The battle to attract visitors to your exhibition booth begins a long time before the actual show. The more attention you can draw to your event through e.g. trade media, blogs, your website and other channels the better.
It is time for PR professionals to face facts. In recent years visitor behaviour at trade shows has changed. What was once a two day reward to hard working employees has transformed into a shorter and much more targeted activity for decision makers and influencers.
Most trade show visitors have a set agenda on what exhibitors they wish to visit and what products they would like to see. In reality most decisions are made already ahead of the trip.
Of course there are exceptions to the agenda. Some still make spontaneous visits to exhibition booths if they appear appealing in some way. Are you willing to wager that your booth is one of those that receive spontaneous visitors?
The Messe Frankfurt tower. Image source: Messe Frankfurt GmbH.
Before the show
My experience from technology PR is that people interested in certain types of technology try to stay updated on the latest developments by reading trade publications, websites, blogs, and newsletters as well as watching TV and online videos etc. Other important channels are colleagues and friends (recommendation).
Let’s face it, if a friend sends you a link. Don’t you click it?
Being a bit old school I have always tried to target trade media. Really, it is the classic lesson about perception. An ad in a magazine is perceived as a commercial thing. An article in a trade magazine is perceived as more scientific.
Avoid “no”
In the old days a “no” from a magazine meant one less channel to carry your news. Today, a no means a number of channels are being left out. Modern trade magazines are not just printed papers. Publishing houses have websites, e-newsletters (dedicated subscribers = permission), RSS feeds, blogs, web TV, member forums etc.
With this in mind it is more important than ever to do your home work, You must also be professional enough to admit if what you are exhibiting is newsworthy or not. If it is not perhaps you should question your attendance at the event as well.
Maximising your investment
Needless to say attending an exhibition or hosting events costs money. Once you have decided to exhibit you should aim at optimising your investment. The more attention you can attract per invested dollar the better.
So how do you do that?
We have already established the fact that the battle of the visitors to your exhibition booth takes place before the show. Time and money invested in pre-show PR will hopefully translate into visitors, meetings and dialogues with customers, potential customers and other parties taking an interest in your business.
Think about it. What is the cost of a customer visit compared to an exhibition lead?
No news or little news
If there was not much news at the moment I would promote my company’s presence at the show as best possible. Most likely I would distribute a pre-show press release that would direct journalists to the company website through links of interest in the pre-show material.
I would also invite journalists to visit the booth and offer one on one dialogue with company experts. Invites would be distributed through different electronic channels. The content would be adapted for the respective media and contain links to an online response form.
Some trade publications have their own booths at major exhibitions so I would try to visit them in order to draw attention to the booth, build relations and learn more about them. I would also rent a press box at the press centre so that journalists would be able to pick up my press kit.
Medium news
Depending on your business, some years are less eventful than others. Let’s say you presented something great at the previous show. For the upcoming one there may not really any innovations. Instead there are just upgrades and additions to your product portfolio.
Besides the activities described in the previous section about no news or little news I would host a press breakfast at the exhibition booth. The booth environment is less formal than a full blown press conference. If you display products you have natural points of interest to gather around.
I like the breakfast concept. Depending on culture journalists have different levels of integrity. In order not to offend anyone or make them feel uncomfortable, breakfast is at a good level. Bagels and coffee would most likely not be considered a bribe. All people need to eat:-)
Journalists attending trade shows have hectic schedules so breakfast and a short morning activity (max 30 minutes) with an option to stay on and have one-on-one talks with company experts is a good deal.
Big news
The best scenario is of course if you have got big news about new products / innovations. Needless to say, the pre-show activties are the same as in the other two cases. You should also make sure that you have made follow up calls to journalists that are important to you. Remember it is about relations and dialogue.
In the big news case there is an opportunity e.g. to host a press conference, offer interviews with key people and technical experts. You can also arrange tours of the exhibition booth and meet with journalists, editors and publishing houses. It is a good opportunity to meet several important media people in a short period of time in order to try and make agreements on future articles etc.
If you have customers near to the exhibition (e.g. industries) perhaps you can make an agreement for you to bring journalists to their site on study visits. This creates an opportunity to promote your solution and having someone else endorse it. It also creates an opportunity to promote your customer’s business (unless it over shadows your own…).
With a lot of good news on the agenda you should save the real good stuff to the most important target media. However, always have a runner up in mind if they are not interested or if the timing is bad versus their editorial calendar.
A few quick ones about return on communications (ROC):
1. Lead times between distribution of your media material and publication in the trade media may vary from less than a day (online) up to a year. This is usual in offline in order to suit certain editorial themes.
2. Tracking of leads generated is not always feasible as leads are directed to the salesperson or product expert. If you have an opportunity to guide readers to e.g. a request form on your website you can measure better.
3. In order to maximise your ROC opportunities. Remember to start quite a while before the exhibition so you do not miss out on e.g. quarterly trade publications.
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Note from @pr_persson
There are loads of things to think about when attending exhibitions. In this blog post I have chosen the promotional aspects on how to draw media attention to your event and to maximise that effect during and after the event. Needless to say I have not mentioned anything about customer invitations, customer events at the exhibition, non media related PR activities etc.
There are also things that I have chosen not go into detail about at this time as I feel they may deserve future posts of their own. This includes topics like e.g. targeting the correct media, how to acquire good media lists, other events to strengthen your show presence and having the guts not to show everything.
In order to save some space I have left also out some of the timing as to when different should be done during the process. If you have any questions or suggestions on that or any other thoughts please contact me either by posting a comment or by e-mail.
P.S.
If you wish to look at a good example of an extremely professional and international trade fair ground, go to the website of Messe Frankfurt (Germany).
