3 Reasons Trade Show Exhibitors Can Thrive During a Recession

During a recession, the first thought that goes through every trade show exhibitor's mind is how he or she will survive the inevitable downturn in sales. After all, everyone is tightening their belts. Consumers are keeping their wallets in their pockets. The businesses that sell to those consumers are adjusting their budgets accordingly. Most trade show exhibitors, often a few tiers away the economic epicenter, see the coming storm and react rather than anticipate. In many ways, your competition is removing themselves from the field.

This is good news for trade show exhibitors who are willing to take the reins that market leaders abandon in a sluggish economy. Below, you'll discover three reasons why you can thrive during the current recession.

#1 - Your Competitors Have Become Lazy

During an economic boom, improving your sales and revenue base is almost as simple as showing up to the convention hall. In some cases, this is exactly how many of your competitors thrived. They constructed their booths, put up their trade show displays and attendees flocked to their exhibits. Everyone has budgets to spend when the economy is healthy. During an economic bust, those budgets dry up. Considering this a positive environment for your business might seem counterintuitive, but this is when opportunity rears its head. More.

Exhibit Survey’s White Paper: Looking Past the Recession

The Exhibit Surveys folks have created a great White Paper -Looking past the recession: Exhibition strategies for the interim. In it they detail our current economic situation and what exhibitors must consider for the near term.

Synopsis: Exhibitions are down, but far from out. Real time findings from the current recession indicate cause for optimism, including sustained audience quality levels. Also, even though exhibitor budgets are down and will likely trail the recovery, the perceived value of exhibitions as a marketing tool not only remains intact but is enhanced in terms of its role within the vogue of “experiential marketing.” While discernment of the depth, duration, and breadth of this recession is still difficult, metrics that track the health of the industry and the economy show hints of a turnaround that may begin late this year. In the meantime there are strategic moves the industry can employ, particularly in terms of its key constituencies, as it rides out the storm so it may exploit the coming recovery period from a position of strength. More.

The 'Pablo Picasso' of Virtual Meetings

The Virtualis Convention Center in Second Life has become one of the first options that Dan Parks offers to clients looking to save costs.

For example, one event last year brought in 80 people from several different countries for three days of training – with a team of people to help with orientation for an entire week. The total cost was around $10,000. By comparison, the budget for the previous year was $175,000, Parks said.

In general, he said, an event in Second Life is about 10 percent of the cost of a similar event in a physical location. Full Article.

What you need for an effective Outdoor Tradeshow?

Options for effective Outdoor Displays

Branded Pop up Awnings – What better way to be prepared for unpredictable weather than with an instant shelter, fully printed to promote your brand, logos, marketing message or products.

Outdoor Banner Stands - Outdoor banners stands are durable hard wearing weather resistant displays that are an effective way to display your graphics. Outdoor banner stands are portable and sturdy, making them an ideal display choice for your outdoor graphics.

Flag Displays - For high impact, attention grabbing displays, feather flags, wing banners, flying banners, portable flag poles and event flags for maximum viewing at your outdoor display or exhibition.

Portable Counters - Portable counters that can be personlised to your corporate style with graphics that are either permanently applied or attached for easy removal for rebranding later projects. All counters fold down for portability and flexibility and are suitable as promotional counters at your outdoor event.

Display Barriers – Display barriers are ideal for queue management, crowd control and café barriers. Display barriers are ideal for defining seating use at your event and promoting your logos. More.

Are You Serious About Tradeshow Marketing?

It’s a fair question, and one you probably don’t think about enough.

“Of course I’m serious,” you respond. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t serious!”

Gitomer’s approach is from the sales aspect, and he covers such things as ability to deliver, desire to serve, friendliness, truth at ALL cost and more.

Much of that applies to tradeshow marketing. So, how serious are you?

Do you plan your pre-show marketing?
Do you pick your staff with an eye to having the most open and enthusiastic personalities at the show?
Do you train your staff?
Are you regularly re-examining your tradeshow booth’s marketing message to make sure it in sync with your products and your audience desire?
Do you debrief your staff each evening before turning them loose?
Do you make adjustments at the show based on your observations of visitors or the staff debriefing?
Do you have definable, measurable goals for each tradeshow?
Do you re-assess those goals based on the type of show and expected audience?
Can you crunch the numbers to come up with the ROI over the last year’s worth of shows?
Do your sales staff have real, actionable leads after each show, rated as ‘hot,’ ‘warm,’ or ‘cool?’ More.

The 8 Best Tradeshow Tweets

1. Conferences and Break-out Sessions. Business execs find this useful. It gives insights into presentations and ideas, and helps bring you closer to people who are not there…as well as connect with ones who are.

2. Booth Promotions. Got a prize to giveaway? Regularly tweeting about stuff going on at your booth is a good way to bring visitors by, and helps remind non-attendees what kinds of things your company is doing.

3. Raves. Love a booth? Promotion? Graphic? Break-out session? Meet a cool dude/chick? Tweet out a rave. Works even better if they’re on Twitter; if so, be sure to use their handle.

