Exhibition stands

Using press and magazine advertising, brochures, mailings - old hat or still cost-effective?
Margaret
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Exhibition stands

Post by Margaret »

We have decided - at the last minute, because we only just found out about it - to exhibit at an exhibition a week tomorrow. (We are also exhibiting at a wedding fair at the village (honeymoons!) but mainly support the village rather than in expectation of getting any bookings.)

Has anyone else tried this? I'm looking for tips for putting a display together without spending much money. I have ordered 43 Euros worth of large photos from Snapfish but not much else so far.

Any ideas, suggestions gratefully received.
Hells Bells
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Post by Hells Bells »

We haven't, but it is something we have considered doing at one of the ski shows, perhaps even sharing a stand with someone.
Londoner
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Post by Londoner »

A friend of mine shared a stand at the viva Italia show a couple of years ago .She has a villa in Tuscany. I helped her "man " it one afternoon.
We had a lot of interest and people did pick the brochures up but she did not see any huge surge in enquiries.
Lots of people were roaming around with lots of papers/leaflets etc. Do they actually read any of them when they get home?
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Partridge
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Post by Partridge »

Hi Margaret, just back from Vegas so only just seen this. For the future you might want to consider a pop up banner stand. I only say this because Del's little foray last year in to a couple of exhibitions in France, where we had 2 MM banners behind us, for services to expats found the following:

He was by far one of the most popular stands visited because most people had home made boards behind them, or nothing at all. It could have been because so many people were interested in print but somehow I doubt that.

Unfortunately it wasn't viable for us to consider doing any more as most local businesses wanted the usual 'pay peanuts, hold my hand' service.....but by far the most requested thing was the banners. Some of them can have the cartridges changed so it's possible to change the display for different events. I'm sure you can get your local printers to do it or, as always, just e-mail the boys if you want any info for the future :lol:
Don't waste energy on things you can't change.

Costa de la Luz apartment rental
www.ownersdirect.co.uk/spain/S5386.htm
Margaret
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Post by Margaret »

You are right about banners!

We had a 4 m2 stand, the smallest they did but we did pay a little extra to have a corner stand which gave us extra exposure. The organisers provided a back wall with our name on it, a carpet and a desk. We borrowed 2 pop ups - one from the area tourist office, which they did in English for us, about the free use of local buses and trains and one from the village tourist office - those 2 virtually made the 2nd wall, dividing us from the neighbouring stand. The majority of stands were professional organisations plus there were tables for small local companies and crafts.

We deliberately went for a 'cluttered' look to give an impression of all the things available here so we took a chair and coffee table (with a glass of wine, books and DVDs on it), borrowed some skis from a local sports shop, plus sledge, tennis and badminton racquets, a few baby toys and a basket with our 'welcome pack' in it. I am not sure how well the idea worked but it did make us look different.

For the walls, we had some fantastic collages made up by Snapfish, one of the area, one of the apartments, also a map showing where we are (on the Czech border) and a map of the local ski runs, plus a few other bits and pieces. To attract attention, we took 3 bottles of local schnaps which we gave away free as tiny tastings and ran a free prize draw for 2 nights in one of our apartments - people had to fill in their contact details for our mailing list to participate. We got 41 entries which is about the number of potential guests we had good conversations with. Of course we also gave out flyers which we had had printed.

We offered 10% off bookings made at the show or by next Sunday. So far, we have no bookings from up but were pleased that we spoke to that many potential guests - probably more than we have spoken to face to face ever.

The show was for expats living in Czech Republic and we only found out about it 10 days beforehand so we had a relatively poor stand position.

So, don't know yet if it was worth it but it was huge fun planning it and we enjoyed doing it.

And a nice footnote is the email I got back yesterday from the young woman who won the prize:
"Many thanks, it is fantastic!!! Great news, I am very happy to win it, because I love the landscape and nature around your town. I know it more from the Czech part and have been planning to discover it from the German side, so I feel very lucky :-).

I have very nice memories about Bayerisch Eisenstein, 20 years ago when I was a little girl, it was the first western place I ever visited in my life, I remember being very impressed:). "

And you see photos of the stand here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25231786@N ... 037488106/
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enid
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Post by enid »

I think you produced a great stand especially at such short notice - I know from the business we ran in the UK that these things don't always bring an immediate result but do help raise profile and you may be surprised when a booking comes from it sometime later on.
Margaret
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Post by Margaret »

Thanks, Enid. Yes, we felt the profile raising was very useful. But the whole event, including 2 nights in a hotel, cost us the best part of 1,000 Euros so we have to think carefully before we do it again!
AMC
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advertising stand

Post by AMC »

We had a stand at a couple of events a year or so ago. We had quite a lot of interest at the events and we gave out quite a lot of advertising bumpf. We really thought that with the interest that we had generated that we would be generating a great deal more enquiries than usual, but it didn't happen.
Very dissapointing really.
We had professional looking backing boards along with professional enlarged photos etc, Paid for the stand etc but i don't think any extra enquiries or bookings were generated for all our efforts.

Hey look on the bright side, we got free drinks provided at the events.

Hopefully other people had better luck than we did and i hope that i dont put anybody off from giving it a try. Go for it!!!
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Aldo
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Post by Aldo »

Londoner wrote:We had a lot of interest and people did pick the brochures up but she did not see any huge surge in enquiries.
Lots of people were roaming around with lots of papers/leaflets etc. Do they actually read any of them when they get home?
The way to do it is to give out something that's different, that surprises so that you make an impression right there. Another idea would be vouchers for an amount off a stay. If it's a considerable amount - say 50 euros - they might use it themselves or give it to someone else to use. It doesn't cost you anything if they don't use it but it might entice them to make the right choice.

In such a context you also need to differentiate your property from the others - and sell that.
Margaret
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Post by Margaret »

We gave away a free weekend in return for people signing up to our mailing list. There certainly wasn't anyone else doing that. We also gave free tastings of schnaps which were also very popular. But I am not actually a great fan of competitions so I might go for the voucher idea if we do it again. So far, no bookings as a result and even the prize winner has not taken up her prize weekend although she was very enthusiastic when we wrote and told her. Oh well, you don't know if you don't try and it was fun.
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