Special contribution from The Expo Group’s EVP of Marketing and Client Strategies Ken Dec
Too often at proprietary conferences, the show floor experience is disconnected strategically, visually and experientially from the event.
It is disconnected because it’s too often not part of the experience design of the event. It’s treated as a separate ‘thing’ that, as long as the sponsorships come in and partners sign up, the job is done.
Approached that way, it’s a lost opportunity to get more from your proprietary event investment.
The expo floor should feel like an experiential extension of your event, reinforcing the key messages you’ve worked so hard to articulate through the experience design of pre-event marketing, overall environment, general sessions, breakouts and workshops.
Here’s how to fix this problem:
Align the show floor strategy with the overall event strategy
You should be purposeful about what you want attendees to Think-Feel-Do-Keep and Share about YOUR brand (the event host) after attendees have spent time on the floor. Aspire to more than communicating “these are our partners”; aspire to making crystal clear how these partners contribute to YOUR brand’s value proposition.
The branded environment you’ve created should continue through the exhibit area
Gone should be the days of the ‘garage sale’ look and feel of the expo floor. Purposefully design the spaces to be used by partners in a way that is consistent with the event identity you’ve created.
The expo floor should be strategically organized to reinforce your brand value proposition
Organize the show floor in ways consistent with how your partners work with your brand – the way your attendees would likely think about how partners fit within your brand’s ecosystem.
Enable “dwell time”
Give attendees places to sit, meet, mingle and engage. Doing so will bring more meaning to the experience and more value to attendees, partners and your brand.
The space, time and expense allocated to the expo floor experience is significant and far too often under-leveraged. These few simple changes to how you strategically approach the show floor experience design will deliver more value to both your attendees and your brand.