Exhibiting Objectives & Budget

Objectives and Budget Before you do anything else you need to Establish clear objectives

Your show objectives will tie in with your companies overall marketing objectives.

Comes down to four key areas: Sales, Marketing, Customer relationship management, Media

Your show objectives are likely to be a handful of these. And as you know they must be measurable and achievable. So you must put some targets in place for any of the objectives you set.

- If you are collecting leads then how many are you aiming for - I will give you some help with setting realistic and achievable lead targets in a moment?

- If you have a new story to tell and want to get coverage in the press, what press and how many articles are you in aiming for?


My advice is to make sure everyone in your company or in the least the relevant staff know what you are trying to achieve by doing the show. Early buy in will help maximise the input from others and keep everyone focussed on the goals.

Set your budget

Setting your budget early will help you monitor expenditure. As a basic guide your budget is likely to be split as follows:

Stand space 20-30%
Display stand 40 -60%
Show service 5-15%
Marketing 5 -10%
Other 5 - 10%


Marketing

Exhibition marketing falls broadly into two activities: pre-show marketing and marketing at the show. Whilst you are expecting the Show Organiser to deliver lots of good quality visitors, it's your efforts on the marketing front that will help ensure you meet the right people at the show!

Pre-show Marketing

Advertise your attendance It is worth while highlighting the fact that any marketing before the show is aimed at enticing your clients and prospects to the show and puts you on their 'must see' list. This can be done in several ways; by sending a simple invitation or more sophisticated mailer. Or even by word of mouth via your sales team or customer service staff. If you give people a reason to come to your stand, an incentive, then this will increase your hit rate.

This is a good time to further develop relationships with existing clients too. There is no better place to meet clients than at a show. If your stand looks good it helps to reinforce your credibility with them. Don't avoid inviting key clients because your competitors are at the show - if the show is relevant to them and you haven't told them you are there what will that say to them?

Work with the Organiser

Take advantage of any deals being offered by the organiser, such as; free seminar places, tickets that give people VIP status and show tickets with your logo on supplied FOC. All Organisers are keen to increase their visitors numbers and will work with you, especially if you have a good database that you're willing to market the show to.

In addition to sending out mail and email shots consider:

- Putting information on your website
- Placing details on your music on hold
- Putting the show logo and your stand number on company correspondence such as letterheads and invoices