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"Sorry. It's just not in our budget this year."

How many times have you heard that so far? Advertising, membership, conference registrations, and booth sales have all taken an across-the-board hit since the stock market went wonky this fall. A recent survey by Tradeshow Week found that a whopping 58 percent of respondents planned to cut back their show participation due to higher travel costs, and 11 percent said they wouldn't exhibit in shows at all until things turned around. Only 16 percent of those participating in the survey said it's business as usual on the exhibit floor.

What's that mean? Well, for starters, many shows are seeing lower-than-usual sales, both on the ticket side and the booth side of things. Shows that have been on the upswing for years are finding themselves scrambling for exhibitors this time around, and some exhibitors are pulling out of exhibitions they've already contracted and paid for, saying that skipping just the travel costs for staff will mean significant savings for their companies. And, they say, they just can't afford to be out of their offices for upwards of a week-even though they'd be on the show floor selling, it's not the same as reaching out to their own targeted customer lists. They can do better at home.

What this means for associations is some very fancy footwork and some concerted efforts to bump up the value of their shows. They need to convince exhibitors that not only are their shows unparalleled selling opportunities, but also that lower attendance won't be a huge issue. And that's a tough sell.

Despite all this, some show organizers say they're not seeing downturns. In fact, their shows are continuing to grow despite the dire news on the nightly economic report.

How is that possible? They say it's a matter of good marketing, great planning, and doing whatever they can to keep their show head and shoulders above the competition.

Selling: The Constant Process

Jim Waterhouse has run the sales of the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) Career Tech Expo for the past four years, growing it from a 310-booth show in 2005 to its current size of 415 booths. With no sales staff and the added responsibility of advertising sales for the association on Waterhouse's desk, the task might seem daunting.

He says one of the best solutions is also the simplest: Try to re-sign exhibitors for next year before they depart for home from this year's show.

"Our show is in December," he says. "We get a good chunk of business every year by doing a booth pick at the end of that show." That means he spends some of his show time visiting exhibitors he knows are likely to come back and asking them to sign for their space right away.

"If you have 220 exhibitors at your show, you're probably going to have 150 to 175 you can count on to come back," he says. "Try to get them signed up and locked in as soon as possible. That frees you up to sell to companies who've never been to your show."

Others use a similar strategy. Chris Brown, EVP of conventions and business for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), says he generally re-signs about 80 percent of his show's 1,600 exhibitors; the annual Las Vegas event draws about 100,000 attendees.

"We start sales a year out," he says. "We also use a priority points system to reinforce loyalty and reward people who have been with us for several years." Those exhibitors are offered contracts about three months before anyone else, giving them priority booth selection.

"We work with about 500 companies preshow to start to lay out the next year's show floor. Then, we move on to an onsite space selection process." Brown says he can count on selling about 75 to 80 percent of the following year's show during that process.

"After that," he says, "We come back and get all of that sorted out, and then work on filling in the other 15 to 20 percent of the space."

He says the preshow sales and at-show booth selection process NAB uses is "pretty typical of larger events." That said, there's no reason smaller shows can't emulate the process and get their sales rolling even before the current year's show has opened its doors.

Waterhouse says there's another secret to boosting booth sales: Carefully plan out the first quarter of the yearly selling cycle, complete with projected numbers and a marketing strategy to reach out to both past exhibitors and companies that have never attended your show.

"If you plan out the first three or four months of your year, you're usually going to be successful at the end," he says.

That means he spends a good chunk of the weeks immediately after a show planning his prospectus for the following year, beefing up his database of companies to contact, researching similar shows, and working on the overall look and feel of the exhibit all for the following year.

Others agree. Denise Quashie, director of exhibits for Meeting Expectations (an association and show management company), says the yearly schedule is invaluable, and a little simple math wound into it helps keep her sales team on target and motivated.

"We use a timeline that shows how many booths we should have sold by whatever time in the year it is," she says. "If you've got a really good sales manager, he or she will set those goals in the beginning. It's simple math: if your goal is to get 200 exhibitors, how many should you have sold three months into the sales cycle?"

ACTE's prospectus is mailed out to returning companies and new ones, and then Waterhouse hits the road-literally-to meet with people who might not have considered exhibiting with the association. He says it can be an expensive process, but he looks at it in much the same way he asks his exhibitors to consider his show: The cost of traveling is relative to the number of potential sales they might gain by attending.

"I go to other tradeshows," he says. "If the cost of our booth is $1,600 and I pick up just one new company, I've paid for the cost of my being there. And I usually pick up three or four new exhibitors at each show."

Staying Informed

Quashie agrees. "We send our salespeople to our competitors' shows," she says. "We do that to build up our database and to continue to grow our show. It also helps us keep track of what companies are acquiring each other. We've found that to be a big issue." By knowing who's bought whom, she says, her sales team can both go after the newly-minted big fish in the pond and save time calling companies that have been bought.

