Exhibition Organisers Challenges #1

Organisers Challenges - 1

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?As Exhibition Organisers, we have many challenges that we all face each week and month.

?·??????Exhibitor Retention/Finding New Exhibitors

·??????Getting Visitors to our shows

·??????Standing Out with our Marketing of our Events

·??????Getting and Keeping Great Salespeople

·??????Writing Copy that Sells

Today is the first article in a series of 4 all about these…of course the above is not an exhaustive list but rather a starting point for future discussion and looking at better more effective ways of doing things. Today, we are focussing on Finding New Exhibitors/Exhibitor Retention and why this is so important.

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Finding New Exhibitors/Exhibitor Retention

The average business loses between 17-25% of their clients to every year. However, in our industry we lose a lot more…somewhere between 40-50% of our Exhibitors annually would not be unusual. The real challenge is not only losing them but rather the time it takes to replace them with new companies…increased time which we invest to effectively be in the same place. This to me is a real issue and we as an industry need to address this. In simplistic terms, take a show that has 100 Exhibitors. Let’s say we lose 40% of them (in reality, it’s closer to 50) - so in essence we lose 40 companies. In my 30 years in the industry, it’s safe to say we would have lost 20 of them anyway, achieved objectives, show didn’t work, gone out of business or that market segment. This is perfectly normal and not a major cause for concern. However, the other 20 we lose for 2 reasons...

1.????They did something wrong

2.????We did something wrong

What I am getting at is, that we are losing too many Exhibitors each year because we or they are not educated on how to exhibit properly. They rock up to the show and just “expect it to happen” – no planning, pre show marketing, no objectives set and throw up a few banners and pop ups and wonder why people aren’t flocking to their stand. Worse still are the Exhibitors who park themselves on a chair for 3 days, texting their mates or eating their lunch. ?Exhibiting is not easy but it’s not difficult either and if we want strong Exhibitor retention it’s vital that we help our Exhibitors on the journey. What I mean is, we advise them on what preshow marketing works, how to set their objectives, stand design etc and what to expect in terms of visitors and how to sell at exhibitions. By doing this we are not only investing in them, we are investing in ourselves and higher exhibitor retention. ?By doing this we are increasing their opportunities for success and ultimately ours by getting higher re-book rates. Yes, it’s a hit of work but it’s worth doing…for everyone. It’s very easy as Exhibitors to lay all the fault at the Organisers door and sometimes you would be right, but from my 25 years experience of working with Exhibitors, very often they have done little or nothing before exhibiting and just hope it will all work out. To put it into perspective, it’s the Organisers responsibility to get visitors to the show but it’s the Exhibitors responsibility to get them to their stand.

On the educating piece, there are 7 key steps to Exhibition Success, and these are listed below. These are the things that will determine success and ultimately better results exhibiting and higher retention rates.

1.????Have a 1-2-page written plan

2.????Set 3 Clear objectives for exhibiting

3.????Do lots of Pre-Show Marketing – 70/30 split in favour of digital

4.????Effective Stand Design using the 60% and 15ft rule

5.????Ask good questions of visitors

6.????Understanding how Exhibition Selling is different from day to day selling

7.????Ensure you have a follow up plan – 6 Days/48-hour rule

We run a masterclass on these so if this is if interest just get in touch.

New Exhibitors/Exhibitor Retention

When it comes to finding new Exhibitors, a lot of sales people rely on re-booking and fill the gap by a few inbound enquiries and trawling through other exhibition catalogues searching for the “lower hanging fruit” – These are grand but will only get us so far and we need to be more creative where we find Exhibitors. Post covid 19, we are going to have to look to new places and work harder to find new clients. Using the old ways is fine but you will need more avenues to source and find new clients to replace the lost Exhibitors. Consistently filling the pipeline is what great salespeople do. The added advantage of having new Exhibitors in your show also reflects in new visitors to the event and by keeping the show fresh and relevant, you are increasing its appeal to visitors.

Some new ways of finding Exhibitors include…

1.????Actually, asking your clients for referrals

2.????Joining and contributing to LinkedIn groups specific to your industry

3.????Creating your own groups from above

4.????Developing stronger links and partnerships with Associations

5.????Getting out of the office and face to face at networking meetings

6.????Hosting free advice podcasts or webinars

7.????Finding out the companies that follow your social posts and engaging with them as potential Exhibitors/sponsors

There are a lot of other opportunities and ways of finding new clients, many of which you are doing but the reality is that if you keep just doing the same thing over and over, you will get the same result. As we face into more challenging times, it’s critical that we become more proactive not reactive when it comes to filling the gaps left by lapsed Exhibitors and this is not nor should it be a sporadic thing but rather small consistent efforts that lead to bigger successes.

For me, it’s all about having a retention & prospecting strategy that takes account for things always changing and adapting to that change. It’s about being creative, thinking outside the box and trying many things (some of which won’t work) but finding ones that do and capitalising on them.

Despite the tough, tough challenges of the last 8-9 months, the exhibition industry has not gone away because we deliver real life opportunities for our clients and multiple objectives in one place at one time and that’s the power of what we do every day but when we come back, we will all need to be better and adopting a new strategy will help you deliver that change and be more successful.

I have an unwavering respect for all the Organisers out there who work hard to deliver great events and results for our clients and our industry will shine again.

We have developed a program specifically for Exhibition Organisers and have a look here and get in touch if you would like more details. https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwc082xhdnw5yi8/STAR%20LV.pdf?dl=0

Keep well and stay in touch,

Stephan Murtagh,

Director,

The Exhibition Guy Group,

+353 86-7750420

[email protected]

www.theexhibitionguy.com

?Dublin, Ireland

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