7 Proven Strategies to Generate More Revenue as an Exhibition Organizer

Introduction

Hi everyone, this is Nina speaking, a Strategic Account Manager for Swapcard and soon celebrating my ten years in the Event Tech industry. Today is just the first part of a two episode series where we are going to tackle the topic of revenue generation in trade shows. We have identified seven strategies that are proven to be working. So let's get started.

1) VIP Offerings & Premium Packages

The first one we want to discuss today is the VIP offering and premium packages. Yes, VIP packages are not just for visitors. This is also something that you can develop for your exhibitors to make sure to generate high revenue and also bring high profile exhibitors to your show. So here are three examples of things you can do To create Premium Packages The first one is to look at a tailored experience.

For instance, organize a guided tour of your trade show with the key stakeholders of your premium exhibitors to make sure you give them this sense of unique experience that other exhibitors won't have. A guided tour of all the area before the opening, while not having a VIP lounge where they are invited to come. Things like this are very valuable for them and will make them feel special.

But this is not only thing you can do.

You can also look at Interviews that you would organize with them and make sure that those interviews are broadcasted on demand or live. And that will bring them more exposure. Another element that you can bring on the table is the possibility to organize hosted by a program. This will bring immediate leads to dose exhibitors, but they will also get some exposure because they will be part of the selection of exhibitors that are part of this program. But let's go into the second point.

2) Exhibitor Referral Programs

Offer referral programs for exhibitors as well.

Yes, you can engage your exhibitors to promote your event, to make sure that they will bring participants that are from their audience. By doing so, they will not only get some exposure because they will communicate about your event on the social networks or on their on their emailing campaign. But there will also be an opportunity to bring a wider audience that will also benefit to other exhibitors who are not part of this referral program. Referral programs means that you need to bring something else to the exhibitors. You need to give them advantages because otherwise they won't take part in this program. So you can decide to get a refund on some aspect or you can decide to simply have early bird program for them that you assign if they reach a certain amount of visitors registered for your events. Let's talk about another aspect which is really important and this is going to be our third point.

3) Smart Sponsorship Opportunities

Smart sponsorship opportunities. We know that the historical strategy is to work on paper, for instance, to make sure that you have a logo in the right page of the magazine of the visitor guide, things like this. You can also still continue to have the huge banner at your event where you have the logo of the sponsors that you have for your events.

That's what we are used to seeing.

But now, we need to also combine this approach with more digital approach, let's say, we need to focus on brand activation and on the next generation of opportunities you can bring in terms of sponsorship.

So aside the VIP area sponsored by your main partner, you can also decide to have splash screen, banners, logos that you will display on the homepage of your website or your mobile app. And that is not all. You can also look at sponsored games, you can look at logo placement on emails. You can look at interactive map and logos displayed on this interactive map. You can decide to have a different way to organize the exhibitor list within the app.

And all those elements are things that you can develop based on what you are also doing on the paper. So by this I mean, if you had this paper guide where you had first a list of audio exhibitors, you can replicate on the digital. But the difference will be that with the digital, you will have also a full tracking of the behavior of the visitors.

It's something that organizers are more and more doing, and some are actually moving completely to the digital side. So creating a combination of both is what will make you successful. The fourth point that we can discuss today is the fact that you can use, for instance, influencers from your industry to bring more people to your event.

4) Leverage Industry Influencers

We all know what an influencer can bring. They have a wider audience, and they have an audience who is not necessarily the one coming to your event. So focusing on those type of influencers can have a huge impact on your event. And many events now are doing this, tapping into the influence of the people who are very well known in the industry, that's something you can do.

Now let's talk about another aspect, which will be our fifth strategy to talk about today, gamification. How scary this world is, because many organizers are still seeing this as a gadget, a nice to have, something which is not serious. Actually, let's just name it differently. You can use the word incentive.

5) Gamification (Incentives to Drive Engagement)

Because yes, this is all about this. Gamification needs to bring incentives to make sure your visitors, your audience, is more engaged with your event, your content, and your exhibitors. It can be a scavenger hunt, where you ask them to go and look at some specific exhibitors who are part of the game challenge. It can be also about who is the most active attendees or the most active exhibitors Who has connected with the biggest amount of attendees?

So things like this. But for instance, what is important with the medication is that if you have more engaged attendees Most likely you will have more data and you will have more information on the behavior of the attendees and on what make them go or not to a specific area. So using gamification is a powerful way to engage more. But this is also an opportunity for sponsorship because you could ask one of your partners to be the sponsor of this gamification.

And by having their logo everywhere in the area, the rewards for the gamification or the incentives, let's say it as well, are very, very interesting.

That's also a really good way for the partner to be exposed and to get this activation around the brand that they are looking for when they are sponsors.

6) Save Money by Going Paperless

My favorite points.

Sixth, save money by going paperless. Because yes, we all know that printing materials for the shows is a huge amount of effort, of money, of logistics. Let's say the word. It's not about greenwashing. Right now, it's about necessity.

We are not here to talk about how to be better compared to the competition. No, we are talking about a necessity, something that even visitors are expecting more and more.

So we have many examples of how to get greener at at your event? So it can be about the waste management, it can be about reducing signage on-site, it can be about using recycled carpets, it can be about having recycled booths, etc. But one of the aspects which is very interesting today is the paper usage. Because by reducing paper usage, that means also that organizers are getting rid of sponsorship opportunities.

Let me come back to what we were saying at the beginning. If you have, for instance, a visitor guide, you know this very heavy visitor guide of forty pages where you have the list of the exhibitors, some news, the plan, etcetera. If you reduce this, this is a huge amount of money that you save because you don't have to print them, you don't have to ship them, you don't have to destroy them if they are not used after. Just bring all of this into the digital and that will already be more efficient. But that means that you also need to compensate the loss of revenue from the paper guide. And actually, no loss.

You bring on the digital what you had on the paper, and you keep the revenue. You actually make more money because you save all the logistics around the paper. So that's about sustainability.

Aligning growth with an environment friendly approach. Last but not least, data driven insights for improved decision making. Because this is the key point of everything we've been talking about right now. Whether you are going for gamification, or for paperless options, or for smart generation, All these elements having one common point, data. Because today data will be the Gold key for organizers. Data are bringing you insights that you wouldn't have in any other way Then bringing tools that allow you to collect all those information.

7) Data-Driven Insights for Improved Decision-Making

Let's take marketing tools for instance when you are preparing your events. If you are using all those marketing tools, you will have better ways to analyze for instance the engagement on the website, The effectiveness of your campaign. But let's be more precise. If we take at the show floor directly with your exhibitors, if you use lead scanning on all your booths, we will give you powerful data.

For instance, you can see that three or four or five exhibitors who are located in the same area are not performing. Is it because they are not using the solution? Is it because they prefer to focus on quality rather than quantity? Or is it because traffic is not here?

Because if it is related to traffic, you might want to send push notification to encourage attendees to go to this specific booth. But that can be also a strategy to be used when you want to rebook. Because yes, we know that during an event you are already preparing the next edition. But how powerful would it be for you to go to an exhibition area, meet with your different exhibitors, and know already if they made the most of their event or not.

You might not have the same discretion if you know that an exhibitor did not have as many leads as they were expecting. Or the other way around, if you know that they have, I don't know, a thousand of leads already qualified and that they are very successful, it's much easier to bring the attention for the next year. That's all we have to say today. Thank you again for your attention, and please share with us if you have other strategies because we know there are other strategies working out there And the most important for us is to make sure that we share them together as a community because this is together that we will grow.

Thank you everyone.

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