Xchange Session - Insights from 500+ B2B Exhibitors: From Broken Experience to Sustainable Exhibitor Success

Nina: I'm Nina, head of solution design for Swapcard, with twelve years working in the event tech industry.

Walid: Hello, everyone. I'm Walid, general manager at Swapcard. I help exhibition organizers and large conferences in the United States and Canada. I'm coming from Montreal today, and I'm really happy to be with you. Thank you so much for being in this room.

Nina: We're here to talk about a survey we've done at Swapcard. In general, we always try to learn as much as possible from the industry — whether that's organizers or end users — because that's how we grow with our product, and how we grow as an industry.

The idea was to conduct a survey with 500-plus exhibitors from different events, to understand their pains and challenges, and what they consider a success when they participate in an event. Those exhibitors came from different industries, different sizes, and all over the world. There were a lot of learnings for us, and one question in particular came out of it.

Walid: Based on your own experience — and I know you come from different departments — do you think your exhibitors have a seamless experience, from signing the booth to the rebooking experience? Raise your hand if you think they do.

Either you're all really shy, or we have a real challenge as an industry: understanding exhibitor expectations and how they measure their success at your event. And the survey results were interesting.

What we see in the exhibition industry is that exhibitors are signing a booth, but there's the admin of the organization buying the booth, and then a separate team of staff members who actually attend. So it's a broken experience — from buying the booth to managing the event — and there's often miscommunication between the different teams.

The bigger challenge we see is lead generation and engagement. Based on the survey, where exhibitors struggle most is engaging with the audience prior to the event. Simply meeting the right prospects is the biggest challenge.

So another question: do you think your exhibitors generate self-qualified meetings before they show up to your event? Raise your hand if you achieve that KPI — a qualified meeting for your exhibitors.

We have Alejandro from Questech, and Questech is a hosted-buyer program, which is why they achieve this. Any other organizer able to deliver self-qualified meetings to your exhibitors? No one. So there's another challenge. That's the bigger pain — but the good news is there are solutions to fix it, and that's what we'll look at together. Qualified meetings are one of the biggest ones.

Nina: When we talk about lead generation and engagement, we also realized in our conversations that even when exhibitors have a solution in hand to generate leads, they don't necessarily know what to do with it, how to optimize it, or what to expect. When we asked them why they didn't know they had a lead-capture solution, they'd say, "I didn't know. I just came to the booth, and my marketing team told me to collect leads and scan badges, and that's it."

The people preparing the event are not the same people who are on-site, so the communication is broken. As an organizer or supplier, we're not addressing the right messaging to the right persona before the event. So setup, onboarding, and operational difficulties are a real barrier for exhibitors trying to make the most of their experience. Which brings us to the last challenge.

Walid: ROI — return on investment. We all know it's a big buzzword, but there's also the attribution concern. And what is the attribution concern? It's that only a very small share of your exhibitors export their leads into their CRM. Again, it's broken. The challenge isn't making leads at events.

What is a lead? It can be a connection, a conversation, engagement on an ad in your app, or random people you've scanned at the show — and people don't like being scanned; it isn't natural.

So you, or your provider, need to support exhibitors in getting their leads into their CRM. Why? Because then they can measure ROI, justify the investment, and come back to spend more the following year. Your goal is also to know how to measure your exhibitors' performance. If you have the right tech stack, you can capture that data — the technology isn't the challenge, the implementation is. So the question is how we support you in making sure your exhibitors push those leads into their CRM, and communicate with the audience not only during the event, but all year long.

Nina: So what's the real challenge behind these three elements? It's the broken experience. "Broken" is a bold word, and it can scare organizers, but the point isn't just about having a tech stack with multiple platforms — we all know it's sometimes important to have a specific tool for a specific part of the experience.

We know there are all-in-one platforms in this room, and we know there are specificities that lead you to use different platforms. But exhibitors don't only have to navigate that tech stack — they also have to navigate the communication. They're sometimes harassed with many emails before and during the event. And again, there's a disconnect between what's said to the people preparing and the people on-site. That's where it's important to fix the issue and understand how we can support exhibitors to make the most of their experience. Which brings us to the next point.

Walid: Exhibitors are not a monolith. They shouldn't be treated the same. We're releasing a playbook about the exhibitor maturity curve, so you'll receive documentation on this.

In your show, you have different types and levels of exhibitors: the manual, old-school exhibitor; the digitized exhibitor; the connected exhibitor; and the revenue-driven exhibitor. What we're trying to do is help organizers treat exhibitors differently — you need to adapt your communication strategy.

If you're a first-time attendee, you probably received a first-timer email. But what's the continuity that onboards you the right way? It's the same for your exhibitors. If you have a new exhibitor, you need to support them so they grow. You grow, we grow.

It's hard, because exhibition organizers usually have small teams. They lack resources, and there are disconnections between sales, marketing, and registration — so it's disconnected internally too. Having a dedicated playbook for each type of exhibitor will help.

Nina: Why segment exhibitors? Because you can offer the same stack of features to everyone, but they won't use it the same way or adopt the tools the same way. To give them the right experience, you need to focus on why they're there and how they act.

Take the manual exhibitor — the ones who still take notes on paper. Because let's be honest, we still have exhibitors taking notes on paper. They're usually smaller companies, and it's not a shame; it's just reality. We have small, medium, and large companies. The small ones — often family businesses, or in industries that aren't especially tech-savvy — will use what they know and focus on what they know.

So when we tell them they can just scan a business card and have everything in an Excel sheet, they realize, "That's easy. That's something I can handle." And usually they become interested in exploring more. This group needs simple communication and simple solutions to make their event successful and efficient. That's how you begin moving them to level two.

Usually these exhibitors are at level one in the first year. In the second year, you can bring them to the second level, where they become digitized exhibitors. They start using the tools you provide and understanding how digital solutions improve their experience — with basic setup, basic automation, basic tools. That's where it gets interesting for you as an organizer to adapt your communication. You can go a little further on renewal discussions, show them the impact of what they did during the event, show them they made qualified leads — because you have that data in hand. And the best part is when you move into level three.

Walid: As a reminder of how it works: as an exhibiting company, you first send emails to your existing customers, because it's easy to engage clients and meet them at the show — whether you're small or large. But it becomes a real challenge when you try to reach prospects. A month or two weeks before the event, all exhibitors are reaching out to the same potential customers, so they get ghosted — no answers. They try to organize dinners and engage the audience, because they want to meet new customers. That's where they grow, and where you can help them spend more the following year.

To make the link to connected exhibitors: have you flagged your power exhibitors — the ones doing incredible work with their marketing teams? If you have, you should use them as an example. A modern exhibitor today has a marketing team. They already know who they should meet at the event, so they run a top-fifty-accounts campaign, then organize a dinner or side event. They gather the right people, they're happy, they meet everyone, they integrate all that data into their CRM, and they keep smartly engaging with those prospects until they become clients. That's the connected exhibitor.

The revenue-driven exhibitor is also very tech-savvy, but they take advantage of exhibitions that offer hosted-buyer programs. They have a recorder on the table, they hold their meetings, and afterward everything is in the CRM — no need to scan people or take notes. It's recorded. That's the new generation I'm seeing in the United States. Hosted buyer is growing fast. We saw it recently with HIVE in the news — a good reminder from the earlier session.

Nina: To conclude: on top of communication, and on top of segmented support for your exhibitors — because the top twenty percent, where the revenue comes from, is usually the priority — you need strong tools that are connected and answer the right needs. From a hosted-buyer program that provides qualified meetings, to on-site lead capture that's basically the standard now in Europe, there are many tools out there to help ensure your exhibitors have the right experience and the right return on investment.

Walid: One thing worth knowing: hosted buyer is just one term. Some organizers instead run meetings in a sponsored meeting lounge. Most exhibitors sometimes don't have time to hold meetings at their booths because they're too busy — we see this in the food industry and other sectors. So you set up a meeting lounge where people can connect with the right technology. They engage smartly before the event, and you're able to track all those qualified meetings happening at your show. That's very important.

In Vegas, I attend so many events — and where are the meetings held? In the Starbucks outside the show floor. That's crazy. We need to fix this. Often no one is organizing a hosted-buyer program. Maybe you organize meetings, but again, the technology is here; it's just a question of implementation and execution.

To conclude, we want to thank all the organizers who allow us to learn and experiment together — because at Swapcard we truly believe we innovate together, not just the supplier on one side and the organizer on the other. Thank you.