By: My Booking Manager
Rita Davenport had been given a
free hand to design and manage an exhibition stand for her company. The Marketing Director had
briefed her extensively on the overall idea and left her with an open brief to produce something
that would attract customers, dealers and the trade press. Rita walked out of the meeting feeling
inspired but not quite sure what to do next.
Once you understand clearly what the sponsor needs the stand to achieve, you can go about
the business of designing and branding your presence. If your budget will stretch to the cost of a
professional exhibition designer, you should commission a good one. Not only does it remove some of
the more stressful elements of exhibition organization; gaining agreement to the design, arranging
manufacture, checking quality, organizing transportation, assembly and disassembly; it allows you
to be objective about making changes. In addition, exhibition designers will provide advice about
the best position for your stand in the exhibition hall, traffic flow through the stand, lighting
and audio-visual presentations.
If you don't have an extensive enough budget to engage an exhibition designer, get together
with a good graphic designer who can produce well designed exhibition panels that will impress and
attract attention. You may need to provide a stand system (normally a metal framework that is
assembled to hold the exhibition boards) but these are fairly lightweight, easy to assemble and
come ready-fitted with a lighting system.
Other considerations for your stand should include furniture to rest your foot-sore
customers, pamphlet racks for your product information and storage for the paraphernalia that you
don't want to clutter the stand.
Before you finalize the design of the stand, run it by all of the important decision-makers
and influencers in the organization to make sure it has their blessing before you commit to
expensive printing and photographic work.
Selecting and training your exhibition staff
When potential customers home in on your stand, they don't really want to deal with people
who only have a vague understanding of your products and services. They generally want very
specific answers to very specific questions and it is in your interests to people the stand with
carefully selected competent individuals who can work effectively as a team.
If you choose to use technical staff who have limited sales experience or sales staff with
limited technical knowledge, it is vitally important to provide them with an opportunity to pick up
new skills and information prior to the exhibition. Allow your own staff to train each other and to
share tips and techniques in sales as well as improving technical knowledge on the products or
services being exhibited.
Rita was fortunate, her exhibition budget allowed her to commission a talented exhibition
designer who project managed the installation for her. The exhibition team was selected from sales,
marketing, engineering and administration co-workers. They all benefited from a fun workshop where
they compiled a stand data book to educate each other about the company, product and
sales information
.
Article source: http://www.earticlesonline.com/Article/Brand-Your-Exhibition-Stand-For-Maximum-Impact/33108
