It’s not often you get to pick the brain of a trade show executive. The experience and leadership are invaluable. Here, we present not one, but eight opportunities to peek inside the minds of event leadership as they address five of the most beguiling questions our industry is currently facing.

In separate emails, we invited our panel of executives—listed at left—to submit their own answers to five questions we’ve determined to be top of mind for show producers. We cover the recession’s impact on our market and how it will change as a result; maximizing exhibitor relationships; growing attendance; social media and technology; and how to produce the best attendee experience possible.

In all cases, our panelists have generously offered solid insight, not over-simplified platitudes, into what show managers need to be doing to not only survive, but thrive in today’s market and beyond. To paraphrase Alan Peterson, president of Penton Media’s trade show group, the days of simply selling real estate on the main aisle are over.

EXPO's PANEL OF EXPERTS... 

David Audrain
President and CEO,
Messe Frankfurt North America

Alan Steel
President,
GLM

Alan Peterson
President, Trade Show
& Conference Group, Penton Media

Dennis Slater
President, Association of
Equipment Manufacturers

Margaret Pederson
President,
Amirexx

David Weil
Vice President,
Event Services, SmithBucklin

Kerry Gumas
President and CEO,
Questex Media Group

Don Pazour
President and CEO,
Access Intelligence, LLC

Q: How best to serve exhibitors with flat or declining budgets and keep them in the show?

David Audrain: Encourage them to cut back if they need to, reassure them that a smaller booth is not a bad statement in a market where everyone has budget concerns, and that a smaller presence is certainly a better option than no presence.

Help them to review how much they are spending on your show, offer to “audit” their budgets and show plans and help identify ways they can do more for less, and spend their budgets more wisely. Be their partner.

Don Pazour: First of all, make sure that they have cut less effective media or less productive competitive shows out of their budgets before figuring out how to reduce their costs for your show. Encourage them to drop broader, less focused shows, cut print, and find dollars from the Web marketing as show attendance can be tied to their Web business success. Resist strongly accepting reduced budgets to propose a reduced value proposition. In fact, point out that if others are trimming, this is the chance to stand out as invested in growth. Okay, okay, maybe I am avoiding the question. If you fail to hold your dollars from a client, perhaps allow them to take smaller space, but to counter this, win back as much as you can in special sponsorships that will drive people to their booth and provide the impression they are there in greater strength. Definitely for strong shows, stick to whatever priority point system you have. It is particularly important to reward those customers that help keep the show vibrant during tough times.

Margaret Pederson: It is important to prove the value and ROI of an event. Research confirms that one out of two attendees plan to buy products shown at an event; that the net buying influence increased in all industry sectors in 2009; that 34 percent of attendees are first-timers at any given show; and that 33 percent of attendees reported their purchase intentions were more favorable after visiting companies’ booths. Organizers need to conduct research specific to their exhibition. It is key that the metrics align with and measure success consistent with the objectives and initiatives of key stakeholders.

Alan Peterson: Identification of key accounts in events and having real dialogue with those customers using a senior sales or management person will be required. Finding out exactly what their goals are, not only for the show, but for them as a company, will be critical. Following up on that information, custom proposals using all of our ammunition (data, lead retrieval, list, non-traditional sponsorships, e-media, PDAs, etc.) will be crucial to keeping customers engaged and participating. The fundamental business asset of events—“putting buyers with sellers”—is still, in my opinion, the most efficient use of time and dollar resources that companies can use. But selling and producing events based on three days and 100 feet of concrete while “hoping” exhibitors have a good show will doom the model.

Q: Will the industry grow again? Is the downturn due to the economy, or are corporations valuing and using conventions/trade shows differently?

David Audrain: I believe that exhibitors continuously review the value they get from exhibitions, and that when the recession hit the value decreased more than usual because of the slowdown in orders and business in general, and this reduced the value for many exhibitors substantially.

The challenge for us as organizers is that exhibitors measure that value in many different ways, and we have to defend or promote our value often without knowing how we are being measured. Where we fail most often is that we don’t ask our exhibitors often enough how they measure the value of our shows, and what we can do to improve that value. We seem to believe that if we don’t bring it up then they won’t think about it. Obviously, sticking our heads in the sand isn’t a useful option.

If we really want to “partner” with our exhibitors as we say we do, then we need to be the ones to push them to measure the value from our shows, and to help them do it.

