Miniseries: Aspects of Events and Exhibitions: Upselling

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.
-Jim Manzi

In my previous blogpost, I wrote about choosing an appropriate proposition for your target group. One factor to take into account is the type of exhibitor (experienced vs. inexperienced). Another is the event or exhibition you are organizing: is it a business-to-business or business-to-consumer event? The distinction between these two types of exhibitions or events can influence the impression your exhibitors want to make on the visitors, and the budgets the exhibitors have available to market their product or service to the visitor.

You'll soon see that many exhibitors require more products and services from the organizer of the event or exhibition than boothspace alone. (Mostly experienced) exhibitors will be looking for ways to increase their success at your exhibition – they have formulated targets for the exhibition which they will need to meet in order for the exhibition to be a success (and to justify participating in the future). It is your task to provide your exhibitors with different options for doing so; if you don't offer the options, the exhibitor will hire external parties to do it for them, or they will fail to meet their targets and choose not to participate in future editions of your event or exhibition.

Upselling
Offering more products to the exhibitor is called upselling, and it should be an integral part of your salesactivities. Upselling allows you to increase turnover per exhibitor, and will increase the profitability of your event or exhibition. If done right, the products you offer to exhibitors can improve the image of your event or exhibition towards the target group, it can increase visitor numbers, it can increase visitor satisfaction, visitor involvement, etcetera. Which products you should choose to offer to your exhibitors depends on your event, but here are a few ideas:

Sponsorship packages
Sponsorship packages provide a way for exhibitors to conjoin their company name with your exhibition or event. The sponsorship package should consist of adding sponsor logo's to your event or exhibition's publications, advertisements, etcetera. The sponsorship logo's should be features prominently everywhere you communicate your exhibition or event. Take care that the sponsors are leading companies; only then will adding their logo's to your communication improve the image of your event or exhibition. Moreover, make the sponsorships exclusive or limited: adding too many logo's will drown out your event's or exhibition's logo, plus you run the risk of negatively influencing your event's or exhibition's image. Pricing and a selection process may provide adequate protection against these risks.

Advertisements
Advertisements are a great way of increasing the exhibitor's visibility at your exhibition or event, and simultaneously increasing the profitability of your event. The advertisements can be featured in the exhibition catalog, a special exhibition magazine, or, if your exhibition or event doesn't have publications, in any medium, as part of your advertising campaign for the exhibition or event itself (a 'special' about your event in a magazine or paper) – not only will this provide more exposure for your exhibition or event in this medium, it will also give you a better bargaining position when you are buying f.i. 30 pages instead of 20. This in turn will allow you to ask an attractive price for your advertisements, while still making a good profit.

Digital products
As your media campaign towards visitor acquisition starts and intensifies towards the start of your event or exhibition, more and more potential visitors will be visiting your website to find information about your event or exhibition, buying tickets, checking routing, etcetera. You could provide the opportunity for your exhibitors to stand out to your digital visitors by offering possibilities regarding placing a banner on any page of your website. There are also many other things you could do on your website to direct attention of visitors to certain exhibitors; the sky really is the limit here. Remember that your website is also something that lasts longer than the actual exhibition or event: use this in your upselling.

On-site promotion
When a visitor has entered the exhibition or event, it is key for the exhibitor that the visitor visits their booth. There are several options for increasing chances to increase chances they do; just think about what you can do with road signs (traditional, digital or in the carpeting). You could also consider a routing service where you match the visitor's interests with the exhibitors (you could also do this in advance during the ticketing process on your website), or by providing the visitors with guided tours. You can offer these services to your exhibitors to be included in such a matching service or tour. Again, the sky is the limit; be creative and offer products that are right for your exhibition or event.

Active Upselling
Make sure that upselling is an integral part of your exhibition or event; it will not only improve the profitability of your event, but it will also improve your image to your target groups; not only visitors will be attracted by big names from the industry, but also other companies! Making the key exhibitors more visible to all parties involved will definitely improve your exhibition or event.

Keeping track of which exhibitor has or hasn't ordered which products can be a hassle and requires good organization and overview. Fairsatile has built-in functionality for providing you with this overview. Moreover, Fairsatile helps you keep track of deadlines – for all products you offer, you need to observe the deadline for ordering this product. Should the product require exhibitor input, you should also monitor the deadline for supplying this input. Fairsatile also shows you, which exhibitors have not supplied the required input yet.

Conclusion
In short, offering your exhibitors additional products and services beyond boothspace is key to increasing the overall success of your event or exhibition. Both exhibitors and organizors benefit from a better image of the event or exhibition, higher visitor numbers, and more key companies from the industry exhibiting. The organizer can use the additional products to further improve the profitability of the exhibition or event by having more bargaining power towards media, and by communicating big names to attract other exhibitors. Keeping a good overview of which exhibitors have ordered which products, and monitoring the deadlines for ordering these products and the deadlines for supplying exhibitor input can be difficult, but Fairsatile provides an excellent solution for this problem. Let your imagination run wild to come up with the best, innovative products to upsell your exhibitors; Fairsatile will make sure you know exactly who to call about ordering them or supplying information for them!

21 February 2011 16:20