Are You An Exhibitor Inhibitor?

A well-planned exhibition can create a unique marketing opportunity for your exhibitors while generating a substantial source of revenue for your organization. Research shows that exhibitors attend conferences and trade shows in order to build awareness, capture leads, see current clients and keep an eye on the competition ¹. Having access to your organization’s members and attendees is of paramount importance to an exhibitor. Their involvement at the show creates networking opportunities with existing and new potential customers. This access is vital and can generate thousands of dollars in revenue.

Recognizing Exhibitor’s Value

An exhibitor’s participation adds significant value to your event, including:

• Enhancing your attendee’s experience by displaying a visually appealing exhibit hall filled with engaging booths and continuous traffic.
• Showcasing exhibitors with innovative products and services to give your attendees a unique opportunity to see industry advancements all in one place.
• Offering exhibitor driven educational content at the show to provide further interactions with attendees.
• Generating revenue from exhibit booths, lead retrieval, and sponsorship to help offset the expenses your organization incurs while implementing the show.

Achieving these objectives will result in recurring revenue as well as additional exhibit and sponsorship opportunities at future shows. This whitepaper discusses ways to improve exhibitor retention by enhancing their overall show experience.

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Enhancing Exhibitor’s Experience

We know that exhibitors are an essential component of any successful show, but how do we address their business objectives to guarantee their attendance in the future? Consider the following ways to enhance your exhibitors experience at the show:

• Provide exhibitors with more data. It is not sufficient to send them a list of names and emails for every attendee at the show. Exhibitors are looking for ways to qualify the people with whom they are networking. For exhibitors, sending a mass email to every attendee at the show is like throwing mud at the wall and hoping something sticks. Instead, you can help them better qualify their leads by providing a lead retrieval system that quickly and easily captures an attendee’s contact information and other relevant data to replace paper lead forms. A robust lead retrieval system also provides advantages to the both show organizer and exhibitor by providing comprehensive show data and analytics.
• Incorporate incentives as part of your show culture. Gamification is a widespread concept that is sweeping the meetings, conventions, and events industry. This practice promotes traffic in the exhibit hall by offering prizes to both attendees and exhibitors. Some examples of gamification include vendor quizzes, scavenger hunts, and name drawings. Implementing a creative incentive program at your show promotes attendee engagement and results in more business opportunities for your exhibitors.
• Plan for exhibitors to have plenty of facetime during the show. Your show provides a unique experience for exhibitors to gain exposure from key industry personnel. Allocating time for these face-to-face engagements creates a great deal of value that cannot be found anywhere else.
• Survey your exhibitors to see which aspects of the show they consider to be most important.  Take this feedback into consideration when planning for your next show.

Conclusion

Understanding the role exhibitors’ play at your show will promote sustainability and increase retention in the future. We are Conference Leads by Engineerica.  Providing automated solutions for conferences and events is our passion.  We have been specializing in attendance tracking software for the past 20 years. We would be happy to discuss potential alternatives for your conference processes and how to improve your attendee and exhibitor overall experience.