How to get the best out of PR at an exhibition

Source: Google images

This time next week I should be in Barcelona for the latest instalment of Mobile World Congress, or as I and many people will always know it – 3GSM. The event is a major date in the telecommunications diary and for a number of exhibitors a central focus for their PR campaigns.

Exhibitions are an opportunity to for clients to meet current and potential customers, journalists and analysts together in one place. It is also easy to be one of the many exhibitors overlooked. This can be because of announcements made by major players or simply because you haven’t planned your PR strategy around the event very well.

If you are making a sizable investment in attending an event and have a date in the diary it is essential that you build it into your PR campaign.

I believe that the most important time for PR surrounding an exhibition is in the activity before hand rather than what actually takes place at the event. Below are five points which will help you get the most out of your investment in PR around exhibitions:

Exhibitors need to ensure that they appear in the news in the run up to an event. Try and create a buzz about what you will be announcing at the exhibition or demonstrating. PR needs to drive traffic to the booth.

Meet the media
Too many companies place too much focus on securing interviews at an exhibition and build their PR strategy around this. All too often I have heard a client say we want six interviews at the exhibition and if achieved think that this is then a tick next to PR on their to do list surrounding the event. Interviews at the exhibition are always hard work as journalists often only stay for 20 – 30 minutes before they head off to their next interview. Also consider that the journalist may interview between 10 and 15 companies over the course of the day which means you have a lot of competition for inclusion in their write up.

Why not conduct a media tour ahead of the exhibition instead? Two or three weeks ahead of the exhibition get your PR agency to set up interviews with all of the journalists that you would have liked to speak to at the exhibition. They will have more time to speak to you and you will be under less pressure to get to your point in a short time scale.

This tactic also gives you the opportunity to offer them the chance to see a demo or speak further at the exhibition.

Timings of news announcements
What are you announcing? Are you the biggest player in your market? Will you be heard amongst all of the noise at the exhibition? These are all questions you should ask yourself and discuss with your PR agency to decide when and where you should announce your news. Maybe it is worth distributing your news just ahead of the exhibition rather than at it. With so many companies holding back their news for the big event you may have more space to make a bigger splash with your story before rather than at the same time as everyone else at the event.

Speaking opportunities at the exhibition
Are you speaking? This is a great tool to use at exhibitions but you need to get organised well in advance. Unless you are a big name, you may also need to find a customer to talk with you, so approach some with this in mind. Organisers putting together speaker schedules love case studies and this can be a great platform to show off what your company does and the problems it solves.

Are you in the show guide or newspaper
Increasingly exhibitions have their own daily which is handed out to people as they arrive. Make sure your PR team has contacted the organisers and knows who is producing this and the type of content they are using. Most daily newspapers have a few news pages and then a section which has been pre-written to fill space where you could put a bi-lined article or a case study forward for.

The same goes for show guides. These are handed out to everyone who attends and is an opportunity to drive people to your stand. Get your PR team to investigate whether you can include an opinion article or case study but be prepared for the fact that the organisers may ask you to “sponsor” this opportunity as most have cottoned onto the power of this tool.

Place case studies with your industries trade titles
Most good PR campaigns will have activity based around drafting case studies and we all know how powerful a tool this can be. That said, it can also be a time consuming one and needs to be carefully planned.

If you are attending an exhibition, try to plan for the completion of all interesting case studies up to three months ahead of the event. This allows your PR agency to try and secure placements for the case study in the pre-show or show editions of trade titles. The end result is to drive people to the booth and create an excitement about your story.

The list of activity that you can do in the run up and at the event is almost endless but if you are looking at where to start or where to focus the majority of your activity these five points are the ones that I would recommend you consider first.