Participation in exhibitions and shows is an exclusively important advertisement measure for goods promotion to the market. It often happens that within 2-4 days of a show a company may find more customers, partners and resellers than for a year of work. But serious preparation is required to ensure success of exhibition and show.

Those who have participated in shows and exhibitions may not read the below-mentioned. For those who haven’t done that yet, it is very important to understand: there is as great difference between visiting an exhibition and participation in it, as there is between watching a film and making it (respectively – the price).

First of all, it is necessary to decide on which exhibition to participate in. From two-three to two dozens of exhibitions a year are held in each industry in the USA. As a rule, participation in the largest exhibitions will have the greatest effect as they gather the biggest number of prospective customers and partners. But effective participation in an exhibition requires considerable expenses on staff, advertisement and marketing materials, rent and equipment of the exhibit stand.

If you are in the largest exhibition in the world dolefully but in proud solitude standing in the corner gripping a pile of papers with the description of your product multiplied in a Xerox machine, and grayish standard curtains are hanging in your block with your company name printed on paper stuck to them, then, most probably, you will play the role of a sad spectator of this “festival of life”. You will have nothing to do but try to grab the accidental visitors of your bear’s corner. With the lie of the land like that for your participation in the exhibition we immediately recommend to REFUSE from such an idea. Such participation in an exhibition will not be of any use and may even have a reverse effect; your company may be treated as not serious. Simple visit of such an exhibition will have much greater effect than participation. Roughly speaking, if you don’t have sufficient funds for participation in the largest exhibition then it makes sense to restrain your ambitions to the level of ammunition and to take part in smaller exhibitions for a start. Speaking the language of sports, there is no need to rush to the world championship at once – at first, make yourself a “star” of district or city competition.

There are three basic stages in organization of each exhibition.

1. Planning.
2. Preparation.
3. Managing.

Poor organization at each of those stages is equal to failure of the whole exhibition undertaking. Let’s have a brief look at each of those stages.

1.Planning.

At this stage you have to answer the question of targets and tasks of your participation in the exhibition. This is exclusively important for further preparation of advertisement and marketing materials, as well as employment of staff. There is need to set too many targets at the same time. In that case they won’t be accomplished. You should concentrate on 1-2 basic directions.

Carry out marketing. If another 20 companies in the exhibition offer absolutely the same as you do, the result will be approximately same number of times less than expected. You should effectively present what your goods, product or service are and how you advantageous and different from all others.

You should make a budget. In no way shall this budget be lower than the average in the exhibition. If it is smaller, or much smaller, you might have to refuse from participation in the exhibition or just attend only as a visitor, but furnish yourself at least with business-cards and small booklets.

2. Preparation.

This is the most labor-consuming stage. Briefly we can break it up into several sub-stages:

• Ordering of a stand at the exhibition. The earlier, the better. If the stand is ordered too late, you might find yourself in such a remote corner that 90% of visitors will simply not reach you.
• Preparation of marketing and advertising materials. There are usually lots of problems with that, the texts themselves, ambiguities and mistakes of translations, poor design, bad printing, cargoes might take time in delivery, etc. the earlier you start preparation, the better. In this matter, you should always have a security plan “B”. Proper marketing and advertising materials – are 50% of the success.
• Allocation of required advertising materials and exhibition materials. Here it is not worth saving. From our experience we know that exhibition catalogues are desktop materials in many companies for many years.
• Preparation of the stand. The stand and equipment of your place at the exhibition is your face. You have to be remembered. Grayish curtains and a shabby table will have an exclusively negative effect on the image of your company. 90% of visitors as a rule give companies like that a wide berth and the best advertising materials will not help you.
• Careful checking of all the advertising and marketing materials. Submit them for reviewing to experienced experts. Mistakes, misprints, ambiguities may have very negative effects.
• Ordering of required equipment. All those – are important details of the stand. Old computer monitor with cataract will have the same negative effect as the grayish curtains…
• Insurance. It is required from all the exhibition participants in the USA. You are not insuring yourself, but the visitors of your stand in accidents.
• Ordering of uniform for exhibition staff.
• Ordering of required infrastructure. Electric power, Internet, phone lines, television, scanners – all that is required. At exhibitions all that has a cost.
• Staff employment – you can bring the best experts with you. But if they don’t speak English well, failure is ensured. A well-coordinated, communicative team should be working at the exhibition.
• Workers and shift-men. You will have one day only to deploy the whole exhibit. If you remain without help, you will just fail to assemble the stand with computers, furniture and other “accessories”. On that day, many things which you’ve forgotten or haven’t foreseen will come to light, and you will have to go to buy all that…
• Booking of tickets, hotels, car rent. The earlier, the better. The bigger the exhibition is, the more chances are there that in case of booking a hotel on “the last day” you will have to stay in a cheap motel one hour drive from exhibition location. Either you will miss the most important part of “hangout”, or the whole exhibition will pass in the mist of insomnia for you …
• Applications for participation in various events of the exhibition. Here in particular, as a rule, the most important contacts are established. Show yourself and see the others.
• Applications for all required passes (badges) for the staff in the stand and company authorities. Maybe for your major customers.
• Sending invitations to all of your present customers, prospective customers whom you are working with now to make them your customers, and probably, it makes sense to purchase the list of serious players in your industry (prospective customers) for invitations sending. As a rule, exhibition organizers sell lists like that to the participants. The customer, who reached the exhibition having a personal invitation, will visit your stand as a rule.
• Souvenirs, visiting cards, contract blank forms, etc.

