Maximising Return On Your Expo Dollar
Do you just love Expos or are you one of those who hate 'em with a passion? Done right, exhibiting at an Expo can set your firm up with new business for the whole year to come.
Wander around any trade exhibition and you'll see two sorts of stands: ones that seem constantly busy and buzzing, and ones where the stand staff slump glumly at their posts, alone and unloved.
After the event, ask a sample of exhibitors whether or not it was a success for them. You'll get answers ranging from "Raging! This lot will set us up for the year!? to "Total crap. We're never coming back. Probably."
What's the difference? It's not money. It's not the products. It's planning.
Chances are the owners of the successful stands sat down some months before the event and decided... Well, first we have to assume that they'd already decided for some reason to attend the event, so it's clearly an integral part of their marketing plan (do I hear some guffaws out there?)
The why, then the who and then the what
So they sat down and first decided what they wanted to achieve from the event (their objective), then, what sort of people they wanted to attract to their stands (their target audience), and finally, what outcome they wanted from their interactions.
And then they built a plan which delivered on those things.
Is this enough? No. Post-event follow up is easily as important as the event itself. Like the lead-up to your first-born (aka pregnancy) it's easy to think that the big event is the birth. Anyone with one or more kids knows better.
Follow up for real ROI
Of course event follow-up is where things so often fall apart. While it's perfectly natural for everyone to put their energy into creating a knock-em-dead stand, sadly, all their efforts will come to nought if no-one's tasked with making sure all the leads are followed up diligently.
Rate and prioritise leads
If "acquiring leads" is built into your objective you might do well to develop a "quality" rating system for those leads. At one event we classed anyone who expressed clear interest or attended our seminar as being grade one (we offered a bottle of bubbly, as a door prize, in return for business cards), anyone who came to our stand and simply entered the draw (for a Playstation, I think) was classed grade two (many will have been completing the form only to get the Playstation, but as all delegates were either decision makers or influencers in the target market, by having them stop and engage with the product - they had to answer a few questions based on information they could find on the stand - the least they could do was build some brand and product awareness) and the rest of the attendees (with whom we had no direct contact) were classed grade three. After the event we prioritised all the contacts and made sure we contacted the grade ones as soon as possible, followed by the grade twos. We filtered the grade threes according to their job position and company, and followed up with them as well.
First published in The Channel magazine
I'm forever blowing bubbles
One time we used bubbles to attract delegates to our stand. Not Bubbles the Clown, nor Bubbles from "Ab Fab" (now there's an idea...) but just plain old soap bubbles, from a bubble machine. Delegates would see the bubbles floating about and, intrigued, track them down to their source. Now, this was a rather dry conference we were at, so the bubbles were a bit of light relief after all the speeds and feeds talk that delegates had been subjected to. And since the event was a very specific industry event, virtually anyone that turned up at our stand was a likely prospect.
Why mention this? Well, sure, it was a gimmick, but it worked fine both in attracting and stopping people at our stand. The point is that we had thought about what we wanted to achieve beforehand and built our event participation around that objective.
Takeaways
- Set an objective: decide what you want to achieve, who you want to talk to and what you want them to take away with them (in their heads, about you).
- Training: Ensure all your stand staff know the objective, the target audience, and how to qualify leads. And make sure they're properly motivated: bored or disgruntled staff on your stand don't do you any good.
- Plan, plan, plan
- Plan for before: through pre-event promotions such as advertising and invitations to customers and prospects (give them a good reason to visit your stand)
- Plan for during: produce your stand and stand activities to attract and capture the attention of the people you most want to talk to. Does giving away lollipops achieve your goal? If not, why are you doing it? And what do you know about your leads? Think about traffic-flows. Are you on a bustling thoroughfare, a jammed-up intersection or in a backwater? And what can you do to make your stand a destination (rather than an interruption?)
- Plan for after: make sure all leads are filtered, prioritised and followed up promptly after the event. Sadly, too many sets of leads end up as bags of cards under someone's desk. (Hell, I've got some here, if you want 'em.)
