffle prize. Encourage your exhibitors to find creative ways to bring traffic to their booths. Pens are great, but it is likely that every other booth will have those too. Something eye-catching and different is always a great draw to a booth. Gadgets and gift cards are always great to give away and easy for attendees to carry and transport. Remind your exhibitors that these attendees are traveling and may not be able to bring home a huge gift basket, so they should “think small” when considering raffle prizes. If a raffle winner isn’t present when prizes are drawn, this is a great opportunity for them to set up a meeting with that person to deliver their prize. Find out what prizes your exhibitors will raffle at the show and use in this in pre-show marketing communications.
11. Post Show Marketing –
The show doesn’t end when the tradeshow lights go down. In fact, for exhibitors it’s only the beginning. This is the time to take it to the next level, categorize strong/hot leads and follow up within a week of the show; contacts or cold leads need to hear from exhibitors as well. Encourage exhibitors to keep thorough notes to remember what was discussed during the show and jot down the conversation topics that will sustain that connection for years to come. And follow up! What is the point of being at a show if you don’t follow up and maintain and develop all the new
connections made?
As always, the certified conference planners at Meeting Expectations, Inc. are pleased to speak with you to brainstorm creative and cost-effective ideas for sponsor and exhibitor development to suit your specific audience. Contact us at [email protected] if we may be of assistance as you plan your next event.
