Orchestrating a Successful Exhibition – The Art of Conducting It Right (Part 2)

Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

After having answered the fundamental questions about your reasons for the exhibition (Purpose for participation), and having conducted the necessary Pre-exhibition preparations, both discussed in part 1 of this series of blog posts, we will now move to the next phase of planning a successful exhibition.

How to attract visitors and attention to your stand
An eye-catching and impressive booth attracts attention and visitors quickly. Similar to visiting a website, you have only seconds to impress and attract passersby, therefore, it is very crucial that you think creatively about how to garner the much needed attention. Setting up a display of various products and materials, having a demonstration of video clips or how your products works, or employing a clean and clear design best tailored for your audience, you can be sure that these are all critical factors that can bring you well-earned attention.

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Listed below are some methods that will enable you to achieve that:
•  Decide on a suitable stand construction (open space versus shell scheme)
•  Customize the design and branding of your booth (as opposed to using roll up posters and pop ups) and use stand illuminations
•  Provide a unique demonstration of exactly how your product works
•  Make use of (free) advertisement in the exhibition catalog/newspaper, event website, event guide
•  Offer branded giveaways suitable for your target audience and for the different level of visitors
•  Offer visitors warm and cold drinks and make arrangements for daily Happy Hour
•  Organize a raffle or competition (great opportunity to collect business cards)
•  Invite industry experts or branch specialists to your booth as guest speakers
•  Hand out invitations to your booth among your prospects
•  Wear branded and unified clothing

Tips:
•  Ensure that while designing your booth, you take into consideration important factors like meeting space and proper seating arrangements 
•  Keep an adequate supply of well-presented collateral, promotional materials and business cards in your stand and in the show press office
•  Keep the booth clean at all times (without dust, fingerprints and used coffee cups)





Exhibition Stand Staff Training
80% of the success rate of an exhibition is largely dependent on the performance of the stand staff during the exhibition as they are the company ambassadors, and are a key ingredient to having a successful show.

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You only have one shot to make an impression on your prospects. After engagement with your staff you want them to walk away from the booth completely impressed by your professional team, with a strong conviction that you can deliver what they need, and that you possess the right team to support them. Consequently, you need to invest time in the training and development of your staff’s skills so as to empower them for the task ahead.

Sales people do not necessarily need to be your stand staff, as an exhibition offers a unique environment in which the visitors tend and should to do most of the talking as opposed to the typical selling experience which sales people are accustomed to. Ensure that you choose your stand staff wisely.

Whatever staff you decide to recruit for the exhibition, inform them of your reasons for the exhibition at the event, your objectives, their duties and responsibilities, and how they are expected to function. 

In order to avoid valuable time wastage on irrelevant or unimportant prospects for your business on the part of your stand staff, teach them to ask influential questions that enable them to engage, qualify, present and close within a predetermined length of time.

A motivated, well-trained team goes the extra mile to distinguish your company. At those booth stands where unprepared and non-enthused staff is  present, they will sit down at their stands, work on their laptops or phones, and talk to each other - it looks unprofessional and unappealing.

Ensure that your stand staff realizes that at all times they are viewed and heard everywhere. They need to comprehend that their behavior and conduct are "on display", similar to your products or services.

Tips:
•  Involve only essential people at the early stage of planning your exhibition in order to set measurable goals, clear messaging and lead generation tactics
•  Conduct several pre-show planning and follow-on-progress meetings to be followed by a final briefing (including booth work schedule)
•  Organize a specific stand staff training session


Coming up next :
- During the event
- After the event


Want to learn more about successful exhibition planning? Contact me for more information at arielleadler@yahoo.comarielleadler@yahoo.com

Orchestrating a Successful Exhibition – The Art of Conducting It Right

Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Performing exhibitions at industry events can be a lucrative and respectable way of raising your profile, launching a new offer and generating sales leads, IF done right.

The act of conducting and managing a successful participation in exhibitions is a state-of-the-art business; standing out from the crowd, differentiating your company from competitors, deriving the expected quantity of quality leads, dealing with budget constraints and demands for demonstrable returns on investment are features which require unwavering preparations but are often disparaged.

