Attending exhibitions should be a vital part of every marketing team’s plan – not only because some are free to attend, but they can also reap high rewards for your team and for morale. After all, a happy team is a productive one. Here are three reasons why your marketing team should be attending exhibitions:
Be inspired
Exhibitions are inspiring places to visit. Although you walk away completely exhausted, feeling like your brain is going to pop, you feel motivated to do bigger and better things.
From free conferences to learn something new or to hear from market leaders, to seeing new and exciting products and services that you may not have otherwise heard of, inspiration can be found in every corner. You really can walk away with more than just a few freebies but with real useable knowledge to grow and develop your team and your business.
Related: UK Small Business Events and Exhibitions Calendar – A regularly updated list of upcoming events of interest for UK SMEs and small business owners.
When we spend a lot of time with our head buried deep in whatever task we’re doing, exhibitions are a refreshing break to gain some perspective of that all-important ‘bigger picture’. You can find out what the major players are doing and what’s on the horizon for your industry.
Check out the competition
Visiting exhibitions where you know your competitors are exhibiting allows you and your team to scope out the show for your future exhibiting plan. Although you can find out things like target market and demographics of visitors from most exhibition organisers, you may find it’s best to visit the exhibition yourself – especially if it’s a future investment for your business.
Not only will this give you a good chance to see the types of exhibitors that go to the event, but it will also help you to see your competitors face-to-face. To find out what offers they give while at the show, what displays they’re using and how large their stand is.
Although ‘keeping up with the Jones’’ isn’t really the point of exhibiting, you’ll want to make sure that if you exhibit next time, you can compete with their stand presence.
Plan your stand
Seeing how other people exhibit and how they use the space available to them can be a great source of inspiration of how you’re going to plan your next stand. There’s nothing better than really seeing how displays are put together and how each item works in unison to create a great display.
Have your marketing team take a look around the sort of stand spaces that you’d be using and take note of things they liked and didn’t like.
Critiquing other people’s displays is a great way of making sure that your business heads in the right direction by aligning best practice – for what attracted you and detracted you as a visitor – against your campaign objectives.
This also gives a great opportunity to make notes on what made a stand go the extra mile– whether that’s a uniform appearance of your staff or a super giveaway.
After you’ve got an idea of the sort of display you want, exhibition stand suppliers such as www.marlerhaley.co.uk can then work with you to create your dream stand to make sure you beat your competition!
