The world of trade shows, conferences and business events and gearing up. We’re getting ready to throw open our doors and let you back into our favourite venues. We know that you’ve missed networking events and designing your exhibition stand just as much as we’ve missed doing our jobs. We can’t wait to see you.
However, the pandemic has affected many industries. It has been hard to operate and recovery is at the front of everyone’s mind. For this reason, we understand that you might be looking to save some money when it comes to your marketing strategy.
Exhibiting is a great networking strategy and can help you generate leads, increase brand awareness and build relationships with customers. But it can also be expensive. Your exhibition stand is the largest investment, often costing up to 50% of your total exhibiting budget.
If saving money is something you are keen to do when it comes to your exhibition stand, these five tips will help you achieve that:
Always Rent your Exhibition Stand
The first thing you should do to save money is hire an exhibition stand. Your exhibition stand typically costs upwards of 50% of your total exhibiting budget, which is why rental stands are such a popular option.
Purchasing a stand has benefits. However, if you are looking to save money then hiring will help. When it comes to your event and your stand, you will notice very few differences when it comes to rental vs. purchases.
You can have fully customised graphics and choose whether to self-build or receive professional install. At the end of your show, your exhibition stand contractors will take your stand away again. You’ll have no storage costs, which can help save money in the long-term.
Keep an Eye Out for Reusable Exhibits
If you’ve followed the advice above and decided to hire an exhibition stand, you should still make sure that you choose a reusable option. This can dramatically reduce the cost of exhibiting from show to show.
Some exhibition stand contractors offer build ‘n’ burn stands. These stands are not reusable and end up in the skip immediately after the show. As well as the sustainability issue, build ‘n’ burn means that you are paying for a brand new stand every time you attend an exhibition.
Reusable stands will decrease the cost of repeat exhibiting. If you purchase your stand, there will be no charge per show unless you require additional graphics or professional installation. If you hire your stand the cost of the graphics will be included in the first show, after which, you will see a reduction in rental fees.
Note: In order to reuse your graphics, avoid dates or anniversaries. It’s great if you’re celebrating your 20th year in business, but you won’t be next year and you’ll have to fork out for new panels.
Switch to Digital Handouts
For years, we have seen exhibition stands covered in branded promotional goods. Pens, USB sticks, tote bags, mouse matts… the list is endless. As well as being expensive, the relevance of this promotional merchandise has decreased over the years.
Stop spending your money of stuff that people don’t want.
To really catch the attention of a lead, you need to offer them something of value. And there is an easy way of doing this with very little expense. Digital handouts offer visitors an incentive to hand over their contact information, instantly showing their interest in your business and qualifying themselves.
You can provide vouchers, the chance to win a prize or informative eBooks and audiobooks. These are a few examples of things that have much more relevancy than a branded mouse matt and are cheaper to produce.
Make Sure it’s a Modular Exhibition Stand
There is no point having a reusable exhibition stand that isn’t also reconfigurable. If you have a busy exhibiting calendar, the chances of you have the same size floor space at each show is unlikely. It is even more unlikely that these floor spaces will have the same number of open sides and the same orientation.
A reconfigurable exhibition stand allows you to build the structure from a set of building blocks, like Lego but better. These blocks can be moved to form new shapes or structures that fill any space. The graphic panels are fitted to the structure after it is built, so you have nothing to worry about when it comes to reusability.
Modular exhibition stands are the most sustainable and effective solution when it comes to exhibiting. You can save money by hiring and reusing one over the course of your exhibiting calendar.
Don’t get tricked. There are several different types of exhibition stands – make sure you know what they are.
Perfect your Qualifying Questions
One of the main mistakes that exhibitors make is playing the numbers game. They calculate the success of their show by the quantity of leads that they walk away with. This isn’t the right approach and can harm your ROI.
When it comes to lead generation, you are looking for quality over quantity. If you collect 500 leads for the sake of it, your sales team will contact 500 leads for the sake of it. Of this 500, only a handful might be interested in your product.
Instead, you should focus on qualifying your leads. If you walk away with 30 contacts that have expressed an interest, your sales team can spend more time nurturing each lead. This sales technique has proven far more successful than mass emails, cold calling or the increasingly popular LinkedIn connection request.
It can take as little as two minutes to properly qualify a lead. Ask questions about their business needs and find out whether your product can solve a problem. It is useful to find out their buying power– are they the decision maker? Or do they influence the final decision? The trick is to do this quickly and discretely before the delegate loses interest and wanders off your exhibition stand.
Exhibition Stand Savings!
There are loads of ways that you can save money when it comes to your exhibition stand. These five tips are a great place to start. Hopefully, now you know that you can still exhibit no matter what your exhibiting budget.
Remember; rent a modular and reusable exhibition stand to see a reduction in cost with repeat exhibiting. Don’t use time-stamped graphics. And provide delegates with a digital alternative to the branded pens. Finally, perfect your sales pitch to make sure you’re not wasting time on people who aren’t interested in your product.
Finally, enjoy your show.