The BusyEvent Blog

Because the events industry is so diverse, with factions that provide or want all manner of services, we research and talk to a great number of people.

Recently, we ran across an article written by Maya Design and were inspired by it.  It’s pretty much exactly what we’ve been discussing internally and with some of our clients and now, we get to share their thoughts.

For more information about The Invisible Exhibitor and Attendee, please visit the Maya Design web site.

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From the Maya research paper:

Even if your event is profitable, it might be in danger of staying that way for long if you, as the organizer, aren’t providing a method for your participants to get our more, than they have to put in, to the experience.

Almost everyone involved in the trade show industry can think of once successful and invincible events that have disappeared without a trace. What makes the difference between those that grow and survive long term and those that limp along or fade away?

Based on our experiences in the events industry (both at BusyEvent and at our previous employers), we began concepting and building a platform that addresses the three major factors brought to light by Maya’s research, which are: 

1. It’s the quality of the experience, not the quantity that matters. For example, if one of your exhibitors met 1,000 people on the show floor, quantitatively, that’s great! Having that long list of follow-up phone calls to make can be daunting. And, spending an entire day making phone calls to people that came to an exhibitor’s booth just because “they had really cool squeaky balls”, is disheartening and useless and threatens the events ‘next year participants’. Show organizers that pay attention to the quality of the experience, provide information in time to make sure exhibitors can act on it while the show is going on and provide meaningful connections between exhibitors, attendees, sponsors and others, are sure to succeed – doing more than just surviving.
   
   
2. Services and tools matter. Services and tools that are usable, matter most. Every show attendee, especially exhibitors, wants services, and tools that are efficient, reliable, and predictable. Unfortunately, our industry is forcing those that lay the golden egg to use systems that seem set up to encourage failure or at the very least, aren’t delivering an ROI sufficient enough to encourage their continued use. Why should an exhibitor be forced to go through 5 pages of a web site to register their people, only to have to do that again for each of their team. Why is the check-in process at the airport easier than the arduous process of getting your “badge and swag” once you finally arrive at an event? How are events facilitating what participants typically come to an event for; information, opportunity and networking? And, is it easy for them to get that? Show organizers that think through the process of how to provide opportunities for attendees to get what they want, for exhibitors to be presented in as positive a light as possible and for sponsors and speakers to get the ROI they expected are sure to continue to succeed.
   
   
3. Wow, what we’ve seen exhibitors go through just to get what they were promised. The stories we could tell . . . “I don’t know, but they’ll have the answer in (name of room on other side of venue)”, “it’s not my job” and “that office is closed until tomorrow”. We’ve seen so many examples of events making it harder than necessary for their number 1 customer to get what they need and were promised. In a large manner, that’s why we founded BusyEvent. Exhibitors are forced to play by many different sets of seemingly arbitrary and constantly changing rules, plus foot the bill for errors and inefficiencies caused by other people. We can tell you that from the exhibitors and sponsors we talk with, they feel taken advantage of, rather than valued, and would choose other ways of attracting customers and marketing products if they could. Shows that do not provide a superior experience in connecting the right people at the right time might become increasingly at risk as other venues make it easier for exhibitors to reach their target audience. And most assuredly, those events that make the process harder than it should be, will not be around to celebrate their profits, in years to come.

In all, your clients (exhibitors, sponsors and other participants) and their clients (attendees) are having a heck of a time simply conducting business, making connections and getting what’s important to them, easily and quickly.

Events that provide tools and an experience to help them will survive and thrive, those that can’t, don’t or won’t, will be “last year’s news” and there’s nothing worse than that.