Actual article date: Apr 21, 2015

This week a new and interesting study was done by CEIR, commissioned by Society of Independent Show Organisers (SISO). It offers offers insights on young exhibitor attitudes and preferences about business-to-business exhibitions. A truly useful piece of research as we increasingly see a younger generation making decisions on exhibiting.

“This particular study suggests the future of the industry is bright; though it also points out young exhibitors have unique preferences. Organizers need to pay attention and adjust content and marketing approaches to remain relevant and positioned for growth.”

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Below are some important points to note from this study.

“Nearly all (98 percent) of young exhibitors find that exhibitions deliver unique value that cannot be fulfilled by other marketing or sales channels. The most popular aspects speak to the ROI, the ability to achieve multiple sales and marketing objectives in a compressed time period, with engaging face-to-face with customers and prospects top-ranked.”

What does this mean for organisers? We need to start measuring ROIs in alignment to exhibitors’ sales and marketing aims at your event, in a scalable way. Measuring leads generation, gauging marketing impact per exhibitor and recommending the right buyers/exhibitors to each other has never been more important. Why so?

“For young exhibitors, exhibitions mean business: More than seven out of 10 young exhibitors view the exhibition channel as a medium to accomplish multiple important marketing and sales objectives.”

Technology can help you do these analytics in a scalable way and even measure the business value at your event. Analytics is just one part of the puzzle as it is most important at the onset of organising any tradeshow, to always seek to improve the experience of your attendees in alignment to their ROI. This means that you need to constantly drive and deliver high quality and relevant interactions at your event.

“For young exhibitors, at the core of the in-booth experience is the product itself and attendee interaction with product and exhibit booth staff. Young exhibitors find tactics which feature the product (71 percent) give attendees opportunities to interact with product (67 percent) and provide settings that enable booth staff to engage with attendees (66 percent) as the most effective ways to interact with attendees. A majority also find various digital interactive elements, giveaways and prizes as effective attendee engagement techniques.”

And most importantly…

“It is all about face-to-face engagement and interactions: One-on-one conversations with exhibit personnel, with and without a product demonstration are the number one face-to-face settings of choice.”

Overall, this is an interesting study. More than being different from the older generation, young exhibitors are emphasising more strongly on the derived business value at a tradeshow that they exhibit in. And that happens to be the main factor that separate a fantastic tradeshow experience from a just a good one.

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