"When should you exhibit - and when not!"

Introduction | The decision to exhibit | When not to exhibit | Conclusion | Links

Many organisations can be found at the same exhibition year after year, the key reason why they attend is often the fear their senior managers have that their absence be taken for a downturn in their fortunes. To avoid this, organisations spend lots of money to show their faces as they did the year before. For larger corporations the money is probably not an issue but for small or medium sized companies there are plenty of other ways to get a bang for your buck and the fear mentioned above smacks of a lack of imagination and negative thinking.

Introduction:

Exhibitions are a major organisational effort when well executed. There is often considerable expense involved in booking stand space, stand construction, hotel costs in popular times and any of the other marketing activities involved in the show about which I will expand later.

Then there are invisible costs for example the amount of time your staff will be involved in preparation for the show and the time sales & marketing people will use running the stand during the exhibition and that most often missed item... following up after the show. [Note: I have long since lost count of the numbers of companies that fail to send me the information which they promised when I visited their exhibition stand. In fact I have presently become so cynical that when information does promptly turn up following an enquiry at a trade show it is the exception rather than the rule and takes me completely by surprise.]

I make the comparison of a busy trade show to a wild jungle or rainforest. Organisations (organisms) are striving for position to get the best effect, most display heraldic corporate image and branding (livid plumage to attract their mate or distract their prey), some are displaying or disguising parasitic or dependent relationships, most are stretching their sinews in all sorts of directions seeking the light of publicity to greater or lesser effect. Many elements from a rainforest are there... established players with expensive stands and good positions (mighty trees, using lots of light and water, on which many parasites exist) small niche players surviving largely in the shadows etc etc. The difference for your marketing strategy is that you can chose to exhibit (enter this jungle or not, there are other ways to get your message out)

Done for the right reasons, and executed well, taking part in a trade show can be a great asset to a marketing campaign.

The decision to exhibit?

Why are you exhibiting?

Weak reasons for exhibiting:

Because we attended last year and the previous 4 years and if we are absent this year people may think we are having difficulties. This thought passes many directors minds when considering their large sales and marketing budgets for the coming year but it is a very weak reason for attending trade shows when their costs are taken into account.

What else could you be doing with your resources? the sky is the limit, you could:

- Use the money for a ground-breaking development which will leapfrog your competitors.

- Create your own "Battle Bus", a mobile exhibition vehicle, where you can ensure your targets do not leave your stand to visit your competitors immediately afterward and your exhibition takes place then all year round wherever you want it to.

- Invest in private hospitality targeting the key decision makers of your top customers.

- Start a direct marketing campaign

- Invest in a state of the art website or upgrade your existing one to an ecommerce class site.

- Invest in your direct selling activities putting more feet on the street or increasing customer facing time by a large factor. If your expanded sales resources are calling on 50% more opportunities than before you may be better placed for the future than if you had attended that exhibition.

- Use the budget to poach, and then retain, some key staff from your most envied competitor.

- Use the resources to increase your direct focused selling effort and reduce your selling prices as a promotion on a range of items making the point that saving exhibition costs allows you to do that.

How long is a piece of string... if you are considering investing in a trade show or attend trade shows regularly your sales and marketing budgets will be significant, this means you have the pockets for alternative strategies.

Powerful reasons for exhibiting:

- This exhibition is part of your annual launch pad for ground breaking new products, your product development pipeline is timed to meet this deadline which is just one element of a bonanza of promotional activity surrounding the birth of your new products. Launching new products is a good reason to go to a trade show. Companies that have nothing new to show risk their repute by attending with the same old stuff year after year.

- This exhibition forms part of an initiative to gain a foothold in a new market. If you are not already active in a market place attending an exhibition can play a valuable part in your learning about the market, it can provide a place to meet potential: partners, sales channels, end customers and the local or industry press.

So having said that in my humble opinion the best reasons for exhibiting at a show are to launch something new and significant or to drive into a new market, there are plenty of other benefits you can get from a trade show, examples include:

- Team building for your own staff
- Hospitality to your customers and or distributors
- An opportunity to meet the press
- General enquiry generation
- Motivation for your non sales & marketing employees
- A good look at the competition (you can get this without exhibiting)

When not to exhibit?

Bear in mind who will be at the trade show.
Will your competitors be exhibiting there? this is not such a silly a question as it might seem. You might say that if your competitors were not there then you would be at the wrong show however this depends on your strategy for competition.

Do you compete head on, like for like, on price?
When the dust clears after your planned price war, who will remain standing? if it is not you .. a strategy rethink is required.

Do you compete with innovation? trying to differentiate your offering to better solve your clients needs...

......in a way this is a question of what sort of organisation you are. Are you a product or customer focused organisation? If you are customer focused, you will innovate and change your products and technologies to suit your customer's needs and you will have selected your own target customers not let your customers select you. You need not fear anything from exhibiting next to your competitors except that they may have been more innovative than you in the time since you last checked them out. In fact the way that you define your competitors may also have changed completely as part of your customer focused definition of what you do...

If you are product focused perhaps in a commodity market, and your competitors are also, then exhibiting next to them is very questionable in my book... What are your prospects going to do, visit your stand then look at theirs, ask for the best price at each because your products are the same?

If you are product focused are you really going to invite your best customers to meet you at a show where your competitors are also exhibiting and competing with you on price...?

If your best customers are happy, why tempt fate?

Conclusion:

This article does not have a conclusion, it can be a judgement call to exhibit or take another strategy, at best your historical data will only predict future results. I am convinced that exhibiting without a clear reason is going to realise mediocre results at best.

In a previous article entitled "Whatever you sell you only "sell benefits" this may be useful in deciding if you are a product (technology) or customer oriented business.

[Author mark@sticky-marketing.net 04 April 2001]

There will be more related articles for example:
"How to get the most out of exhibiting." possibly in the May edition, please subscribe to the mailing list (form at top left of each page) to be notified when new editions are out.

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