4. Ask/Answer Questions. Trying to find a good restaurant or watering hole? Need an answer to an industry question? Ask and ye shall receive.

5. Engage in Conversations. Similar to #4, but perhaps on a more casual or personal level. A conversation may only be a few tweets long, but even a short one can be engaging. Continue.

Social Media Revolution

Social Media is NOT a fad. YouTube Video

Eco-Friendly Promotional Marketing...and More

Try to put yourself in the shoes of a customer or prospect walking the show floor at your next event. You're likely to be overwhelmed by an endless array of Frisbees, coffee mugs, paper weights and squeeze toys. What exactly does it take to catch your eye or to make an impression?

Before opening a catalog or visiting a Web site and drooling over all the shiny items available to promote your organization, think about what you can do that will stick in someone's mind and remain cost-effective. Think about what you want the promotional products to do. What do you want to achieve at your next event? Do you want to generate "buzz" and attract attendees to your exhibit? Do you want to make sure every attendee goes home with something in his or her "goodie bag?" Or do you want to be more selective, rewarding actual prospects with something significant?

The best promotional strategies work toward one of two goals -- reinforcing your branding or emphasizing a call to action. Different products work better to help you achieve each of these goals. Let's start considering three types of promotional giveaways: practical, somewhat risky and green products. Continue.

3 Tips for Turning Your Tradeshow Contacts into Customers

Have you spent all day at a convention or fair pitching your products and services to a plethora of people with the hopes of hooking in new clients? At the end of the day, your feet and back hurt, you have the mental fortitude of a zombie, but your hopes are high that you’ve made some solid contacts. Yet, over the next several weeks the expected uptick in sales never materializes.

Your investment of time and money were high, but your return of new customers and sales were low. You question whether the convention was a gathering of time wasters and trinket collectors or if there was something in your pitch that put people off. Here are a couple of methods for converting those contacts into customers. Continue.

Trade Show Booth Staff Training Essential

Never underestimate the importance of your trade show booth staff. They are your front line ambassadors and the critical links to your overall trade show success. It makes sense that if you want to have a positive experience at your trade show display, you need to pay attention to all the elements of trade show exhibiting. By putting a premium on grooming and training your trade show booth staff, you can rest easy they will be performing at their best.

The first step in your company’s trade show venture, then, is to recognize the importance of the trade show booth personnel. The second step is to invest in the training of your booth people.To launch this process, make sure you get executive “buy in”. If top management respects and values their trade show team, then face- to- face training skills become effective.

Remember the key value of exhibiting at the trade show is to engage real people about real products/services in real time. A typical company representative can often hold meaningful conversations with about 3 or 4 people in a ½ hour at a trade show as opposed to spending an entire day in the conventional field selling process. Continue.

A Stand-out Small Exhibit

You don't need a mammoth-sized exhibit or piles of money to make a big (and memorable) statement at your next show. Use these five tactics for getting the biggest bang out of your small booth.

Use lighting. According to industry research, lighting can increase awareness of your exhibit by 30 to 50 percent. Renting a portable lighting system or using product spotlights will give your small exhibit the extra exposure it needs.

Keep it simple. Feature only one or two products. Any more than that and you'll just add clutter - and keep your prospects away.

Employ bold colors. Find high-impact hues that will stand out from a distance, and avoid neutral colors that will just blend into the background. More.

Trade Show Booth Rental - A Smart Option

When it comes to trade show booths - to rent or not to rent? - that is the question that can perplex many an exhibitor.

The industry rule of thumb is that if you?re going to use the same trade show exhibit three times, you should purchase it instead of renting. But, if you only want a trade show booth for a one or two time trade show appearance, renting is often the best way to go.

For companies that have the choice of renting vs. buying a trade show exhibit, there are many solid and sound reasons to rent a trade show exhibit rather than making a purchase of a trade show display.

According to Candy Adams, a San Diego-based independent exhibit-management consultant, trainer, speaker and writer known as The Booth Mom, there are compelling reasons why companies rent trade show exhibits, such as: continue

The Convention Industry Council (CIC)’s Accepted Practices Exchange

(APEX) Panel on Green Meeting and Event Practices today released the final draft standards for green meetings and events for review and comment by the meetings industry. The process of developing green standards has been a partnership between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Green Meeting Industry Council (GMIC), APEX and ASTM International to answer the need in the meeting and event industry for a uniform measurement of environmental performance.

The APEX panel and hundreds of volunteers have devoted countless hours of discussion and refinement over the past two years to draft what will be a very well planned first step in solidifying green meeting practices. These standards are an attempt to create a level playing field of what constitutes "green" for the industry.

Nine individual topic areas comprise the entire standard and nine separate committees were charged with developing the standards. Those topic areas include Accommodations, Audio Visual, Communication, Exhibits, Food and Beverage, On-site Office, Destinations, Meeting Venue and Transportation. The draft standards will now go out to the industry for review and comment through APEX City Discussion Groups and a blog as well as to the ASTM International for its review process.

