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While exhibiting is a relatively straightforward process, plenty of opportunities can be missed without careful planning. I make the assumption you have chosen the right exhibition to take part in for the right reasons. Exhibitions are expensive high profile events which take place in the full glare of publicity under the scrutiny of competitors and your own senior management team. It is vital that your exhibition runs like clockwork making maximum use of the commercial opportunities available. This can only be achieved with significant forward planning and great attention to detail. The following is intended as a starter checklist for exhibition organisers within a company. Budgeting: for entire show .. You need to get a grip on the budget available for the exhibition and an understanding of which items will be counted as exhibition expenses as much as a year before the event. Your budget will dictate much of the substantial expenditure like the size of your stand and the exhibits or stand construction itself. Booking floor space and location .. usually the earlier the better, many exhibitions take bookings at each event for the following year, often the sooner you get your booking in, the sooner you can lay claim to territory. A deposit is often required at this stage. You may want to move from a previous location, you may want to be near a vulnerable competitor, your intention may be that year by year you want to move from the outskirts to the centre ground of an established and substantial industry exhibition. Appointing an exhibition manager .. someone has to micro manage your exhibition, they may need to undertake contingency planning on each item, they will have to ensure detailed timing is adhered to. Exhibition deadlines are absolutely final. There can be no delay to the exhibition opening day just because the display on your stand is incomplete, the product exhibition panels have not arrived from Italy yet or the transporter bringing your demonstration vehicle was involved in an accident approaching Birmingham! Dependent tasks: Many tasks in getting your exhibition completed will be dependent on a wide range of people in your and other organisations. If achievements are late, the exhibition manager must have top level support to resolve issues in advance of the deadline. The exhibition manager needs to have initiative, for example perhaps to plan a contingent floral display to replace a promotional video panel if doubts exist that the director in charge of supervising its production may not finalise the voice over before the shooting deadline of the production company. Booking hotel accommodation .. book in advance, you will need staff on your exhibition stand to meet and greet and sell to or entertain your visitors, they have to sleep somewhere, busy exhibitions like the German Hanover Messe, have great shortages of hotel rooms and inflated prices at show time, companies book years in advance to avoid disappointment. Selecting an exhibition contractor .. bid process. In most cases exhibiting companies will not have in house capabilities to design, build, transport, erect and complete an exhibition stand at the exhibition hall on time and of suitable quality. There are many exhibition contractors available but you must organise a bid process where two or three compete with designs and costs. This allows you a look at alternatives, exerts pressure on costs and gives you an opportunity to decide if a company will be both easy to work with and dependable. Planning your exhibition stand and exhibits .. all the usual questions prefixed by "what, where, why, how, who, how much, when".
If you have picked an experienced exhibition contractor they should be able to ensure all your specific product exhibits meet the required standard of safety for the specific exhibition. The area where it becomes complex and involves dependent relationships is that usually your engineers and product marketing people will have to provide much of the product displays as the exhibition contractor cannot be expected to be expert in your business and the specialization of your products. Promotion: Press Releases .. pre show .. you need to start telling the story of what you will be exhibiting in pre show press releases, these may hint at items that are new and exciting, they may be designed to inform targets of your participation. The exhibition organisers themselves may offer you the opportunity to take part in their pre exhibition publicity. They have to ensure that visitors turn out. You will I expect want to mention on your website your future exhibition timetable to allow people to meet their contacts face to face. You may want to mailshot your mailing list, if that is your plan you should include a stand manning schedule so people know when the person they want to meet will be on your stand and can make appointments. Appointments calendar - Invites: you need an appointments calendar controlled by someone who will be on the exhibition stand such that people can arrange to meet their contacts centrally. How much before the exhibition can you finalise your stand telephone number or will you rely on mobile phones, check there will be adequate coverage for mobiles to work. Complimentary tickets .. will you buy or get these as part of your package and to whom will they be offered, your existing targets .. new targets? Exhibition Catalogue entry .. This deadline cannot be missed. What will you state in your entry into the exhibition catalogue, this may also be made available on a pre exhibition website and or CD rom, people may find you from this information or not, in years to come. Hospitality - Food and Drink .. be wary of expectations, some exhibitions and their visitors expect more food and drink than others, will you need to hire staff to produce this? Will you provide your own? Will you use the facilities in the exhibition hall itself? Exhibition attendance lists .. many exhibitions these days collect data from people attending the exhibition. This is especially true for "free to enter" exhibitions. The list is usually available to buy or rent from the exhibition organisers during or after the show. There is still hope if you failed to attract a major new client to visit your garish pleasuredome to view your laser illuminated fountain. Perhaps you can get their business address, names, job titles and email addresses and tempt them into a commercial relationship in some other way. Enquiry forms .. easy to complete / clip business card to .. or use exhibition system.. It must be clear what action is to be taken. You do need to capture data on people that visit your exhibition stand and make an enquiry. Standard Enquiry forms are a good idea and perhaps a computer database on the exhibition stand into which these forms can be typed. Following up contacts made at an exhibition often appears a problem for companies that have spent tens of thousands in exhibiting these days. I often wonder what the purpose of their exhibit was so poor the follow up often is. I recommend you have staff starting the follow up process at the exhibition if at all possible. All contacts should be receive a letter of some kind within a week of their visit to maintain top of mind awareness. This letter should answer their enquiry or explain who will answer it and when. Sales people responsible for that account or territory must be informed and should take responsibility for further contact with the enquirers where appropriate. The contacts you make at an exhibition are expensive. There is almost a moral obligation to make the most of your organisation's enlarged post exhibition contacts list. Competition - This will be a chance to look again at your competition in some detail, everyone in customer facing roles will want to do this so try to get them to report their findings so that everyone in your company can keep up to date. Motivation opportunity for your own staff: You may want to get your order processors to visit the exhibition to motivate them as part of your customer facing team. Perhaps the supervisors from your production facility can be impressed by the quality of effort your competition display and return re energised. Senior manager on stand: on each day one person must have overall responsibility for the stand, its contents and your company personnel. This is often shared between a number of senior people if the exhibition is a long one but the exhibition manager may need to be present for the whole exhibition. Security: If you are displaying ground breaking new products on which the patent if not yet out or they are still at a "one of a kind" stage of their development, you may wish to take security more seriously than usual. Should you remove the crown jewels each night, provide a lockable area within your stand to secrete them in, or make them an integral part of something large and immobile preferably built into the structure of the stand? Build up and break down .. passes for the exhibition contractors .. passes for the exhibitors staff, before and after the show. People who need to get in often before, after and during the exhibition may need passes, your chairman may give you a piece of their mind if they do not have one in advance. Attention to details will reduce unplanned events and centre attention on your exhibits rather than your competence. Cautionary note - at your exhibition there will be customers, your top management, the press and relevant media. There is simply no chance that incorrect spelling on the stand or promotional materials, weak translation into other languages, products poorly displayed or divergence from corporate image will go unnoticed. Do not leave any aspect of exhibiting to chance. At the start of this article I wrote "I make the assumption you have chosen the right exhibition to take part in for the right reasons" in another article I question the motivation for exhibiting and some suggest powerful reasons to exhibit. Click here to read that article. Author Mark Abraham, email: mark@sticky-marketing.net 12 June 2001 |
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