Maximising Exhibitor Engagement: Getting the basics right

For marketers, exhibitors are often an untapped resource for generating brand awareness (and consequently, new audiences) for our events.

If exhibitors could send one email to their database, post on their social media accounts, or send out a press release, your marketing reach would increase exponentially.

Here at FFAIR, we see many of our customers using their online exhibitor manual as a tool to increase exhibitor engagement.

Katie Whatley, event marketer and CMO at FFAIR, shares some practical tips on how to get exhibitors active with their pre-event marketing campaigns.

Know Your Audience

Marketers aren’t always those in charge of stand delivery. Those responsible may not see the importance, or perhaps may not even read your email. For smaller businesses exhibiting, it may be that they have outsourced their marketing support or have multiple.

Information needs to be clear and easy to access. If your exhibitors’ marketing teams haven’t booked the stand or signed the contract, they may not have immediate access to stand and/or package information such as stand number, stand size, location, or package details. Make sure this basic information is easily accessible to everyone in the exhibitors’ organisation.

Try Video

According to InVideo, video content is 12 times more successful than other types of content. In fact, it generates higher engagement rates than both text and image content combined.

So why not use video in place of your long manual copy to engage exhibitors? Walk them through the opportunities - marketer to marketer. We’re seeing more and more event organisers communicating with exhibitors using video content - building better connections with the exhibiting teams.

Make It Easy

Remember, exhibiting is only one of the many channels your marketer is operating with to deliver their corporate marketing strategy. If you look at any marketing tech stack, you’ll see that marketing teams.

As a marketer, I know this to be true given that I use 8+ platforms alone every day. I recently exhibited at a trade show, and they added another four for me to use just to deliver and promote my stand. This is quite simply - crazy business in 2024.

If we commit to making the lives of our exhibitors easier, we will see them be more engaged. Ensure all your platforms are integrated. Event registration, lead capture platforms, meetings platforms, and any additional promotional tools that are part of your exhibiting experience need to be integrated into one central resource to ensure maximum engagement.

Build your exhibitors' event tech stack as if you yourself were exhibiting. Have you ever stopped to think that perhaps it’s not that they are lazy, perhaps you’re just making it too hard?

Inspire Your Exhibitors

Not every exhibitor has extensive exhibiting experience. They may not be familiar with the many marketing opportunities that exhibiting can bring to their marketing campaigns.

Show them examples, talk about the benefits - not just give them a list of to-dos to add to their extensive workload.

Set Deadlines and Reminders Over Email Chasing

Many of our clients have seen real success in using automated reminders over regular email chasing. While the delivery is still an email, having a regular automated reminder each week with clear deadlines as a prompt has seen.

Also, ensure your emails are actually being delivered. It’s in receiving the email rather than sending.

Run an Onboarding Programme for Your Exhibitors and Sponsors

Imagine your company purchase a new piece of technology or platform, you’re often treated to an extensive onboarding programme and given access to an account manager or customer success representative. These are all mechanisms to help you are a user succeed.

Exhibiting is hard and requires significant time and resource. You want to make sure that your customers have a great exhibiting experience and rebook their stand so why not run an onboarding programme for your exhibitors. Think about ways of streamlining this process - better exhibitor manual, access to all the information they need in one central location, videos of frequently asked questions, first-time exhibitor guides. Start by thinking about if you were exhibiting at an event and what you’d need to have the most successful exhibiting experience.

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Your online exhibitor manual is just one of the many resources you have at your disposal to help you communicate better with your exhibitors. Make sure it’s a platform your exhibitors actually enjoy using! Find out more