City Discussion Groups, events akin to town hall meetings, will be held over the course of the next few weeks in the following cities:
Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Ft Meyer, Winnipeg, San Antonio, Denver and San Francisco. Those interested in participating in a discussion group may register through the APEX website at www.apexsolution.org.

For those not in proximity to a discussion group, the APEX virtual blog site provides for greater access and participation. The draft standards may be accessed and feedback given at http://wp.apexsolution.org

Suggested changes and feedback will be reviewed by the committees and incorporated if appropriate and then submitted in final to ASTM. All comments, whether by City Discussion Group or by blog, are due September 11th in order to be considered before the standards are submitted to ASTM in final format. It is anticipated that the final standards approved by both ASTM and the APEX Commission will be complete by year-end.

Trade Show Advice: Calculating Trade Show ROI

Every company is different, if your company has a short sales cycle, and accounting is willing to work with you, then you should be able to put together a report that details the hard dollars that your show generated. However, if your sales cycle is longer, then a lead management program will allow you to generate a trade show ROI number. Link.

How Exhibitions Can Deliver Value in the Recession and Beyond

What happens at the tradeshow is obviously import to your success, but equally important is what happens after the show ends. This is where most exhibitors drop the ball. Differentiate your company from its peers and wring the full value from your tradeshow participation. To truly benefit from all the hard work what went into exhibiting, must ensure that appropriate follow-up activities take place.

Follow Up Begins Before the Show More.

Bringing the A-Team

A YouTube video by Francis Friedman. Link.

How Exhibitions Can Deliver Value in the Recession and Beyond

The current business climate for exhibitions is not pretty: Exhibition budgets are down 17 percent this year and 17 percent of exhibitors said they will participate in fewer events in 2009. Instead of despairing, exhibition organizers should take advantage of this downturn to adapt their strategies and strengthen the role of exhibitions as a marketing tool, says a new whitepaper published by Exhibit Surveys Inc. called Looking Past the Recession: Exhibition Strategies for the Interim.

Exhibition organizers should focus on three areas: relationships, value, and communication, states author Skip Cox, chief executive officer at the Red Bank, N.J.–based consultancy.

More and more, companies view events as opportunities to create brand awareness and preference through experiential marketing, which is about establishing an emotional connection with customers. Exhibition organizers should find new ways to create the “highly personalized, experiential exchange between seller and buyer” that fosters these relationships. More.

How To Tackle A Virtual Trade Show

Before you invest a dime in showcasing at a virtual trade show, get a feel for the environment. (Most shows are free for attendees.) You can also contact the show designer and for a demo walk-through. "Browse" the booths and listen to a few seminars to get a feel for the style and length of presentations.

More.

Screen shot graphic from the Virtualis Convention Center on Second Life.

The Invisible Industry

This is a great video from PCMA on the meetings industry from 1992 that still holds up today. An interesting look at the value of meetings. Link.

How Important is Booth Staff Training?

You’ve no doubt arrived at a tradeshow booth wanting to find out more about the product or service being offered. Maybe you even scouted them out or found them on a recommendation.

But when you arrive you find that the staff greets you with indifference. Or worse, you find yourself ignored, and not because the staff is busy with other customers but because they’re chatting with themselves.

What do you do? Turn and walk away? I’ve seen it happen.

It’s a missed sales opportunity that will likely not be regained. All because your booth staffers didn’t have the presence of mind or proper training to greet you. More.

Don't Leave Home Without It

Candy Adams lists 15 of her favorite things that help her save cash and sidestep hassles on the trade show floor:

To avoid material minimums and marked-up charges, I’ve assembled an arsenal of packing materials, tools, cleaners, and comfort items that go with me to every show. Here are a few of my favorites.

Packing Materials and Adhesives

D Containers: D containers, also known as cargo boxes, air-freight containers, or air-cargo containers, are large cardboard boxes on a pallet. Sizes vary from 48-by-39-by-40 inches to 58-by-41-by-45 inches.

These large, reusable boxes are a good alternative if crates are out of your price range. They break down well for storage, and I can generally get three to four shipments out of each container. They’re great for protecting irregularly shaped shipments or to use as a master box for smaller cartons. They’re also efficient to ship, especially via van line, as they fit two wide and two tall in the van when placed on stacker bars.

D containers can be purchased from companies that sell packaging materials and boxes and cost about $50 to $75 each, depending on the quantity you buy. Before buying them, check with your internal shipping and receiving departments to see if they receive products in these containers and can save them for you.

Portable Strapping Kit: If you’re going to use D containers, purchase a portable strapping kit so you can secure your D containers to their pallets. These three-part kits include half-inch polypropylene strapping, buckles, and a knife. Kits with metal banding are also available, but aren’t as lightweight for shipping and are harder to cut.

The kits cost less than $50 and are worth owning, since you’ll pay more than this on show site just to have one pallet banded by your I&D contractor. They weigh less than 15 pounds for 3,000 feet of strapping and 300 buckles, making them easy to ship. If you don’t need the whole kit, you can pre-cut pieces long enough to fit around your D containers and put them in plastic bags with their metal clips. More.