3. Managing.

This is the most nervous stage – something may not be sent, someone does not arrive, the stand appears to be 15 centimeters bigger than you space, etc.

There are two very important moments here. They will show how well the preparation for the exhibition was done. The first one – is the preparation directly at the exhibition.

• Assembly of the stand, furniture installation.
• Connection of power, Internet, phones.
• Testing of computers and systems which you will have to operate at the exhibition.
• Staff preparation – everyone should know his part and objective.
• Making a work schedule. People will not be able to work 8 hours in a row; enthusiasm decreases, and then comes what psychologist call “fatigue indifference”. In advance, you have to estimate the timings of refreshment breaks so that major part of the team could be permanently present at site. There is no place for “closed for lunch” signs at the exhibition, for which dozens of thousands of dollars have been paid.
• Prepare the main and a spare place for negotiation: wandering about the exhibition with a prospective customer, repeating “let’s find a secluded corner” – is not the best thing to do.
• Make provisions for operative contact with company authorities in case of appearance of major customers or interesting offers.
• On the chance of equipment failure or power cut, note locations and phone numbers of exhibition authorities and of all the technical services. In case things like that happen, the whole team is not supposed to rush in panic around the exhibition shouting “Help!” or “Please, save me!” The responsible person should quickly get in touch with respective services and remedy the fault.
• Get acquainted with your exhibition neighbors on the left, right and opposite. Learn about their product and field of activity. Neighborliness hasn’t yet done any harm to anyone.

The other moment – is the exhibition managing proper.

• Check the scanners of visitors’ cards (otherwise lots of contacts will be missed)
• Each of the team members should have an operating mobile phone, and everyone should have the total list of team members’ phone numbers.
• Uniform or at least a corporate tie and shirt. It doesn’t only play an important psychological part, demonstrating your well-coordinated team to visitors, but also allows to quickly find your people in a crowd.
• Fine and reasonable allocation of advertising and marketing materials. They should be properly visible and accessible to all of the visitors.
• All the members of your team must clearly know their roles and strictly stick to them. If the whole team rushes in a crowd at one customer, it’s a very bad style and the customers wil just get scared.

The roles can be approximately the following.

• Specialists in working with the clients. Your employee who starts conversations with clients, provides advertising information, inquires what the exhibition visitor is interested in. His task is to “catch” as many visitors as possible and to sort out those potentially interesting for the company.
• Specialists of your product. Specialists in work with clients bring him those who are actually interested in your product (service). His task is to tell in more detail about your company (product) and to make the visitors interested to a maximum extent; scan his visitor card – for further contact.
• Manager. His task is either to sell the product immediately or to sign a contract for sale. It is desirable to do that on-site, while the customer is burning with desire. If the prospective customer offers something very interesting beyond his instruction, the manager has to immediately contact the company authorities for decision taking.
• As a rule, another “free-flight specialist” is required. That is your employee, but he is not wearing a company uniform. His task is to walk around the exhibition as a visitor, see the stands of other companies (note down their boons and failures), receive as much information about companies-competitors as possible, make contacts with other visitors, carefully finding out what they are looking for at the exhibition. To recommend to visit the stand of your company, and if they see a prospectively major customer (partner), to take him to the company stand and to introduce him to the manager.
• Naturally, everyone has to collect maximum volume of information on exhibition participants. On the one hand, even those who are not interested in your product may recommend you in future to the acquaintances of theirs, who are interested in it. On the other hand, on one day your product may become of interest to themselves (the customer has to “mature”).
• Give maximum quantity of all types of materials and interviews to Mass-media representatives.

As it is clear from this material, managing exhibitions and shows has a lot of nuances which you should be aware of and foresee. Otherwise, your money may turn out to be foolishly thrown after due to some unforeseen trifle, which subsequently may become fatal both for this exhibition and for company image in whole. It is always better to learn by mistakes of others.

Of course, we cannot tell in one page of the site about all the problems and nuances arising during preparation and managing of exhibitions. The objective – is to provide the insight into how it all happens at large exhibitions. However, our company possesses wide experience of clients presentation at exhibitions in the USA and Europe, and we will be able to make your company have a worthy look at exhibition, receive good press, make a lot of useful contacts and immediately sign direct contracts with customers.

We undertake all the concerns and cares for orders of space in exhibition, preparation of stand, printing of required marketing materials in the USA, selection and training of staff, delivery of all the necessary to the exhibition site, mounting of the stand at the exhibition, booking of air tickets, hotels, cars, interpreters, preparation of materials for the press and exhibition managing proper.

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