"We read press releases," she says. "It seems very simple, but not many people do it. You can read a company's strategic marketing plan in a release. It tells you right there what you should be getting ready to propose to that company. You can put [your show] together with whatever their marketing direction is going to be now that they've acquired a new company, and that will give you a great proposal to present."

Waterhouse says that goes both ways: By carefully crafting his marketing materials to give potential exhibitors as much information as possible about the show, he says, he boosts overall sales.

He sends a postcard each June to potential exhibitors. But this is no run-of-the-mill card. Last year's image was a map of the show floor, with one simple line: Where Will You Be?

"You know that when most people look at something like that in the mail, they don't pay much attention to it," he says. "But with this card, you know what the tradeshow is and you know what ACTE is. That card generates new business and new phone leads." By using the show floor map as the graphic, he not only captures his prospects' attention, but gives them solid information about the show-its size, its layout, its overall feel-they can use when allocating their budgets for the year.

Another card goes out in late August. This year, the card featured a photo of Las Vegas-the host city-with the line, Where Should You Be? So this time, the prospects immediately knew where the show would be and who was hosting it.

"That one worked great to bring in people," Waterhouse says.

Finally, he's careful to spend a lot of time talking with his prospects on the phone and with his exhibitors on the floor itself. This casual conversation gives him a lot of background to use selling the following year's event.

"I get out there and find out what they want," he says. "Once they get to know you and they talk with you, there are things you'll start to hear." In recent years, Waterhouse learned that many of his exhibitors were interested in smaller sponsorship levels than ACTE had offered on a large scale. "Most sponsors come in at around $1,000," he says. With that information, it was easy to tailor new sponsorships and drum up interest.

Bundling and Packing the Hall

"You've got to be flexible," says Waterhouse. "If you're rigid, people won't work with you. They want to feel like they have a say in what you're doing."

That includes special deals associations can offer exhibitors. "We've done some specials at booth pick, like combining a booth with a full-page ad in the program guide and we reduce that ad by 50 percent," he says.

"I really try to instill in my sales team to be creative within certain boundaries," says Rob Steward, vice president of sales for LatPro, which sells and hosts career fairs in conjunction with the National Society for Hispanic Professionals. "The shows we work on are very complimentary to our online advertising sales, so we offer some services at LatPro to compliment those fairs."

LatPro markets those as job fair packages-exhibitors have the opportunity to bundle their booth contract with online advertising or other marketing products. They save money on the different products individually, and LatPro sells more overall.

NAB combines its in-person show with an online version, which includes profiles of each exhibitor that attendees can reference at home to either learn about or follow up on products and services they either missed onsite or wanted more information about later. That online show is also used as a marketing tool for the real show.

"We use it to drive attendance to the show," says Brown. "There's a scheduling feature to it, where people can select exhibitors they want to see, map the show floor, and lay out their own itinerary."

The online show is posted year-round, he says, which exhibitors see as a big benefit to participating.

NAB has also gotten creative with ways to drive traffic to areas of the physical show that might not be as prominent as others. "We built a fully-equipped digital theater on the exhibit floor last year," says Brown. "This had a film screen, digital projectors, and we were able to show high-end 3-D content, which just about everybody finds interesting and cool."

Other on-floor attractions have included prerelease footage of Journey to the Center of the Earth, fully-functioning digital television stations on the floor, and pavilions that allow new technologies to be exhibited in designated areas.

ACTE schedules its general session in a hall that abuts the show floor; when the session ends, it empties directly into the exhibit hall.

"It can be pretty scary at first because you have 4,000 people going in there," laughs Waterhouse. "But that's what exhibitors want." He also offers exhibitors the opportunity to host their own workshops in the hall and says those events tend to draw 200 people or so. And he arranges marketplace-style vendors along the outside of the hall to draw traffic to corners that might not otherwise see as much.

"That does wonders in keeping it busy on all parts of the floor," he says.

Waterhouse sends newsletters to his exhibitors year-round, keeping them informed on show status and the kinds of events and special attractions they'll see once they get to the show. "I let them chime in with the newsletter anytime they want," he says. "If you respond to them, they feel comfortable talking with you."

He says he's dealing with the downturn as well as anyone. While this year's show was nearly sold out at press time, he was seeing some cancellations due to the economy.

"We're starting to get cancellations, but people are doing that after they can get their deposits back," he says. "I feel about it at this point that you have to say ‘rules are rules.' They're going to save a bunch of money by not sending people, and they know that."

Brown says his show is still going strong, but it's the largest show in the world in broadcasting and has been growing at a steady three to five percent clip for the past several years. Still, he says, he never stops looking for new ways to maintain his competitive edge.

"Our show is 85 years old," he says. "But it's a competitive world. We never take that for granted."

Kim Fernandez is contributing editor to Associations Now. Email: kim@kimfernandez.com

More Articles From Associations Now, February 2009

  Why Your Association Needs a Sense of Urgency

  A How-To (and How-Not-To) Guide to Launching a Magazine

  The Upside of Down

  How Are Your Ethics?

  Finding Space for Success

  Strategy Session: What To Do When Funding Falters?

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