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How we use exhibitions to sell our products and services

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Core Tip:Small business owners — from a wedding photographer, website specialists, a marketing agency and a driveway cleaning company to a Dragon’s Den winner — tell Rachel Miller how they use exhibitions successfully

Small business owners — from a wedding photographer, website specialists, a marketing agency and a driveway cleaning company to a Dragon’s Den winner — tell Rachel Miller how they use exhibitions successfully

Exhibitions offer amazing opportunities to meet prospective customers and market your products and services. But, they are hard work and can be tricky to get right. As a result, some small firms try one event and then give up on exhibitions altogether.

“Lots of SMEs think exhibitions don’t work for them and they often have quite unrealistic expectations,” says Fiona Humberstone, managing director of Flourish Studios and author of Exhibit!: the SME guide to using exhibitions to grow. “Many people don’t plan their exhibition strategy and they don’t think about why people are coming. They don’t capture data or follow it up.”

There’s no doubt that the cost of exhibitions can be off-putting. “Exhibitions are expensive but they can give really great returns if you do them properly,” says Fiona. “Face-to-face is one of the best approaches, especially when you get access to a highly-targeted group of people who have come to the event actively looking for your type of product or service.”

Exhibitions are primarily a place to gather sales leads. “You have to get as many leads as possible,” says Fiona. “Save the hour-long chat for when you next meet them because you could be missing out on talking to lots of other prospects.”

How to convert leads into business

Fiona’s own experience of exhibiting is extremely positive — but her success was not handed to her on a plate. “I have gathered 100 leads at an event and converted 70 of them but it took a year. I followed up with phone calls, and didn’t stop getting in touch until I had had a conversation with them. You have to show people you want their business. An exhibition is a starting point.”

Robin Robson is the owner of Driveway Cleaning Wiltshire and he has found that local shows and country fairs have brought him a lot of business. “I’ve done several events such as the West Wiltshire Show. I get very good conversions. It’s all about meeting people. Initially, I was a bit apprehensive about investing the money but it has proved to be very successful.”

Robin offers a cleaning service for patios, drives, decks and sports surfaces. At exhibitions, he displays before and after shots, shows people the equipment he uses and gives out double-sided A5 flyers. He also uses a good old clipboard and pen to collect contact details and make appointments.

It goes to show that exhibitions don’t necessarily need to cost a fortune.  “You need to be creative when it comes to your stand but you don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune,” says Fiona Humberstone. Fiona works with wedding photographer Matt Pereira. When they were planning a stand at the National Wedding Show at London’s Olympia, they wallpapered MDF boards, borrowed furniture and toured antique markets to find interesting props. The end result was a sumptuous country house hotel look. “It’s all about the styling and staging,” says Fiona. “It was low budget but highly creative.”

And with a real-life bride on the stand as well as plenty of examples of Matt’s photography, there were no shortage of visitors.

Drawing a crowd is something Neil Westwood knows all about. Neil and his wife Laura runMagic Whiteboard, a fast-growing company that has the backing of Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden thanks to a successful pitch on Dragon’s Den.

Creating the wow factor

Magic Whiteboard several products including whiteboards, blackboards and blackout blinds on a roll. “Our products have the wow factor so as soon as people see them, they are sold then and there. So demonstrating and exhibitions are very important,” says Neil.

Neil and Laura’s experience of exhibiting has taught them a lot. “When we first started out we took a stand that was about nine square metres,” says Neil. “But we learned that visitors don’t always come onto the stand, they stand in the aisles. It’s far better to improve visibility and position. So now we get a long stand which is five metres wide abut only one metre deep. That has halved our costs but increased our visibility.”

Demonstrations and samples are a big draw, as Neil has discovered. Now he also demonstrates his products on the stands of his retail suppliers at some events to get exposure without booking a stand.

“Exhibitions do cost a lot of money,” says Neil. “They cost £5,000 minimum and you can easily spend £10,000. But people have too high expectations. They think if you go to the right event you’ll be multi-millionaires by the time it’s over. But that’s just the start. You have to doPR, marketing and advertising. And it is hard work, especially for a small business. You have to do everything yourself and at the event you work solidly. I see exhibitors not talking to people and I think they are mad.”

Talking to people is, after all, the name of the game. Zoe Brown, managing director of b:webtakes stands at local business events in Woking, Bracknell and Guildford. “We all work remotely — we don’t have offices — so it’s important for us to get out there and meet people. We do a lot of local exhibitions and always make sure we have a high profile by sponsoring receptions and bags and trying to get speaker slots.”

It’s not a hard sell, it’s more about brand awareness, says Zoe. “Often a client will come to us up to 18 months after we met them at an event.”

 

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