Data Exhibitor Intelligence

How much do you we know about our exhibitor base? We know that they exhibit in our events. Now we assume the why is because we are a cost-effective way for them to reach a large audience with a reasonable ROI.

We know that we provide them access at a cost to lead capturing devices. We also know that for the most part at a cost we will make our list available to them thru a third party vendor to promote their products.

Now for the most part we have relied on our sales or marketing team, mainly the sales team to enter in the database relevent data for each exhibitor or sponsor. Now we also know that data is only as good as what has been entered and is subject to user error or lack of input.

When the economy has been good, we many times get complacent and ignore what our exhibitor customer may want to achieve because they continue to participate in the event. However technology used correctly by the exhibitor base is allowing them better access to the actual tangible return on the investment of the event.

Sometimes the seismic warnings and slight tremors go unoticed as you eventually find yourself without one or more customers.

Now their plans and budgets may change but if you had provided what they needed, would they still be a customer. The need may change based upon the decision-makers at x corporation. The marketing vehicle of choice may have also changed, as it will continue to do in a digital technology driven economy.

Technology over the years has always had an impact on marketing and sales. However customer understanding of behavior, data and needs have been around forever. The data had to be stored on paper or in the human mind. Now it can be stored on a tablet device.

All exhibitors have a product or service offering that we know? We know that our show offers potential customers for their products and services based upon their evaluation of the basic demographics.

This is general information. Now we need to take the general data provided to the exhibitor customers and do the following:
Collect more data to further narrow their product to a particular group for example.
Next narrow down the product or brand match to a particular decision-maker from your customer attendee database. Now the person who makes the decision to buy a product from this exhibitor may vary per industry business segment and company size.
The questions to ask and collect;
What are your business sector targets
Who are the decision-makers for your products (if they have more than one you will need to address it)
What is company size or sales volume of your target market?
Are you the exhibitor willing to provide a list of company's that are presently customers to bounce of show managements list to concentrate on new customers?

Another need of exhibitor customer data intelligence. Is to understand where else they exhibit, advertise, promote , dollars spent and why?

If you understand where dollars are spent you will also understand growth possibly for your event.

For example if the exhibitor is taking more exhibit space or spending more dollars at another event do you know why?

We need to know who they want to reach, how they want to reach them, and what it takes to engage.

Again thank you for reading and I look forward to any suggestions to make this blog of more value to you.

Social Media

Social media how do we use it?
It now has come fairly mainstream amongst the tradeshow industry. Yet there is still apprehension from the old guard on how to use it. Kind of like fears of all technology this one is a concern for those resistent to change. Also a fear that someone you are involved with online may say something negative.

Now like anybody out there we cannot always control bad impressions about our products or in our case events. However social media gives and opportunity to guage the pulse of our current customers and potential customers.
We are always striving to add new customers and never before have we been given the ability to connect with them in a inexpensive yet personal medium such as social media.

Now the fact is no one really has a great metrics on the ROT "return on time" to get potential attendees to the event. We don't know those results. We can use codes and that is a good start. Yet we need to still work on those metrics and some of that may require social media platforms to give us the opportunity to cross-check data to our registrations.

I do believe that we can reach a bigger group but we also have to be willing to give some type of take-away for them to come to the show.

Enabling Social media to become promoters for you and your event is key.
If we can work not in fear of social media, yet embrace and evangelize we have a great chance to turn it into something positive.

Many of us dabble and as you can see I have neglected my platform for several months. We need to constantly engage as similar to the way people did in the old trade markets.
History does repeat itself in the form of trade and communication. This forum is still in in written language.  It's not an email but an engagement. You are still connecting with a potential customer or someone that can aid your event.

No it's not a f2f and may never become one. But you know what they may still be searching your website for exhibitor products and ideas, education and so forth to improve their business.

So the interaction has been made. Are we satisfied ? No we want them at the event.  But you know what you may never get them. The point is with the online tools now available you need to engage them online and hope that eventually they will see and value the offering that you provide for them to attend.

I have 20 groups and over 5,000 members. Is that a success. I don't know. There is not a metrics. But I can tell you this they have given me many ideas, and put me in position to better understand their needs.

Not all of them attend my show. But social media has helped me with speakers, topics and message.
The medium is here to stay and will evolve to even better applications. We need to embrace and get ready to interact with our potential customers that will make our events thrive.

It's no longer just f2f it's also pixel and bits.