Trade show success

Given the cost, time and logistics of attending conferences and trade shows it is imperative that attendees make sure that it will be relevant for them.

“Some conferences are weird,” said Famularo. “Some conferences have only short breaks at certain intervals. And those attendees are more interested in going to the bathroom or having a cigarette and attending to emails and never have time for you. You are never part of the agenda. You are the coffee break.

“On a positive side if you are in good with the organisers you might get to speak at a conference, in which case you are not just a standby contributor on a stand.”

Famularo said on the plus side attending road shows and some trade shows provides an opportunity for the company to meet their clients, resellers and distributors.

“They enable a lot of mind share and you get to know people who you have dealt with year-on-year and meet the people who are buying your product.”

Matt Bullock, founder/CEO of payment gateway vendor eWay, said his company mostly sells to people over the Internet and that trade shows are an invaluable tool in helping to get to know customers and partners.

“CeBIT is a great way for us to get in front of our existing clients and we have done every CeBIT in Australia and in Germany,” Bullock said.

“CeBIT has changed a lot over the years, with my focus now more about partnerships and around clients or people we do business with such as Salesforce.com.”

Robert Thorne, marketing manager of Hanover Fairs, which runs CeBIT said the show had changed over the years, with more emphasis on the attendees and their ability to network and develop a more sound understanding of what visitors want and expect.

“Over the years the format for CeBIT has changed,” Thorne said. “In the early days it was a straightforward exhibition and was more general, but now we have about 28 show floor categories, such as VoIP broadband etc and categories for the channel.

“In this way our floor has changed and evolved, with more stands more targeted,” he said. “We are also delivering more focused seminars and conferences, which are attracting a high level of cases studies and executives from overseas which is enriching our visitor experience,” he said.

“And we continue to grow our conference program to reflect the number and level of delegates wanting a more networking function for the attendees including business and government users who can connect and do business away from the show floor.

“Visitors can now pick up targeted information and can listen to experts in the field and get the information relative to their business rather than listening to a generic sales pitch,” Thorne said.

“They don’t want the information they can pick up off Google – they want to know how to save money at the conference and enrich their experience from select speakers and that is not something you can buy or look up on the Internet.”

Thorne said that the actual exhibitors at CeBIT had also changed, along with the trend away from products towards companies that have services to sell, such as mobile telephony and service offerings from companies such as Salesforce and Yahoo.

Mark McPherson, manager training and conferences at AusCert, which runs conferences on IT security issues for companies and the public, said that the organisation’s annual conference is a masterpiece in networking in itself.

“What has changed is in the past we focused on particular solutions, but people have demanded more breadth and a one-stop-shop,” McPherson said.

“The three-day main conference streams offering plenary, referee papers, education, specialised papers are all published at our conference and we aim to give vendors a mix of presentations from industry.

“What is covered is business issues such as the dollars and cents of Internet security and to solve problems by getting all the industry minds together at one time,”
he said.

“So the time networking is very important and allows our delegates to discuss how to handle the issue or what is the international solution and issues.

“Our shows and panels and executive track tackle not only the business issues that need to be discussed but also brings people together to talk about what are huge problems for a major company and the corporate environment and get to really hard core global stuff.”
McPherson said that the conference is held at a golf resort in Queensland every year so as to facilitate lots of networking opportunities, with delegates able to get together at the bars and restaurants or on the golf green.

“People want to have the opportunity to network and share knowledge and that is a really big drawcard for our audience,” McPherson said. “There is real value in the networking so even as we have grown we have not moved from a hotel to a dedicated conference area because the layout and position are very conducive to network and that is a significant aim of the conference.

“We believe we are getting every sector in the community together with experts and business so they can talk to clients and the conference itself may not necessarily be the aim of the program but it is providing a social environment that is equally important.”

While some companies see merits in flying the corporate banner or pushing awareness of a particular brand, Anthony Toope, marketing manager of Samsung Electronics Australia, said success will always boil down to return on investment.

“I think in all marketing initiatives you have to target the right business and while portraying the right image is important by attending these shows, additional marketing money is not increasing,” he said.

“The use of the Internet is taking over and spending budgets on these types of international shows runs into the millions of dollars and how do you measure ROI from that particular event?

“What you put into an event and what you get out of it depends on return on shows and those activities can be quite difficult to gauge.”

Toope said that rather than participating in one big show a month it is probably better to focus on smaller activities with distribution partners.

“We use these activities to talk to our end customers and we would have a major event every quarter,” he said. “Meanwhile we do recognise branding and brand value and product display and our investment in those is significant.

“You have to think about the audience you want to reach and who is the customer and whether they attend those events or if those customers are the ones you want to get on board in the long term.