Exhibitions, the misunderstood marketing media

Corporate South Africa largely sees trade exhibitions as a necessary evil, rather than a viable and productive marketing tool that can be used to achieve annual sales objectives. The surprising facts are:

• Most South African exhibitors are retailing at exhibitions – not marketing! They book a ‘shop' (stand) in a specialised shopping center (exhibition), dress it up, then wait for passing traffic to stop by.

• Very few local companies integrate exhibitions into their marketing mix – preferring to make an ad hoc decision to participate, funded from the petty cash. They rely on ‘gut instinct' when deciding to participate, influenced by the quantity, rather than the quality, of exhibition visitors. Yet these same companies would rigorously investigate and evaluate other advertising and marketing opportunities, particularly their potential to produce a meaningful return on investment.

• Most exhibitors don't set objectives for their participation and therefore cannot prove a satisfactory ROI. Most exhibitors can name two or three exhibition objectives but there are well over 100 great exhibition objectives.

• Exhibitors pay too much attention to the STAND, being the ‘hardware' of successful exhibiting, while largely ignoring the ‘software', being all other necessary marketing and promotional activity.

• The Centre for Exhibition Industry Research in America established that 80% of trade show leads are never followed up – a statistic that is accepted by most local exhibition professionals and trade show visitors! The concept of lead management and post-show promotions is largely unheard of.

In view of the above, it is a credit to the medium of trade exhibitions that they have shown spectacular growth in South Africa.

The ‘information age' is over and the ‘experiential age' has arrived as consumers are swamped with marketing messages they no longer trust; they would rather experience the product for themselves. Exhibitions have always out-performed the other marketing media because products can be demonstrated, touched, tried, tasted and tested.