Priority Exhibitions is reporting a strong first quarter of 2012, enhanced by the recent Ecobuild show, which saw the exhibition stand design specialists install six stands ahead of schedule. Two of the stands were complex two tier constructions: one of which won silver for the best sustainable stand over 100m2.

Ecobuild is the world’s biggest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment, and took place from March 5-7 at London’s ExCel centre. Priority’s success at this particular show was crowned when their client Saint Gobain was named runner-up in for the most sustainable stand over 100m2 awarded by the UK Green Building Council. The stand space measured 10m x 22m, plus a mezzanine level hospitality area.

With environmental consideration high on the agenda for many market sectors Priority strive to promote and continually improve their green credentials for a stand installation demonstrating how sustainability is incorporated into exhibition stands from cradle to grave, including the design, electronic communication, sourcing of materials or construction, logistics and disposal.

Louise Walters, CEO, Priority Exhibition said: “February and March are always busy months for us, but this year it has exceeded all records. Building six exhibition stands just for one exhibition was a fantastic achievement and our dedicated team ensured that each build went to plan and within deadline.

“Along with all the other exhibition stands we’ve designed and built for the first quarter of the year in the UK and Europe we are optimistic that 2012 is going to be a good year for Priority Exhibitions.”

Another large exhibition in March meant working with long-standing client Israel Tourism on the ITB trade travel show in Berlin. In an unusual twist, this stand featured a live folk band, providing further atmosphere. Visitors stood on soil brought over from the Holy Land and a roaming photographer took photos which were printed to fridge magnets as personalised giveaways. This is the largest exhibition stand that Priority installs within the annual tourism itinerary for the Israel contract.

Other projects within the first quarter demonstrate Priorities ability to adapt to any brief or market sector with stand installations completed for well-known brands such as Bunzl, the Conair Group and Babyliss at various exhibitions: Hotelympia, Technology for Marketing and Advertising, Professional Beauty and Firex amongst others.

1.    Keep it up
View your Twitter account as a permanent communication channel. Don’t just tweet for the month before your exhibition – it won’t give you enough time to build a digital relationship with your followers.

2.    Be creative
Don’t just tweet about your own exhibition. Tweeting out links to useful articles and information is a great way to ensure you have an interesting feed, and therefore increasing the number of followers.

3.    Don’t big yourself up
Make sure you don’t just re-tweet any favourable things your followers say about your company. It can be annoying to your followers and isn’t very engaging content to read.

4.    Have a plan
Don’t just let one of your employees sit on Twitter nattering away, or sometimes not knowing what to say. Have a strategy, have a plan and know what messages need to go out.  That said, obviously it is good to have some ad-libbing and personality show through your account.

5.    Measurement and evaluation
After formulating a plan, you need to decide what you’re going to measure and what you will use this yardstick for. Is it how many followers you can achieve, how many re-tweets you get or is it traffic to your website? There are many different ways to measure success of social media, so think it through before you start.

Let us know what your own businesses social media tips are.

Contact Priority Exhibitions on (+44) 02476 843 181 or email info@priority-exhibitions.co.uk to find out how we can help you with social media and marketing for your exhibition stand.

Some of the points below might sound obvious to some seasoned exhibitors, in which case this is a good check list of good practice, but for those still in search of effective measurement and evaluation hopefully a few of these tips will be useful

1.    Be SMART
Do you have a particular focus or target for the exhibition? It is amazing how few exhibitors don’t set the right objectives:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Targeted

2.    Visitors to your stand
Consider other data collection than the basics of contact information, role, position and responsibilities. Having you CRM database available live on your exhibition stand will enable seamless update:

Establish Twitter name, are they followers?
LinkedIn, are you connected, can you connect?
Internal person responsible for follow up

3.    Quality of leads
By detailing visitors’ information directly into your live database you will be able to:
Measure how many follow-up meetings were actioned and by whom.
Integrate twitter and LinkedIn followers into the marketing mix.
Measure how many existing customers came to visit and record what they specifically wanted to ask.
Monitor any follow up press coverage from journalists who visited the stand.
Calculate the cost per lead accurately.

Our graphic design team have put their heads together and this is what they think the exhibition stand of the future will look like. View a larger image.

Using the research we did, combined with our own experience, the Exhibition Stand of the Future shows a combination of all the new technology, communication and strategy techniques we are seeing at the moment.

We’d love to have your feedback on what you think will define the exhibition stand of the future.

Here’s what we thought:

•  Visitor information: Augmented Reality Glasses featuring facial recognition would provide the wearer with useful information about visitors

• Visitor interaction: Augmented Reality allows the visitor to interact with products in a virtual environment and increase dwell time.

