Why Should Exhibitions Be Part Of Your Marketing Plan?

Thought Leadership

Attending an exhibition or trade show allows you to truly showcase your expertise, and not just through speaking opportunities. Clever concepts on your stand can allow you to visibly demonstrate that you are leading experts in your field. There are speaker slots available though as well to exhibitors where you can take to the stage and stamp your authority on a specific topic or business challenge, and position yourself as a thought leader in this area, whilst getting the added benefit of creating assets from the slot, or an additional backlink even.

A Digital Benefit

While the in-person element of exhibitions is often what makes them so attractive, there is often still a digital marketing benefit to attending. Most event organisers will provide online “real estate” for you to promote your products or services. Using event hashtags and interacting online with both attendees and other suppliers can be an excellent way to build your social audience in today's digital age. Acquiring content for your social channels or assets to repurpose in your email programme can also create additional value which runs long after the exhibition itself, and create an attendee base for your next event of interested leads.

Face-to-Face Matters

In a digital era, where so many strategies revolve around online communications, it can be easy to overlook just how imperative adding a human element to your business is and the impact it can have on sales. Attending a trade show or exhibition is an ideal opportunity to allow teams to build a genuine, ongoing one-to-one relationship that transcends the day itself.

Meet The Decision Makers

Exhibitions can be great for meeting your existing customers and your business partners when you can not travel to them normally, or might only meet once or twice during the year. Sometimes even this is a check-in opportunity for remote or other departmental staff to ensure they feel connected to the rest of the business.

From a customer perspective, you can cover outstanding items, order commitments, or kick start your new yearly plans which are not always easy conversations over email. There will be so many professional visitors from all sectors, you may meet the right decision-maker on the stand and agree to important actions for your company right away.

Avoid The Wastage Of Cold Calling

There is nothing more annoying than whilst you are working on an important task, you get startled by a phone call. And if that phone call turns out to be from a salesperson, then not only have you lost your concentration, but you’ve also lost it for something trivial / something off your radar at that moment. Reports say that you need at least 20 minutes to get back to work once you’ve lost your focus, so disturbances like cold calling often leave customers annoyed and indifferent to your brand. Cold calling also comes across as a pushy marketing strategy that can alienate your potential customer too.

Exhibitions are not only a better option but rather the best way to grab your target audience whilst they are in 'buying' mode and in the right frame of mind. This is why marketers know the importance of exhibition shows.

In most cases, during a sales cycle, you need to spend more time initiating contact and qualifying yourself. But in an exhibition show, these steps are shortened since visitors are already interested and they are coming to your exhibition stand during the contact phase.

Keep Your Competitors Close

In today’s competitive marketing world, providing the best services and innovative products is not enough, it is essential to be ahead of your competitors too. You can do the basics to stay abreast of other exhibitors, from reviewing competitors’ websites and having a look at their client feedback, but exhibitions allow you to watch all the market leaders concentrated in one place and how they present their stories to new customers.

Take the opportunity to understand your competitors better by visiting their stand, and gaining insights into their priorities helping you to plan your next marketing strategy more efficiently.

How Can Tecna UK Help?

We will take any brief and create a fully bespoke exhibition stand design that will guarantee an impactful trade show presence. We are a team of passionate design professionals; driven to deliver and build you bespoke modular exhibition stands that will transform your exhibition space in line with your goals. With a multi-disciplined team, we bring together a collection of expertise, ensuring we can deliver an exhibition stand that is both practical and visually powerful.

With a keen eye for detail and creativity, we will take into consideration every element of your exhibition design to ensure it fulfils every one of your stand objectives and makes you stand out from the competition.

We will transform any brief into a modular display stand design that is to scale, works within your budget, and packs a visual punch at your exhibitions.

The team are always up for a challenge, so email us today.

Want to make your next event a success? Take a look at our ultimate guide to planning for your event.

Author

Mandy Wooster

Head of Marketing, Tecna UK

Mandy Wooster has worked in the exhibition and events industry for over 20 years running exhibitions in Barcelona, China, Australia, UAE and the US for organisers such as RX Global. She has extensive experience in marketing, content, commercial and VIP buyer roles and is a double winner of the EXHIBITION NEWS ‘Best International Trade Show’ award.