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July/August 2008
Attendance Marketing Best Practices
Show organizers struggle with how best to communicate with attendees
By Heather Kirkwood
Direct mail is dead. Kaput. Finis.
OK, maybe that’s a little strong, but when show organizers with attendance that grew in 2007 were asked to rank the 15 marketing tools they rely on, direct mail came in last. Dead last. And forty-three percent of all shows say they’ve decreased their use of direct mail — 12 percent have eliminated it completely.
But what to use in place of direct mail continues to confound show organizers, according to the sixth annual AttendTrend survey of trade show organizers conducted by the Frost Miller Group and Jacobs Jenner & Kent.
Thirty-four percent of respondents say they take a shotgun approach using all available marketing methods, while 19 percent admit they don’t know what works anymore and use their best guess.
The annual AttendTrend survey, a study of attendance marketing best practices, was conducted by telephone and surveyed 450 major show organizers throughout North America in December 2007. The survey explores how show organizers market to attendees, what their greatest challenges are and which marketing techniques are most used by growing shows.
“We were curious to get a better understanding of how marketers were dealing with the variety of marketing options available,” says Wayne Jacobs, President of Jacobs Jenner & Kent. “As new technologies are becoming more commonplace, there’s still a lot of confusion about how some technologies work and how to best apply them. When I go to an industry meeting and ask people about how they’re using Web 2.0, for example, not everyone really understands what that means, nor does everyone mean the same thing when they use the term.”
Greatest marketing challenges
Beyond confusion over the best way to communicate with attendees, one-third of respondents also struggle with how to communicate the value of their event to new audiences. Nearly the same number say understanding their audience is a major hurdle.
Top five challenges in marketing events
• Knowing how to communicate in today’s environment
• Communicating the value of the event to new audiences
• Understanding the audience
• Keeping it fresh, new and relevant
• Getting the audience to read what we sent
Marketing budgets stable
Overall, marketing budgets grew slightly in 2007 from 2006; however, just as in previous years the shows that increased the attendance marketing budget also increased attendance. In fact, none of the shows that reported increasing their attendance marketing budgets reported a decline in attendance. Yet, 68 percent of shows that reported cutting their attendance marketing budget also reported a drop in overall attendance.
Marketing methods employed
E-mail is by far the most popular marketing tool. Eighty-nine percent of organizers reported using e-mail five or more times to promote an event, and 80 percent reported relying on e-mail in 2007 more than in the past. Web advertising was the second most popular marketing tool. Sixty-two percent of organizers reported using Web advertising five or more times to promote an event and 76 percent said they had increased their reliance on Web advertising in 2007.
Growing shows
Seventy-three percent of shows with growing attendance relied on e-mail marketing and Web advertising in 2007, followed by advertising (64 percent) and targeted database marketing (64 percent). Direct mail is the least used method of marketing at 26 percent.
Motivating factors
The promises reported as most likely to lure attendees to the show remained the same from 2005 to 2007 — new products, networking and education. The prospect of seeing new products leads the way each year, and was ranked first by 65 percent of show organizers in 2007.
VIP buyers still difficult
Once again, show organizers report the most difficult buyers to attract are VIP power buyers. Sixty-four percent ranked them the most difficult, up from 48 percent in 2006. First-time attendees are the second most difficult constituency to attract with 44 percent of organizers citing them as a challenge.
Value-adds
Continuing education or CMEs continued to be the most popular value-add or relationship building strategy in 2007. It was used by 68 percent of show organizers. Holding orientation sessions grew the most in popularity, used by 52 percent of organizers in 2007 as compared with 32 percent in 2006.
Heather Kirkwood is Senior Editor of EXPO. She can be reached at 913-344-1376 or e-mail: hkirkwood@red7media.com.
Demographics of Survey Respondents
| Ownership |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
| Independently owned |
28% |
36% |
19% |
| Association owned |
57% |
54% |
73% |
| Both |
15% |
10% |
8% |
| These breakouts represent those who responded to the survey rather than a breakout of the industry as a whole. |
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