5 minute read
Exhibiting? Plan your way to success
Scan Display is an exhibition, events and retail display company that celebrates its 21st birthday this year. Justin Hawes, MD of Scan Display, and his team have a great deal of experience and knowledge – as both a supplier and exhibitor. Here are Justin’s top tips for exhibitors, using his recent and successful experience exhibiting at EuroShop 2017 as a case study.
1HAVE A GOAL
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Make sure your objective is SMART (specific, measurable, agreedupon, realistic and time-based). You can have multiple objectives but, generally, the fewer you have, the more likely it is you will achieve them. Use your exhibition objectives as guidelines to choose the right event, to design your stand, and to plan all of your marketing activities around it. When Scan Display exhibited at EuroShop 2017, we had a very clear objective: to market ourselves as partners for African projects. EuroShop attracts mostly European exhibitors and visitors, and many are interested in expanding into the African market. We wanted to introduce ourselves as a company that could assist them with expertise and know-how, to pull off successful projects here. Rather than exhibiting on our own, we joined the IFES Pavilion. IFES is the International Federation of Exhibition and Event Services. It’s a Europe-based association, and Scan Display is a member. We wanted to promote ourselves as a potential partner, so it made sense to be among our international colleagues.
2DESIGN TO YOUR GOAL
Once you have an objective for the expo, you should ensure your stand design supports it. At EuroShop, for example, our priority was to get across our unique selling point (that we are from Africa) and meet with people face to face so they could ask questions about the exhibition industry in Africa. Therefore, our branding was simple but bold and to the point – a map of the world with arrows pointing into Southern Africa and the tagline ‘Your exhibition partner in Africa’. We also chose a space that was close to a busy thoroughfare. Our large back wall was directed towards this foot traffic, ensuring our message was highly visible. We had a space for meetings, and a hospitality station so our guests could relax over a cup of coffee with us.
3CHOOSE THE RIGHT STAFF
It’s critical that, after investing a significant amount of money in booking and building your stand, you have the right people to represent your brand. Make sure you have friendly, energetic staff with a good understanding of your company and what it can offer. They also need to know your objective at the show, so they can help you achieve it. Consider some pre-show training to ensure everyone is well prepared. Many visitors at EuroShop are senior managers, so it was important that our stand staff were too. As a result, I was on the stand along with our two sales managers, our creative director and a senior exhibition architect.
4THINK ABOUT YOUR MARKETING COLLATERAL
Aside from your stand, what other marketing collateral do you want to have at your show? I always recommend branded clothing, as it makes your staff highly visible and, therefore, easier to approach. At EuroShop, our team wore branded shirts for the men, and branded scarves for the ladies. Both brochures and branded giveaways are popular at exhibitions in South Africa. At EuroShop, however, both were noticeably absent. The focus was on talking to people and swapping business cards, and this worked well – as many visitors had travelled far to get there and likely didn’t want the extra luggage to take home. We took a small batch of portfolios, and branded USB drives with our profile and portfolio on them. We were selective about those we handed them out to, to ensure our drives only went to interested people. The USB drives were more popular because of their size and weight. You need to be smart about what you do. Only spend money on things you think will help you achieve your objective.
5PRE- AND POST-SHOW MARKETING
Don’t rely on the exhibition organisers to do all the marketing for you – make sure you let your clients, potential clients and the public know you will be exhibiting, and why they should come to see you there. And, afterwards, don’t lose any of the leads that you worked so hard to make. Follow up promptly. For EuroShop 2017, we sent out mailers to all of the contacts we expected to be there, inviting them to come and see us on our stand. We also promoted our stand on our email signature and on social media. A week after the show, we sent out personal emails to all the contacts we had made (both new and existing relationships), and distributed some press releases. Make a splash in order to maximise your exhibition spend. Another advantage of being at the IFES Pavilion was that it was also marketed, and Scan Display was included in these communications.
6CALCULATE YOUR ROI
Working out your ROI (return on investment) is critical to understanding how successful you were as an exhibitor. Your return should be directly linked to your objective. In our case, our return will be the value of any projects we land from our EuroShop contacts. This info will be useful when planning future marketing activities.
7ADDED VALUE
And, finally, always look for ways to refine your goals, improve your stand, reduce your costs, or create additional value in some way. For example, we applied to the Department of Trade and Industry for financial assistance to exhibit at EuroShop, which helped to slightly reduce the huge cost of exhibiting overseas.
