Overview
Exhibitions and EXPOs are fantastic opportunities for you to grow your business. You can showcase your latest innovations, connect with new clients/customers, build your brand, find valuable partners and network with your peers. No matter the size of the event, or how long you stay, if you plan your event well – you’ll return to the office with insight into your customers’ needs and brimming with ideas and leads.
However, if you arrive at an exhibition with a basic stand, lack of pre-event planning and no strategy for managing the stand and your people, that success is unlikely to be realised. To bring in new business, you need a quality exhibition stand that will showcase your company.
The Importance of Exhibitions for Businesses
The main reason you’ll go to an exhibition is to promote your business. This can be to reveal a brand-new product or service, raise your profile within the industry, and bring in new clients and leads.
The former is incredibly important as you can collect valuable feedback from potential customers – giving you a concrete idea of the pros and cons of a product or service you are looking to bring to market.
However, you don’t need to have a new product or service to perform at an exhibition. A well planned, eye-catching stand will attract a lot of interest and help position your business with the customers and suppliers you want to work with.
The networking opportunities shouldn’t be understated either. Most exhibitions are themed around a specific industry, such as tech, finance, manufacturing, or anything in between. This makes them very competitive, but it’s a great way to find out more about your peers. By establishing the direction your rivals are heading in, you can gain valuable insight into what your competitors are doing and adjust your trajectory to out-manoeuvre theirs; or try a bold new marketing strategy to help you find your niche.
Many exhibitions involve presentations too. This is a golden opportunity to showcase your business to a room full of fellow professionals and target clients, so you should look to identify who may be attending these activities and think about how you optimise the opportunity, e.g. sponsoring, taking a speakers’ spot or placing lead generation materials in strategic locations near to these events.
Finding your Focus at an Exhibition
Before you start designing your exhibition stand and writing your presentation, you need to establish what you want to achieve at each event. Sometimes this is simple; if you have a new product you want to reveal, that’ll be the main thing you want to show off.
At every exhibition we attend we see multiple companies who have no idea why they’re at the event, other than they think they should be, or they attended last year so they’ll attend again this. Sometimes the stand looks excellent, but the person running it looks disinterested, preoccupied on their laptop or phone, or like they have something better to do back at the office.
Providing a quality stand is only half the process. Your team need to be briefed properly before the event, and you need to put your best salespeople front and centre. Make sure there are enough people to run your stand throughout the event – no one enjoys being on their feet for 8 hours without a break, and you should never leave your stand empty.
Even if you aren’t presenting on stage, your pitch needs to be slick and well-informed. If you are at an exhibition purely with networking in mind, you need to be able to explain what makes your business the best and have a jargon-free version for your potential customers.
Separate your team into different roles. Greeters will get the attention of passersby and give them a quick overview to gauge interest, then pass them along to someone who can go into much more detail. Think of it like a production line aiming to maximise efficiency – and no visitor likes to queue!
No matter what your goals are at your next exhibition, you need a professional exhibition stand that will make you stand out.
How Exhibition Stands Sell your Brand
When you’re designing a stand for your next exhibition, visuals are key. You could be set up between Apple and Microsoft, but if you have a well-planned, eye-catching stand with clear messaging, you will be able to compete with much larger brands and stands.
You don’t need a lot of bright and garish colours with surfaces full of visual noise. Whilst colour can play an important role, it’s how it’s used, or not used, that can make the difference. When we create stands, we focus on the ‘what’ and the ‘why’. What are you wanting to say, and why is it important to the targets you are looking to attract?
Remember, your brand is about much more than a company name and a logo. The way you communicate sells you better than any physical media, so make sure you and your team understand your brand ethos and what you are looking to achieve before you set up at your next exhibition.
If your team is stood around chatting and handing out a couple of business cards to passers-by, visitors are unlikely to remember you as they will be bombarded by many other competitors throughout the event. We recommend adding something to your exhibition stand that enhances the experience.
Activities and Games at Exhibition Stands
No matter your profession, we all love to be entertained or see something we found interesting and unexpected. Some events can be too stuffy, both in temperature and atmosphere – liven things up by adding a way for visitors to enjoy themselves.
A little healthy competition is great too. Turn your games into a challenge, with prize draws and rewards for a good performance. These events can feel very competitive; use that to your advantage!
They’re not just for fun either. When visitors sign up for a prize draw, it’s a great way to engage with them when their guard is down, but it also gives you an opportunity to collect their details so you can send them information after the event (alongside a prize or ‘thanks for playing’). Some visitors may be reluctant to give out their details, even when they’re interested in what you offer; this is a fun solution that will get the least resistance.
Of course, if you prefer the more traditional approach to exhibiting, we’ll help you make the most of your stand. With QR codes and scanners, collecting data is easier than ever, and can be done in seconds.
Unlike other exhibition stand providers, we work with you to design the perfect stand for your needs. This means you don’t have to adapt to the stand, and it will be guaranteed to support your pitch and display.
We provide everything you need to set up the stand yourself, or fully managed turnkey stands that are set up for you. The latter is very popular with our clients, as you can fully focus on the day, and don’t have to worry about packing up when it’s over.
We also help you make the most of the stand’s location too. If you’re tucked away in a corner, you’ll be relying on potential customers finding your stand almost by accident; we’ll make sure you’re front and centre to capitalise on the foot traffic.
Interactive Exhibition Stands for Product Showcases
Pitching successfully is an art form, and one that only a few companies fully understand. Talking directly at potential customers can work well, but only if they’re interested in your company already, and there is no guarantee that they’ll remember the information you provide.
The key to an effective product showcase is interactivity and engagement. When potential customers can experience your product first hand, your pitch will be far more memorable. This can be done in a number of ways, including interactive videos, games, or a demonstration of what your product does.
Some companies shy away from interactivity if their product isn’t a physical object. However, with quality videos and demonstrations, you can bring it to life.
Once your pitch is complete, you should always ask people for their feedback. Not only will this help you improve your product, but your pitch too. This can all be done using a separate screen built in to your exhibition stand. It can be a simple rating out of five, or a more detailed review. If possible, you can ask customers that are interested to enter their details so you can contact them after the exhibition.
Our stands are designed with interactivity in mind. We’ve moved far beyond simple tablets and laptop screens, creating an experience that is not only informative, but a lot of fun too!
Post-Pitch Success
When the final day of the event is behind you, and you’ve returned to the office, there’s still one more task ahead of you.
If your stand stood out and your pitch was interactive, you should have a few new enquiries already, but don’t rely on the visitors to make the first move. One of the biggest mistakes we see businesses make time and time again is returning to the office with stacks of emails and contact details then doing nothing with them.
We understand that after a few days of exhibiting you might be behind on a few tasks, but you need to take the time to follow up ASAP. The sooner you contact the potential customers you met, the fresher your brand will be in their memory. If they see an email from you and say ‘who?’ that won’t translate into any new sales. To help with this task you can look to pre-prepare a series of responses, give the post event follow-up role to a dedicated resource in the business and make it their task to fulfil the follow-up. Don’t forget to track these follow-up and responses, they are great insight for further sales activities.
The Best Exhibition Stands
With over 35 years of experience, we know our stuff when it comes to exhibition stands.
We don’t just design a stand and leave you to it, either. After years of helping a wide range of start-ups, SMEs, and more, we’ve seen every type of stand available, and know what will work best for your business.
Some of our new clients used their stand in a way that didn’t suit them, until we opened their eyes about the potential they were missing. Now they’re the best in the room, no matter what the competition brings.
We develop and implement big ideas
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If you are looking for an exhibition stand that will give you stand out and attract more we can provide a solution to meet your budget.
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