Where to exhibit
Where Your Business Should Exhibit?
Before you decide to book an international exhibition or one in the UK, you must do your research. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive but it will make all the difference.
It is worth taking a minute to think about why you need this step. Sadly we see too many businesses that get caught up in the excitement of exhibiting and miss out the research stage. The result is that they pick the wrong event, get the wrong booth location or find the wrong audience is there. Because of this, the company has very poor results and is then out of pocket. This often puts them off exhibiting at further exhibitions in the future- when better research would have given them a totally different experience.
To begin, you need to decide whether you want a UK exhibition or an international exhibition venue. This will depend on your industry and where your market is located. If you only sell locally, you won’t want to exhibit at an event that is 200 miles away.
Even if the venue is right, you still need to be sure that the event is the best one for you. Simple ways of researching a show include asking the organisers for last year’s exhibitor’s lists and attendance records. Speak to the exhibitors to find out their experiences and return on investment. Ask if they are going back this year? It is amazing the information that can be gleaned in this way. For example comments might include, “The show was good but we were in the wrong hall, hall 2 had most people because that was where the restaurant was”. Or “Yes there were lots of exhibition visitors but unfortunately they were not the decision makers.”
The exhibition industry, like most others, has a series of professional publications that list the major events around the world. Publications like ‘Exhibition Bulletin’ will list shows by venue, industry type and time of year. This can help you see where an exhibition fits into the international exhibition calendar.
The credentials of any show can be established by checking how long it has been going and its relevance to the products or services on offer. Also consider the exhibition’s ability to attract the market leaders to exhibit, and the decision makers to visit and the level of advertising and promotion for the event.
So you have now reviewed why, when and where you should look to exhibit now you need think about the substance behind exhibiting what should you do next and how are you going to achieve it.