Kerry Gumas: Business events of all forms will continue to grow in number, but they won’t all be trade shows. The worldwide growth of trade shows will continue, but much of that will come from non-U.S. markets, where more rapid economic development is occurring. There will be a cyclical upturn in the United States, with growth out of the trough of the recession, but timing is uncertain. Also, new event formats and the application of technology to the entire meeting and trade show experience will fuel the growth of new events that in some cases will replace the trade show format. Where large-scale show audiences can be effectively segmented and uniquely served, smaller new shows will emerge. Online events will complement face-to-face. Entirely new events will be created to serve new industries and new categories within existing industries as sunset and offshored industry shows decline.

In this deflationary environment, declining demand and consolidation within industries has increased cost and performance pressure. Of necessity, companies have less to spend and are seeking increased impact and return from the fewer dollars invested.

Don Pazour: I believe strongly the downturn is due to the economy and particularly to the near panic that existed due to the financial community’s issues. This affected attendance, sponsorship, and exhibiting across the entire trade show industry and not just selected markets that were truly in a serious recession. Attendance is bouncing back and marketing dollars will follow. We need to be cognizant of the fact that billions of dollars have left print advertising to support our customers’ own Web sites. Trade shows, for the most part, should retain their value, but we must continue to make the experience more pleasant and effective for both visitors and exhibitors through the use of on-site technology as well as year-round community Web sites for our events. If we continue to invest in the product, there is a long and prosperous future ahead for trade shows. New things and new markets and or segments that create new professional communities of buyers will spawn new trade shows.

David Weil: The industry will grow again but the revenue growth and investment in our industry associations and communities may not be concentrated around just reserving booth space. Marketing professionals are looking for year-round access with our communities and this will come from more exposure through our Web sites and tangible relationship building opportunities that can come through custom events, speaking opportunities and year-round sponsorships. Exhibit booth space is now just one piece to the full range of marketing opportunities our industry vendors are looking to achieve based on their marketing objectives.

Alan Peterson: The industry will grow again, but in non-traditional ways. I believe key events that are central to their market communities will thrive, but the second and third-tier events will struggle significantly. Companies we work with are demanding more return from their participation and we are changing our entire strategy in and around how we formalize their ROI. Non-traditional revenue streams that have historically “scared” organizers will need to be embraced or traditional revenues will be affected. The days of selling real estate and space on the “main aisle” are gone.

Q: How best to use social media?

David Audrain: Social Media use will certainly continue to grow, and change direction many times as it does. What it provides is an open opportunity for people in our markets to connect and research and confide in an unstructured, free-format way.

For us as organizers it provides us with a way to seed a marketplace and then watch it grow if we water it with information and recognize and respond to the input.

Kerry Gumas: Identify your industry’s online ecosystem of sites, blogs and communities and plan coverage and penetration of that as you would a sales territory. Who is responsible for that inside your business today? Those that have started are learning. Those that haven’t should start immediately.

Margaret Pederson: You need to tie social media into the strategy of your organization and the positioning priorities of your event, rather than treating it as a standalone activity. Use it to build a closer tie to your community, extend the life of the event past the physical show, attract new attendees, and create buzz. Finally, integrate it into the overall event experience and measure results.

Alan Peterson: I believe all organizers are looking for the “Holy Grail” in terms of strategically using social media. We are in the process of building out our strategy which will include all forms of attendee-to-attendee connections, process/procedure document exchange, PDA marketing, lead generation, online conferences as well as repurposing of content from existing events. Record everything. We are already going to the expense of audio visual, speaker procurement, staging, etc. at events—why let that content slip away? In the most simplistic terms, organizers put together so much onsite conference content that it is simply impossible for the attendee to see it all—if they want to go to session A and session B but they occur at the same time, it is actually a detriment to the attendee experience.

Dennis Slater: While its true potential or impact is still being determined, social media has quickly become an important marketing tool and needs to be part of  our show marketing plans. At this stage, social media can best be used to provide a continuous stream of news about your events, reaching out to communities of attendees and exhibitors most interested in the industry served by your exhibition. And, of increasing importance, it allows you to respond to questions, concerns and negative publicity about your events. You are being given a forum to state your case. To ignore it would be a huge mistake.

Alan Steel: Use it as an additional tool not a replacement tool. Word of mouth has always been our most valuable promoter and using social media to encourage conversations around our shows, monitoring it and participating in it, is extremely important. However, while social media is obviously important in a broad marketing sense, deeper and more personal relationships with industry leaders and opinion makers continues to be crucial.

Q: Is improving the attendee experience something you focus on? Is it priority one? Should it be? How do you keep events relevant and fresh?

David Audrain: The attendee experience is most certainly something we focus on, and I challenge my marketing managers and show directors to view this as the most important task we have. It of course is also the hardest thing we do to keep our events relevant and fresh. This is where we have to communicate better, more often, and with an open mind, with our audience/community/customers. The answer should always be “yes”, then work out how to make it happen.

Kerry Gumas: Yes, it’s really the essence of the business—through openness to outside input, innovation, a change-management process and a strong merchandising sense. These have to be ingrained within the culture of the event team. The tactics for keeping events fresh and relevant are myriad, but that culture has to be present.

Also, exhibitor and attendee advisory panels are a great source of feedback and input as are social media. Hospitality and social networking functions need to be integrated into every facet of the event.
You should collaborate with sponsors and attendees to create experiential exhibits and features. And it’s important to recognize that in some markets shows have product lifecycles and reinvention may mean launching a completely new event.

Don Pazour: Attendee experience is Job One. Enhancing that experience for professional communities is first and foremost achieved through education. Have relevant content in the conference rooms as well as on the floor. Make your content interactive. Tie the community closer together with mobile value added targeted communication throughout the show. Work with exhibitors and your own budget to provide good networking opportunities. Put fun into the event. Contests on relevant skills for your audience (fighting fires, Web programming, designing airplanes—are examples). Show management or corporate management should register, walk the halls, look for obscure products, attend sessions, ask for help in the hotel lobbies, etc. to try to replicate and understand the experience for your customers. If something ticks you off, fix it. Ask the attendees what they want more of and give it to them, what they want less of and kill it. While surveying and asking past attendees what they want, rely on your market experts to use their own judgment and experience to give directional guidance. But always be careful that some research because of small samples, low differentiation among answer choices, etc. may not be accurate, in which case and always, do not suspend your own judgment.

Margaret Pederson: Attendees are key to success. Historically, organizers focused on exhibitors. Now we realize that exhibitors will forgive a multitude of sins if you deliver a large, qualified, buying audience. Attendees have a variety of ways to obtain information, education and connections, so keeping the overall event experience valuable, relevant and fun is key to securing their attendance. Content remains king in attracting attendance. Making the event user-friendly and productive helps, as do  networking opportunities and unique features.

Alan Peterson: This is our number-one goal. I would say we focus more on attendee experience than any other factor—whether that is tactical or strategic. It has been our belief that we must make our events overly attractive to attendees and truly create an industry “event”. We believe in a strategy that provides as many reasons as possible to say, “Yes, I will register, book a flight, spend time out of my business, spend money on a room, etc.” It’s all in the combination of providing the attendee the very best options for networking, seeing/sampling products, conferences, entertainment, and destinations that will trigger them to not only attend an event, but stay engaged in the brand.

Dennis Slater: The attendee experience needs to be a focus today more than ever. Attendees have more choices to see new products. Budgets are tight and time is increasingly valuable as companies have reduced personnel in the Great Recession we are just climbing out of. These conditions aren’t going to change for a long time. The first part of the attendee experience is something the exhibition industry has traditionally excelled at, and that’s delivering a compelling value in exhibiting companies featuring the latest technologies and innovations.

Now, we must put more effort into making it easy for the attendee to use their limited time wisely by using product concentration areas so they can quickly find and see what they are interested in. And, we want to label new products either in the exhibit stands or special “new technologies” areas.

To increase the value of our shows and save time for attendees, we need to co-locate industry conventions and events at our shows, and offer more comprehensive education programs.

Matchmaking services and networking opportunities organized before the show will also tell the attendees that the opportunities and value go beyond the exhibit floor.

These are just a few examples of what we are doing to make the experience for the attendees a positive one, and to keep them coming back to our events.

Alan Steel: Attendee experience needs to be a priority focus. In the case of our retail shows, it means we must think like a retail attendee—understanding what they do not only at the show, but also before and after the show—and how we adapt what we do to support the ways in which their business is changing. For example, changing the visuals and layouts to emphasize that there is new merchandise, that there are new vendors, that innovation and new presentations are immediately available. A consumer going into a retail store which presents itself and the merchandise it sells without constant change is likely to be seen as stagnant and uninteresting. We have to offer the same experience.

David Weil: It really does start with attendee satisfaction and retention. New technologies exist to help attendees navigate a show through their smart phones, obtain show and exhibitor information through portals by texting, and exchange contact information electronically to help enhance networking—all of which improves their experience at the show. Today’s attendees are very selective on the events they attend and how many people are budgeted to be sent to events. The attendee experience must have a high value proposition, featuring education, networking and new product information. This is the type of value attendees are looking to achieve when attending a face-to-face meeting.

Q: What are the innovations that will be critical in attendance promotion?

David Audrain: We need to focus on collecting more and better information on our exhibitors and our buyers, and then customizing this information so that we can help them to find what they want. We thought matchmaking was developing systems where the buyers and sellers would find each other, or where the sellers would tell us who they want to meet as prospective new customers. But what we need to focus on is “solving the needs” of our buyers, which means we have to identify those needs specifically, and then solve them.

This is not going to be easy, or simple, but it is going to be essential to our success and position as a key business partner for both the buyers and sellers, something we must be if we want to be relevant and important in our customer’s business in the future.

Kerry Gumas: Social networking, e-mail marketing, online events, viral marketing and other user-generated marketing techniques are already replacing traditional forms of direct marketing. That trend will continue.

The reach of live events will also be further increased through online and mobile video. Witness the worldwide audience that a Steve Jobs iPad rollout or other product launch generates via video blogging from inside the venue, and from tweeting and remote simulcast events.

Don Pazour: Attendance promotion becomes a year-round relationship with your attendees. Use the event brand to give your attendee community valuable content throughout the year—and valuable content does not mean telling them how great your show is. Tell them what is going on in the industry, with their competitors, with technology. Make the event brand an umbrella that represents year-round value, but underlying that value add is a big old networking event. Each communication with your universe should say this is brought to you by the “Biggest, most important face-to-face event serving your industry.” Never stop telling them to come back next year.

Separately on attendance, it is about understanding and segmenting audience and testing what messages and media each of these segments respond to. Using technology and plain old elbow grease analysis of all marketing efforts allows shows to continue to build audience in flat markets.

Margaret Pederson: Technology. Social media and mobile apps are key in today’s attendance promotion. E-mail has replaced fax, social media is used in conjunction with direct mail, mobile phones are becoming more important than the office telephone, Web sites take priority over brochures. SEO is used alongside advertising. Google and RSS supplements, trade publications and text are gaining more relevance to younger generations than brochures or telephone.

Alan Peterson: Social media, efficient business appointment setting and ongoing communication with buyers. Again, the registering, badging and having attendees walk the show floor is not enough. We need to keep an ongoing dialogue with attendee customers that goes way beyond surveying them about how the shuttle buses ran during the event. Keeping them connected to the brand for 365 days, connecting them to similar attendees with similar issues and using this connection point just like we use the shows as connecting points will grow events, not threaten them.

Dennis Slater: We can talk all day about new promotion techniques, but nothing is more important than providing the attendee with an overwhelmingly compelling case to attend your exhibition. Focus on the benefits the attendees will receive. Make sure the exhibitors know what products the attendees are looking for, and have the right personnel in the exhibit to talk about the products. Attendees want product engineers, not only sales personnel. Promotion is going to have to be much more targeted with specific messages for each audience. Once you have the value proposition, focus on making it easy for the attendee to register and attend. Explain how the show experience will be a good use of their time, with shorter lines, transportation service and many opportunities to see the latest technologies, which will be featured.

Another critical area to the success of our attendance promotion is the visa issue for international visitors. Exhibitions in North America are focusing more on the international customer as these markets develop. To attract these visitors and get them to our events, we need to make it easier for them to obtain visas, which has been a huge problem. We are working directly with the Commerce and State departments as well as the commercial officers at key embassies and consultants to explain lower wait times, simplify the application process and explain why an improved process is needed. I also want to applaud IAEE for its efforts to resolve this issue for our industry.

Alan Steel: The primary factor in attendance promotion (and this is no innovation) continues to be the money spent, the effort made and the depth of connection with attendees. However, tools that allow the online and the onsite search experience to be aligned will be critical. Each search will have its own value and each will serve a specific need but they will be most powerful when used alongside one another.

David Weil: The concept that social media can help us expand outside our established database and help show management reach out to a global network of people interested in our industries is a very powerful tool for our events. What will be new for show management is that we will not have complete control of the message as we have in the past. Social media can be more impactful if the request comes from a third party who encourages attending a show rather than traditional media outreach. Technology will also play a role in reaching out to the non-attendee through hybrid events that will stream speaker content out to the industry during our live events which can really create aspiration for the non-attendee to participate in the future while gaining exposure to our events worldwide.