What Is Exhibition Marketing?

Exhibiting is an excellent way to attract attention. From showcasing your brand to your wider industry peers, positioning yourself amongst your competitors and importantly to many, advertising new products or services to both existing and potential clients to gain new leads, exhibiting presents a unique opportunity to deliver targeted messaging to an audience who are there to listen. But how do you attract your target audience in the first place?

A well-planned exhibition stand and presence is only half of your event success. Ensuring you have promoted your event attendance to those you’re trying to attract is key to make sure you are maximising your investment and delivering on your marketing goals.

What Does Exhibition Marketing Actually Mean?

In its simplest form, exhibition marketing is the process of marketing your presence at an exhibition. This is usually pre-event activity to draw attention to the fact you are planning to exhibit but it also encompasses post-event follow ups as you nurture any warm leads or new relationships.

The goals you have set as part of your marketing and exhibition strategy will help determine what an exhibition marketing campaign should look like. If the aim is to attract prospective customers who are new to your brand with the aim of generating sales, then the messaging will be very different to an exhibition that is designed to raise your brand profile within your industry. Regardless of the purpose, exhibition marketing should create a compelling reason for your target audience to attend the event and seek you out.

Attracting The Right Attention

There are lots of different pre-event attraction techniques that brands can use to make sure they pique the interest of potential stand visitors and even create a bit of FOMO (that’s fear of missing out) if they don’t seek you out. The great thing about human psychology is that we’re curious by nature so if you create enough of a buzz, prospects, clients and even competitors will all want to see what’s going on at your stand. Get your exhibition marketing right and you will be the stand that everyone wants to visit.

Engaging Via Email

When you’re trying to encourage your desired audience to consider attending the exhibition or to visit your stand, a well-planned and structured email campaign can be a fantastic way to begin their brand experience with you. Using multi-media content, engaging copy and targeted messaging, all wrapped up in a well-designed email package that makes it easy and compelling for the recipient to not only read the email but act upon it, can be highly persuasive.

Sustaining a campaign over the pre-event period with reasons to engage and ultimately visit you at the exhibition, such as including promo codes, exclusive discounts or a hotly sought after personal invitation to an event within your stand, should give your target audience everything they need, to get their tickets booked.

Share Your Socials

Social media is an increasingly common feature of exhibitions, with many organisers using it as a PR tactic to raise awareness of the overall event and create pre- and live-show hype. Take a leaf out of this playbook and think about how you can use hashtags, blogs, vlogs and interviews to really bring your event to life as part of your overall exhibition marketing strategy.

This type of campaign is best deployed 6-8 weeks before the live show and then as often as possible during the exhibition. Try to focus on content that adds value, always asking ‘how is this content going to help or support my target audience’ as this will give you the strongest likelihood of engagement and interactions which is the holy grail of social posting.

Planning Your Exhibition Marketing Strategy With The Experts

If you’re thinking about your exhibition strategy for the year and would like to talk through how your bespoke stand design and build will come together then we’d love to talk to you.

Talk to us by emailing here, giving us a call on 01270 848 650 or completing our quick online form and we’ll get straight back to you.