It should be noted that these are however, an incomplete list of the tasks an exhibition planner needs to deal with.
In this series of blog posts, I will guide you through the basics of planning ahead for a successful and ROI measurable exhibition.

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Purpose for participation
Exhibitions create value to stakeholders through the inducement of the behavioral patterns of the participants. If you do not expect the participants to take some kind of action after having socialized with your stand staff, then there is no value in your exhibit.
As a result of this, prior to tackling the actual planning of the exhibition, you need to ask yourself some rudimentary and essential questions:
•    Is there an actual need for an exhibiting, how necessary is it?
•    How much staff is required to engage the target audience?
•    What size of exhibition space is required to attract the target audience, display the products and hold meetings?

Once you have answered these questions and have decided to become exhibitor, the next step would be the preparatory step.  Whether you are participating in small or large exhibitions, with a small or large booth, they all involve the same basic planning, and there are no shortcuts!

Tip:
•    If you are doubtful and unsure about your need to exhibit, do a careful observation of other exhibitors. If you are still uncertain, attend the exhibition venue as a visitor to learn about the event, your competitors, the market, industry trends and make new contacts

Pre-exhibition preparation
As this is a costly investment in terms of expenditure (e.g. exhibition space rental and all such related expenses as well as labor costs), it is imperative that you should be very clear and focused on what you want to achieve, and also have precise and measurable goals in mind. 

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While preparing for an exhibition, special attention should be paid to:
•  The decision on the stand type and its location (taking into consideration the booth location of your competitors, and companies you would like to be in close proximity to or even be associated with)
•  Liaising with booth designers, production companies, graphic designers and printing houses
•  Opting for a prime speaking slot for your presentation, as companies utilize and recognize the power of communicating messages and expertise in a particular field via this channel
•  Planning your online and offline advertising campaign towards the event such as PRs, mailers, promotion on social media e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, as well as blog posts
•  Arranging meetings ahead of time with prospects (the decision makers), customers, journalists and analysts
•  Planning  lead generation mechanisms
•  Advancing clear messaging; in collateral, booth design and overall approach
•  Arranging hotel accommodation for participants
•  Arranging transportation of goods to venue (and back to your company)

Tips:
•  Start planning well ahead of time in order not to miss deadlines, and also so you can make the most out of the event
•  Keep track of the planned budget versus actual budget expenditure on an excel sheet


Coming up next :
- How to attract visitors and attention to your stand
- Exhibition Stand Staff Training
- During the event
- After the event

Want to learn more about successful exhibition planning? Contact me for more information at arielleadler@yahoo.com

The Challenges of Partnering for Excellence

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If you want to make the most out of your business, and of course that you do, besides offering quality products or services, you also need to have channel marketing, a useful and challenging addition to a company's marketing mix.
If done right, it brings great value to your business - both in terms of larger market coverage as well as revenues.

As Channel Marketing Manager, I have witnessed that building a valuable partnership over the years with channel partners, created opportunities that turned into sales. The secret sauce of channel partner success is twofold. At one hand, by understanding your customers and their needs. At the other hand, by connecting to and cooperating with your channel partners.

Customers' needs should be identified and the added value and demand for their products and services must be promoted. One very efficient way of doing so is by having a dedicated channel marketing manager who acts as the facilitator between you and your customers.
This strategy is being embraced by more and more companies nowadays that want to understand the added value and importance of channel marketing.

It’s not easy to handle the main challenge of building trust and keeping the channel partners motivated and interested.

That’s why companies support their channels partners with a newsletter to keep them abreast of the latest developments and hold webinars to enhance their knowledge in an easy and convenient way.

When focusing on developing the knowledge of your channel partners through easy access to a Resource Center, a Channel Portal and online sales training, it empowers them to identify potential customers, generate awareness of solutions and keep them interested in selling your offerings through incentive plans such as Channel Partner Programs.

By keeping them motivated and showing them the benefits of partnering with you, the company will get a competitive advantage.

More than anything, you must prepare a solid strategy before taking action and channel marketing will prove to be quite a significant aid to your business.

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Want to learn more about Channel Marketing? Contact me for more information.

Selling to Customers - Use Visuals !

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Although posted some months ago,  Rich Earle's post on "Are You Using Visuals to Communicate to Your Customers?" is still very relevant.