• Power supply: Advances in energy efficient mobile power sources will make it possible for exhibitors to bring their own power supply to the show.

• Social media: Looking to the future, this will be much more integrated with Twitter streaming though Digital Out Of Home screens or LinkedIn networking groups hosted on the exhibition stands.

• Integration with PR: exhibition stands will double up as press conferences or mini-lectures for great PR opportunities.

• Lead generation: Touch screen technology will enable exhibitors to capture data faster and more accurately giving better lead generation.

• The End of Printed Literature: Content will be shared via Near-Field Communications or social media and will be downloaded directly to a smartphone or tablet.

• Product Enquires: Near-Field Communications will allow for contactless data exchange or product purchase using a simple unpowered chip.

View the full research: Exhibition Stand of the Future.

Here’s the full report on Exhibition Stand of the Future:

Priority Exhibitions’ research on the Exhibition Stand of the Future found that successful event marketers are integrating marketing disciplines to help events achieve their commercial objectives.

Despite using a wider range of marketing techniques, the majority of exhibition professionals have not lost focus in the core aim of lead generation.

Our figures show that more than 65% of respondents believe that the best way to get value from taking part in an exhibition is to create an integrated marketing strategy to drive traffic to the stand and increase sales leads.

By utlising the emergence of new technologies and social media, there’s a natural convergence across marketing disciplines.

By ensuring your event key messages are flowing through each and every one of your marketing channels, you can create a targeted approach to lead generation.

Here we take a quick look at the six ways marketing integration is affecting exhibitions.

1. Cross-business efficiency
Integrating all marketing and event strategy is, needless to say, efficient for time management as well as being cost-effective. It is important to get all employees at every level in your exhibition team to be ‘on message’ to make the most of this strategy.

2. Measurement and ROI
By converging all marketing disciplines together there has never before been such a wide range of KPIs to measure. Integration makes measurement more challenging simply because there are more success signals that can be measured. However there are certain areas in which measurement has become more transparent. Digital marketing, for example, offers powerful measurement tools for exhibition professionals.

3. Public relations strategy
To merge PR with your event strategy means great opportunity to raise your profile while at the same time as exhibiting. From creating a press conference to organising interviews with the CEO, there are numerous ways to get press coverage from your exhibition stand.

 4.    Advertising strategy
For event professionals, maximising advertising spend is a matter of timing. For example, time it right and you can include media sponsors in your advertising campaign, and  or get extra advertorial content thrown in, or event organisers might give you priority when it comes to organising speakers at sponsored events..

5.    Social Media strategy
Converging your social media plans with event strategy is a great way to create new business leads. Using Twitter or LinkedIn means you can connect with people before the exhibition begins to organise meetings at your exhibition stand, as well as connecting with visitors during the event.

6.    Digital marketing strategy
Your digital marketing agency or team might not work that closely with your exhibitions team, but it is worth aligning their objectives. For example, a pay-per-click campaign could be planned around a major exhibition with specific keywords linked to the exhibition. Similarly, an search marketing campaign might be planned to integrate with the exhibition keywords for the months preceding an exhibition.

Read the full report on Exhibition Stand of the Future.

Our Exhibition Stand of the Future research examines new technology and how it has affected the events industry. Here we look over the eight technologies that are making a big splash at the moment.

You may have already seen some of them being used in exhibition stands. Let us know what you think works, or what you think works at exhibitions.

1.    Augmented reality
This is a camera enhanced view of a physical real-world environment, where virtual elements are merged with the real-life scene creating a ‘mixed reality’ of virtual elements and the real world.

Using augmented reality on our client Nederman’s exhibition stand, massively increased their lead generation and visitor footfall.

2.    Digital Out of Home (DOOH)
Looking towards the future, Digital Out of Home media will be used in some really exciting ways. It will become interactive, use mobile technologies and integrate gesture recognition, which will increase visitor engagement massively.

3.    Mobile marketing
We have only really seen the beginning of what mobile marketing can do. Mobile content will be pushed out to all delegates, who can be alerted by a SMS or Bluetooth message. You can offer them free downloads or exclusive previews of new content or products to increase engagement within the exhibition hall.

4.    QR codes and Near Field Communications (NFCs)
QR codes are becoming increasingly popular, but are often used as a gimmick, rather than part of a wider, thought-out strategy. However, Near Field Communications are likely to be more useful and popular in the future. NFCs allow the transfer of encrypted data when two devices are held next to each other. The possibilities are endless!

5.    Twitter
Some exhibitions and events companies have fully embraced Twitter, while others are slow to utilise its benefits to increase lead generation. An exhibition can be followed by anyone in the world, which takes the event out of its physical confines and your brand message can be applied globally.

