These days, it’s all about technology—but face-to-face human interaction still rules.
Technology is changing the trade show experience, just as it has almost every other aspect of how business is done on this planet.
Some of the ways in which technology plays a role in trade show business these days have critics who make good points, but the fact that technology continues to make trade shows a bit more effective year in and year out is a view shared almost universally.
Carina Bauer (MPI United Kingdom and Ireland Chapter), CEO of IMEX Group, which has been conducting highly successful and constantly growing trade shows in Frankfurt, Germany, since 2003, and in Las Vegas since 2011, says the core of the IMEX shows is human interaction—the appointment-driven, hosted-buyer format—which has been made increasingly more efficient year after year by the evolution of software used to schedule appointments.
"Hosted buyer is the core of what we do, and it is very much a face-to-face experience," she says. "But it is made much more efficient by the software we use today and it would be very difficult to operate in the way we do today without the evolution of the software."
The nutshell of hosted buyer is that it is designed to ensure everyone’s time is spent in a very efficient manner through appointments that couple buyers with exhibitors who offer precisely what the buyers are seeking in the way of goods and services.
"The software we use today offers lots of information that both the buyers and sellers can see about each other before they make appointments with each other," Bauer says. "The time of both the buyers and exhibitors is very important to them, so the more information we can provide each of them before the trade show, the better off they are."
Bauer says the most recent evolution of the IMEX software allows buyers to attach "mini RFPs" to their appointment requests so exhibitors can research the specifics of what the buyers are looking for before the two parties ever meet in person at the trade show. Once appointments are made, buyers and exhibitors can communicate with each other one-on-one via the IMEX software well before the show begins.
Experienced trade show professionals like Garfield Brown (MPI Toronto Chapter), senior manager of events for Canadian telcom giant Allstream, are exhibitors at some trade shows and buyers at others.
"As a buyer, I really appreciate the hosted-buyer format," he says. "With targeted appointments that meet my specific needs, I can now see as many as 10 suppliers in the amount of time it might take me to find one good match for my needs by walking around the trade show floor looking at booths."
Brown says as an exhibitor and producer of trade show components for Allstream, he finds that buyers who are walking the trade show floor physically looking for products that are a match for them seem to be getting smaller in number and so the floors appear to be getting less busy.
That observation is in keeping with what some professional trade show analysts are predicting going forward in 2015. Most industry studies predict moderate growth in spending on trade shows as a marketing method in the coming year, but larger growth in digital media as a marketing method.
"Let’s face it, trade shows and digital media are both marketing tools for the corporate world," says Candy Adams, CTSM, CME, CEM, CMP, CMM, owner of Boothmom.com and a trade show industry strategist for more than 20 years. "Right now, the studies I am reading show that corporate marketing departments are ranking digital marketing as No. 1 and trade shows as No. 2 in the pecking order.
"Trade shows are, of course, not going away," she says. "Face-to-face interaction is never going to be replaced. But the perception is out there in the corporate world that digital media is more effective, and your value is never going to be greater than your stakeholders’ perception of your value."
San Diego-based Adams, who has been running what she calls a "rookie course" for trade show exhibitors for 18 years, predicts that 2015 will be a year in which all marketing spend will be under closer scrutiny from those who control the budgets. And she disputes the validity of the ways in which the value of social media is often measured against the value of face-to-face interaction.
"You are not only talking about apples vs. oranges, you should also throw in pears, bananas, grapefruits and peaches, because there are so many things being measured that don’t relate to each other," she says.
Adams cites a recent trade show at which someone tweeted that her booth was serving coffee. The staff at the booth scanned the badges of everyone who was served coffee—a group that grew exponentially after the tweet. The stakeholder was happy with the amount of data—names and contact information—that was gathered.
"But my question is this: Do we really have hundreds of leads, or just information about a lot of people who wanted a free cup of coffee?" she says.
Adams, who writes a column for Exhibitor magazine and has been a trade show exhibitor herself since 1991, says that despite the many trends that have occurred in the trade show industry in the past couple of decades, most of the principles she teaches in training new trade show exhibitors have not changed.
"I would say 80 percent or more of what I am teaching is unchanged in the 18 years I have been teaching the course, because the fundaments of the industry have not changed," she says.
Among those key fundamentals are to know what type of information your stakeholders want you to capture and know how to capture it correctly, and also to staff your booth with people knowledgeable about the product being marketed while also being skilled at human interaction.
"That speaks to the face-to-face part of the equation that will always be important," she says. "You must have people in your booth who know what they are doing and who are good at interacting with people. That’s not going to change."