Too often companies tend to fill up their presentations and collateral with too many words. In this world where time is so precious and "time is money", who has time to read and assimilate the abundess information one tries to convey ?
The best way to teach one about your products, solutions and services and make an impact with the audience is by using visuals.

Some more tips for building eye-catching presentations:

• Regardless of the quantity of slides you use, don’t be afraid to leave white space (leaving areas without text or images on your page). Crowding lots of information in little room you have may cause your audience visual overload. A presentation which is too crowded with information loses its impact and runs the risk to daunt viewers. Instead, take advantage of white space by showing for example only a single slide of a pie chart or use it as a means to highlight information; leave a headline with lots of white space around it, and it will catch the viewer’s attention immediately.
• Also take into consideration the color schemes you use, whether they are used as background color or font color. Companies should create and use branding guidelines, in order to strengthen the company brand. A good way of doing that is by creating easy-to-use  templates with build-in slide layouts accompanied by icons and pictures.

Good luck !

Child-Targeted Marketing Isn't A Kid's Game

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Every year 100s of billions of dollars are spent by advertisers on inspiring, persuading and manipulating people into a consumer routine which has desolating effects on the environment through its indulgence and improvidence. Advertisers play on our insecurities, create deceitful needs and offer fake solutions. They succeed in raising a certain level of dissatisfaction which directs into consumption and kids especially are defenseless to this sort of manipulation.

To marketers children represent a solid demographic as they are huge customers or potential ones; they influence their parents' buying decisions, spend money themselves as teenagers and will continue to do so as they become adult consumers.

As opposed to preceding generations, young children have more autonomy and a decision-making power within the family which can clearly be observed in a family's purchasing patterns. They uses to  influence which sweets and toys to buy, but these days it goes far beyond that;
they show their preference when buying cereals and other standard groceries, clothing, software and computer products, family entertainment, restaurants and family trip locations and even cars.

Consequently, children's "influence" is recognized by advertisers who nurture this situation and "use" kids as their marketing target.  Nowadays parents are prepared to buy more for their kids as they might have dual incomes and more disposable income in addition to guilt which can play a role as well;  time-stressed parents make up by purchasing material items for time spent with their offspring.

One of the strategies marketers use to target children is by relying on the kid to pester the parents to buy the product, rather than going straight to the parents. The "pester power" marketing strategy creates exactly what advertisers are after as parents easily give in into their children's persistence nagging; it is extremely powerful and works.

Building brand name loyalty
Large enterprises such as Nike, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, to name a few, discovered that brand recognition can be established already in very young children and purposefully changed their primary corporate efforts from making products to creating a brand name image.

Brand recognition fundamentals are created by marketers in very young children, in the hopes that lifetime bonding with the brand is established, from the cradle to the grave.
Brand loyalties can be established as early as age 2, and by the age of 3 or 4, before they can even read, usually distinguish brands and status items

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The Internet
Unquestionably this is an extremely desirable medium for child-targeted marketing by marketers.

Kids surfing the internet doesn't go without dangers and unethical advertising; often without parental supervision, children spend hours on unregulated sites and sophisticated technologies enable companies to easily collect information from the children for marketing research, and to target them with personalized advertising.

In my opinion this is unethical as kids do not quite comprehend the commercial and persuasive intent as well as the manipulation behind advertisements until they are 8 or 9 years old.

It is for these reasons that child-targeted marketing should be sensibly restricted, particularly the ones aimed at children under 9 years old. And this should include censored internet sites, television programs, and advertisements.

Hard-Core Marketing – Israel's Coffee And Alcohol Revolution

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Cofix, perhaps one of Israel's most ambitious and certainly most recent coffee-to-go chains, announced to open Cofix Bar nearly 5 months after having launched its first branch in October 2013.

Cofix's unique concept of selling all of their products for 5 NIS only (approximately  €1) is intended to compete against convenience stores, coffee chains and bars where one can enjoy a warm, healthy or alcoholic drink, snack and sandwich for a most reasonable price.
Naturally the opening of Cofix caused an upheaval in the market as it hit hard on its competitors such as Aroma who quickly lowered the prices "as gesture" of some of their products.
Having done so, in most cases the competitors still offer their products for twice as much, in the best case…..

To read the entire article, please click here

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