THE SPECTRE OF VISITOR NUMBERS
Reading the trade press I note that Consumex visitor numbers are down by 12% or Tradex has a 3% increase on last year’s numbers. Why is the brouhaha about visitor numbers at an event rearing its ugly head again? I suspect it is because of habit – a habit commonly learned when buying advertising. How often do the media rave about their readership or circulation figures? How often do on-line media refer to ‘hits’? Think about listeners on radio and television viewers – again all measured as number of exposures. Exhibiting is different! As an exhibitor at various shows, I can not tell you (even to within a few thousand) how many people walked through the doors. Moreover I would be as unconcerned whether the overall visitor numbers were 2,000 or 200,000 as I shall explain later. What I can tell you, however, is how many people came onto my stand, who they were, what they were interested in, when they are likely to buy, how much they should spend and when we will close the business!
Consider a scenario of two competitors, separated by no more than two metres of carpet across an aisle; one is only just able to cope with the interest and demand, the other wondering why nobody wants to talk to them. They are probably in a similar business, offering similar products and services, probably at a similar price to a similar or more usually an identical visitor. The choice as to which scenario to recreate is yours.
The first rule of exhibiting should be to focus on what is important when exhibiting – your objectives. It should therefore not be the overall visitor numbers unless you are after a major data capture exercise. Do the maths. . . If you engaged a visitor for only five minutes, every five minutes, without so much as a break, over the (say) three days of a typical event you cannot possibly hope to see more than 250 visitors. Overall visitor numbers are therefore largely irrelevant. You should arrange with the organisers to see the demographics and identify whom, from the whole visitor population you want to see and whom is of less interest. Once you start to focus like this, you can begin to realise the enormous rewards that exhibiting can offer.
There are certainly actions and behaviours that you need to consider long before the show happens that will increase your chances of a fabulous show result. So invite your chosen population and design your stand to reflect their wishes. Make it attractive to those whom you wish to court and unattractive to those you don’t. Once at the show, you can greatly influence that interaction with your identified visitors. They key is to spend time with that section of the visitors who will bring you the type of business you are looking for and not allow your staff to idly chat to low value and low potential prospects because at least someone is talking to them!