6.    LinkedIn
This is another communication tool which can be used to build relationships and sales leads before the event to invite visitors to your exhibition stand. Again, LinkedIn is not a media which is being utilised to its full advantage by exhibitors and organisers.

7.    YouTube/ Vimeo
Video is a fantastic way to create instant engagement and get across a message very quickly. Video can be uploaded in advance of an exhibition to build up a buzz around a new product launch, or produced during an exhibition for future marketing. By using a product, such as Vimeo, a company can broadcast video live on the internet, which is ideal for a speaker event, for example.

8.    Facebook
Facebook is now used by 800 million people globally and 350 million of those via mobile. Exhibitions generally aren’t promoted using Facebook, but with the platform still growing so fast, it is currently an untapped market.

See the full research below:

To help us find out more about the Exhibition Stand of the Future, we asked more than 2,000 people their views. The respondents included corporate marketers, agency heads, exhibition giants, suppliers, venue managers and freelancers.

We asked what will the future be? How will exhibitions and exhibition stands change? What features and functionality will they have? What will the commercial opportunities be?

Our research confirmed our own feedback from the industry that:

• technology was having a massive impact on the events industry
• there is a natural convergence of marketing disciplines within the industry.

Obviously not every business is using technology to increase lead conversion, or converging their marketing disciplines for better event strategy. However, from our experience, the successes across the industry, are doing these very things – and doing them well.

Here’s some highlights from our findings:

• 62% felt that budgets would either remain the same of decrease over time.
• 65% of respondents thought that successful exhibitors created strategies to drive visitors to exhibitions stands and increase dwell time.
• The majority of respondents – 58% of people – thought social media would be the most important technology on event stands of the future.
• 21% of people thought augmented reality would be the most important technology on event stands of the future, while another 21% believed it would be digital signage.
• 45% of respondents thought that digital marketing was the best discipline to integrate with event strategy.
• 34.5% people believed that PR was the best discipline to integrate with event strategy.

Here’s the full report on Exhibition Stand of the Future:

Here at Priority Exhibitions, we’ve just released a very exciting and interesting piece of research called Exhibition Stand of the Future.

We’re not looking too far into the future and visualising everyone whizzing around on hovercrafts. We used the trends and developments that we see now and examined how these will develop in the next five years.

Like all industries, the event industry has seen massive changes in technology in a short space of time but also budget decreases as the economy forces us all to examine our marketing spend.

This means that Return on Investment (ROI) is more important than ever to prove how taking part in exhibitions are essential to showcase new products and create new business leads.

We commissioned some research, which asked marketing professionals from all backgrounds their thoughts on the current exhibitions industry.

Answers were extremely interesting and varied and led us to two conclusions:

• New technologies are driving the path forward, but like anything new, it needs to be understood, measured and evaluated properly.
• Marketing disciplines are naturally converging to create stronger event strategy.

All of these findings are so interesting to us as exhibition stand designers and marketers. Not only do we want to keep ahead of the exhibitions industry, but we also advise our clients on the best way to incorporate technology and to market their own event presence.

You can also read the Exhibition Stand of the Future press release which has just been released, and let us know what you think.

Here’s the full report on Exhibition Stand of the Future:

What is more, whereas the last five years has seen experimentation with technology, the research now shows businesses are much more assured in deploying these techniques and seeming a tangible return.

The research, by exhibition stand design company Priority Exhibitions, shows that exhibitors are using digital marketing, PR and social media, combined with new on-stand technologies for a better return on investment.

Two thirds of exhibitors believe over the next five years the best way to secure results from their exhibition presence will be to create strategies using integrated marketing techniques and technology to drive visitors to stands and increase dwell time.

Furthermore, out of the 2,000 respondents, 45% thought that digital marketing was most suited to converging with events strategy in the future, closely followed with 34.5% stating it was PR.

Louise Walters, CEO at Priority Exhibitions, said: “While social media has been around for a few years now, we are seeing marketers increasingly understand how to get the best use from it. Early experiments with new technologies are now bearing fruit and businesses are seeing tangible returns.

“Budget cuts mean that exhibitors need to show a positive ROI on using new technology and marketing techniques, which means they are developing strategy for the future.

“By asking exhibitors about current trends and developments, we can examine how these will impact on exhibition stand design. How a stand is used helps shape the design process. It is true to say that form follows function.”

The research, called Exhibition Stand of the Future, was conducted by Priority Exhibitions to give them insight into the fast-changing world of events and exhibitions. Technology and marketing changes and develops quickly, so it’s important to take a measure of the industry and how it sees marketing an event presence moving forward.

Results are taken from a survey of 2,000 people, including corporate marketers, agency heads, exhibition giants, suppliers, venue managers and freelancers.

Read the full report: