Unfortunately, as the past few tumultuous COVID-19 months have shown us, many traditional “go-to” sponsorships and standard exhibit booths have mostly evaporated. While understandable, organizers have been merely scrambling to keep up with the changes in an uncertain and ever-changing landscape.

As time has passed, many exhibiting and sponsoring companies have become less willing to accept “skipping” a year and rolling their event funds (aka marketing dollars) forward.

So why are attitudes changing?

These companies are also navigating economic uncertainty, so they are anxious to find meaningful opportunities to interact with their clients and prospects. In the 2018 Marketing Spend Decision report by CEIR, 68% of marketers said they paired exhibiting with one or more digital marketing channels. By not offering engagement via your event (whatever format it may become), you have removed one of their top-spend marketing tactics.

Events Budgets in a COVID World

As budgets get re-rewritten and re-written many times this year, companies will look diligently at every investment. Marketing is often the first dollar cut or reallocated to the most effective efforts to generate sales. If your event is not happening or not creating revenue opportunities – you will be cut. Can you hear it…Show me the money. Louder Jerry. SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Cut? Wait—What?

Yes, events activities (regardless of format and your long-standing tradition to attend) will be scrutinized to see what performed well. Even over the past few months, the comfort level of exhibitors and companies willing to forgive low event performance due to the pandemic’s unprecedented nature is waning.

So, what can you do?

Double Down on Virtual Events

Many have quickly worked to solve the event’s content component and left the commerce component to languish, assuming exhibitors and sponsors would be forgiving. Virtual events that work to create environments using proven event technology can drive value and revenue-generating engagement. That said, it is once again a dual responsibility of the show organizer to provide the tools and virtual venues and the exhibitor to market and participate in this new format.

But hasn’t it always been a dual responsibility?

Yes. However, in the virtual world, we are now asking exhibitors (who let’s face it never read) to participate (and excel) in a format they most likely never have before. Now you have even more added pressure to deliver value so you will remain part of the 2021 budget mix, you have to motivate and educate a group to do something completely new.

So, before you update your resume, let’s talk about a few tactics that will help you.

Call the Right People

One shift I see occurring is that events are often categorized as a marketing expense for businesses of all sizes. If a company has a marketing team member or entire office dedicated to marketing, they greatly influence how their dollars are spent. Marketing investment is often directly tied to sales and performance. Building a relationship with the marketing contact at your exhibiting and sponsoring companies will go a long way, particularly in this uncertain time. CALL THEM. Ask them about their goals? What are they looking to achieve with their exhibiting and sponsoring? How has that changed because of the pandemic? What do they want to do differently? Do they want to modify their exhibiting/sponsoring mix?

If it is a smaller company or one that is family-run, do the same thing with your contact or company owner. These conversations will help you retain the customer over both the long and short term. It will be a lot harder to drop you from the mix if you build a relationship to work mutually towards both goals in mind.

Educate. Educate. Educate.

If you were to drop most professionals off at the front door of a convention center, they likely could navigate your event from collecting a badge to finding a session or the exhibit hall. In the virtual world, every experience is likely different.

While it was true pre-pandemic and even more true now, educating ALL your constituents about your virtual or hybrid experience is REQUIRED. Screenshots, videos, webinars, and emails during each step leading up to, during and after your events are some of the best ways to meet your audience’s needs. As early virtual events have highlighted, even tech savvy users have struggled to understand how to engage and interact. They are eager to consume not only education on the how to, but the ability to partake in the virtual world if possible.

For exhibitors and sponsors especially, understanding your virtual event’s capability, features and functionality to generate leads and revenue makes education more important and required of show organizers.

Want to learn more on how to best prepare your exhibitors and sponsors for the virtual world?

Join me, Rich Vallaster, Director of Clients Relations at Personify and The Trade Show Wonk, and my special guest, Marlys Arnold, Author of Build a Better Trade Show Image and Virtual Event Host & Concierge at the Exhibit Marketers Café, as we share how you can help your exhibitors and sponsors rethink and retool to succeed at your virtual events. Tips include:

• Connecting with attendees pre-, during and post-event (both you and your exhibitors/sponsors) to create a robust conversation
• Having essential behind-the-scenes support to guide both attendees and exhibitors/sponsors through the experience
• Educating exhibitors/sponsors on how to engage and interact with a virtual audience
• Implementing creative ideas to get attendees excited and involved

Watch Now

The post Show Me the Money! Virtual Sponsorship and Exhibiting Success appeared first on Personify.

If you’re an event organizer, you’re often a jack (or jill) of all trades. You spend countless hours working to deliver a compelling lineup of speakers and sessions, develop professional development opportunities to help attendees grow in their careers and make new connections, and recruit event exhibitors and sponsors that will appeal to attendees. But let’s face it—we couldn’t host a successful conference without the organizations that participate in our event including exhibitors, attendees, speakers, sponsors and more.

If you’re looking to build long-term relationships with the organizations that invest time and resources at your events (and I’m guessing that you do), it’s critical to recognize and appreciate their contribution and show the value that is associated with being part of your event. We’re sharing four ways that you can recognize event exhibitors in person, online and via mobile and social, and demonstrate value:

1. Create Dedicated Activities for Event Exhibitors

Your partners and vendors likely have many options to invest their limited resources (both their marketing dollars and their staff’s time). To make sure that you’re creating an experience where exhibitors and sponsors feel valued, create dedicated activities to help them connect with attendees and prove the value of your conference.

This can include an exhibitor happy hour and gamification of the expo floor where attendees compete to visit different exhibitors for prizes and raffle drawings. You could also host an exhibitor spotlight where companies promote their solutions and product offerings over the lunch hour. Another option is to host a get together aimed at new attendees and sponsors to help first timers make new friends and exchange ideas.

2. Drive Traffic for Event Exhibitors via Website, Social Channels and Community

When Personify exhibits at a conference, the reason that we do it is because we want access to the audiences that the organization serves and to be able to show attendees the unique value that we can provide to solve a challenge or meet a goal. Similarly, with your exhibitors, you can increase the ROI of the exhibitor experience by creating high visibility for their organization.

Make sure that your exhibitors and sponsors are featured prominently on your organization’s website with an interactive floor plan and a link to more information about the exhibiting organization. Create space in the editorial calendar for your social media plan and in your online community to highlight exhibitors that will be at your upcoming conference. And, make sure to backlink to the exhibitor’s website to drive up their SEO value.

Before, during and after PersoniFest, our social media team pushed out dedicated social and community posts for our sponsors and exhibitors to show our appreciation for taking part in our annual conference.

3. Celebrate Their Success with Your Constituents

In addition to providing a time and space in the agenda for folks to visit the expo hall, consider creating an awards program or an appreciation dinner to highlight constituents’ success stories. This not only allows your members, donors and volunteers to learn from their industry peers, but also provides an outlet for exhibitors and sponsors to showcase their solutions and partnership opportunities with your organization.

For example, we created the Persi Awards at PersoniFest to highlight client success stories from the previous year. When possible, we included mentions of Personify’s partners and exhibitors that worked with our clients to help them reach their goals.

One of the 2019 Persi Award winners is our client the Texas Hospital Association who undertook a massive effort to move their billing and collection processes in house. We shared, both onstage during the keynote and afterwards in the blog post recap, how our partner and Personify exhibitor Intellidata played a crucial part in their billing transformation.

4. Directly Connect Event Exhibitors with Attendees

It’s a common issue that I have experience when attending a conference. I’m looking for a technology tool that can help me do X, Y and Z but I’m not sure which exhibitors offer that type of solution and so I spend time wandering around the expo hall hoping to come across a vendor that meets my needs.

There’s a better way. Intelligent matchmaking enables an attendee to connect face-to-face with experts that have a solution for a specific pain point or challenge in their organization. As part of your pre-show strategy, attendees can share the types of solutions they’re looking for on the expo floor and exhibitors can respond before or during the conference about how their solutions can help.

While this list includes a few ways to improve your exhibitors’ experience, it’s certainly not an exhaustive list. If you’re looking to revamp your exhibitor marketplace at your annual conference or tradeshow, learn more about our solutions for event professionals.

The post 4 Ways to Recognize and Create Value for Your Event Exhibitors appeared first on Personify.