Your Exhibition Marketing Timeline

“One of the biggest mistakes, I made when exhibiting is that I just assumed the organiser would do all the marketing”

An A List Exhibitor – Major Printing Exhibition in Europe.

Let’s face it and be upfront and honest about it… There can be 10,000 or 40,000 visitors to a show, but if they are not visiting our booth then 10k or 40k doesn’t really matter. It’s the organisers responsibility to bring people through the front door of the show, but it’s our responsibility as exhibitors to bring them to our booth.

When we exhibit, we spend money on the space, booth design and all the other things that go with it. Oftentimes, there’s not a lot left for marketing. The good news is, that in this digital day and age there are so many free or almost free ways of promoting your booth that money doesn’t have to be the deciding factor. The decision is more around deciding you are going to market yourself in a targeted way and where we are budgeting our time to promote the booth to attract those key buyers.

For a national or semi-international show, 75% of your financial and/or time budget should be spent in the month run up to the show. (See guide below). Since and a little before covid, companies were booking booths later and later and whilst this is not ideal for the organisers, it’s part of the new reality. This is also true of visitors. They are making their decisions to attend later and later, and our marketing effort needs to take this into account. (For more international shows/attendees this is a bit longer due to travel, flights, hotels etc)

As with all things in general business, we need to focus our target marketing to when people are buying. This is why the month before the show is so critical.

Many years ago (in the day of exclusively printed visitor tickets) some exhibitors used to say ”why should I waste my money sending out postal invites when my competitors are sending them out to all my customers anyway?” There is somewhat of a logic to this but it’s not one we should adopt. Pre-Show Marketing is about them remembering us and not just some random ticket that arrived in the post.

Take a look at the outline below, where we detail the marketing effort starting at 3 months out leading all the way up to and including the day of the show. Every business will of course differ but the fundamentals of attracting key buyers doesn’t. It’s not about doing just one thing and hope it works, it’s about a strategy and reinforcement campaign.

 

Timeline	% Of Budget	Where/What	Where/What	Where/What	Where/What
3 Months Out	10%	General Advertising	Compilation of target visitor’s database
2 Months Out	15%	General Advertising	Direct Mail Campaign	Start Tickets Campaign	Start of Social Media Campaign
1 Month Out	25%	Direct Advertising Campaign	Direct Mail Campaign/Targeted Ticket campaign	Pre-Arranged Appointments Organised	Strong Social Media Push
2 Weeks Out	30%	Personal Phone Calls Top 20	Social Media Push Targeted Ads	Special Show Offer Ezine	General Ads
1 Week Out	20%	Reminder Call to top clients to visit	Last distribution of tickets to new potentials	Social Media – Don’t miss us at show posts	Special Show Only Offer Ezine

 

As mentioned previously, it’s more about how, what & when you’re allocating your time on, far more than the money involved.

Looking at each time segment in isolation, it looks like this…

 

3 Months Out

10%

General Advertising

Compilation of target visitor’s database

 

Ok we have booked the booth and we are less than 100 days out. Enough time to start making an impact but not shouting our mouth off. This is the “Whisper Phase” – we need to start dropping into conversations that we will be exhibiting at said show.  Maybe starting to introduce the show logo on our advertising with an “expression of interest” for tickets. It’s also a good time to begin compiling your database of who you are targeting to visit. We do this early as this will be a work in progress all the way up to the show.

 

2 Months Out

15%

General Advertising

Direct Mail Campaign

Start Tickets Campaign

Start of Social Media Campaign

 

Stage 2 is really the start of our marketing effort. Through general advertising and social media. If the show you are exhibiting at has international visitors, then a starting your ticketing/invites campaign should begin here. This stage is about creating curiosity and interest in what you will be exhibiting. Also, if you are launching a new product at the show itself, then a direct mail campaign here on this product would be really useful. Its also a good time to begin using the show hashtags around this time so you can avail of higher social media traction and interest.

 

1 Month Out

25%

Direct Advertising Campaign

Direct Mail Campaign/Targeted Ticket campaign

Pre-Arranged Appointments Organised

Strong Social Media Push

 

Stage 3 and things are heating up with a month to go and this becomes more obvious with an increased ad campaign from the organisers. This is a great time to “Piggyback” on this as you advertise more and also begin to get pre-arranged meetings in place. This is the real “Marketing” time where we should be doing 3-4 things weekly that will drive visitors and engagement. Our visitor ticketing campaign should be in full swing around this time.

 

2 Weeks Out

30%

Personal Phone Calls Top 20

Social Media Push Targeted Ads

Special Show Offer Ezine

General Ads

 

These last 2 weeks before the show are critical and one of the key exercises to do during this time is to pick up the phone to your top 20 clients/potential clients and personally inviting them to the show. This personal touch yields great results. Worst case scenario you are keeping the touch points and lines of communication open with your clients in a non salesy way. From a social media point of view, it’s also a great time to increase your company and stand profile and continued use of the # ‘s to piggyback on social media. This is also a really good time to send out an ezine of something special you are doing at the show. It could be a specific “show offer” or a reminder of a new product launch. As human beings, we like to be the first to see something!

 

1 Week Out

20%

Reminder Call to top clients to visit

Last distribution of tickets to new potentials

Social Media – Don’t miss us at show posts

Special Show Only Offer Ezine

 

Just a week to go and you are no doubt busy with show prep but it’s worth checking in with top clients who haven’t responded, sending out the last of your tickets if you have any and continue with short social media messages. It can be a tough week to get lots of other things done but it’s worth keeping on top of it as one extra visitor/buyer could make the show for you.

There’s a lot in this article but there’s also a big reward at the end of it if you focus on the prize…

Its your show and your results you can look forward to!