The Exhibitor's Resource – Trade Show Marketing Blog

North Carolina businesses have been taking the show on the road this year. Trade show displays for Greensboro and RTP based Syngenta have made it to over 150 trade shows this year, including over 75 farm shows, from the of vines of California to the citrus groves of Florida, and from the soybean fields of North Carolina to the potato fields of Idaho. Durham, NC based Burt’s Bees sent their Award Winning Green trade show display just returned from Natural Products Expo East. Cary, NC based Cornerstone Therapeutics just debuted their new Exhibit Resources trade show display at the 25th Annual NANN show. In fact, Exhibit Resources represents many North Carolina companies at trade shows across the country and the world. It’s no surprise, with large metropolitan areas such as the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill plus RTP, Cary, Morrisville and the rest of Wake and surrounding counties), the Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point plus the rest of Guilford and surrounding counties), and the greater Charlotte Mecklenburg area, there are a lot of businesses with national and international reach based here in North Carolina. Be on the lookout for a North Carolina display at a trade show near you!

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Exhibit Resources hosted another ICA (Independent Communicator’s Alliance) meeting Wednesday night at our showroom in Raleigh. And this time, in addition to providing the venue, we also offered the insight by presenting our talk “The Value of Face-To-Face Marketing.”

The trend in recent years has been for marketers with tight budgets to allocate their limited dollars to customer-facing and lead-generating efforts, including trade show and event marketing. At Wednesdays talk, I provided an overview of what it takes to create successful trade show displays and face-to-face marketing programs. I discussed how exhibiting benefits the broader marketing effort, how exhibitors can realize the greatest return on their event marketing investment, and I gave a sneak peek at emerging trade show display design trends.

Highlights from the talk were mentioned in a press release written about the talk by ICA member Cindy Turner.

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Trade shows have been an important part of a company’s marketing mix for some time, and have supported the overall marketing strategy by complementing the other “pillars” of the effort.

The marketing mix used to only include
Trade Shows, Radio, Print Media, Billboards, Newspapers and TV

Now marketers also have
The Internet , Social Media such as Blogs, Twitter, Linked In, Facebook and Special Events.

Special Events have emerged as another successful Face-to-Face marketing strategy because of the focused, direct interaction with the customer that they offer. A special event could be an after hours, off show site, invitation-only social event held one evening during a larger trade show. It also could be an annual gathering at a company’s headquarters to pump up dealers or introduce new product to the media and existing customers. It could be an appreciation or awards event at a destination location to thank loyal employees, company partners or long term clients. Or it could be a sponsored event tied to a charity fundraiser or sporting event. No matter the venue or focus, special events often have an element of exclusivity, and can afford companies the opportunity to present their message to a receptive audience without distractions.

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At Exhibit Resources, we are adding more rental inventory to our shelves, designing “ready-to-go” rental kits for quick client use, and partnering with vendors to offer more design options as rental solutions.

Most of our new rental designs are designed with lightweight fabric graphics and aluminum extrusion to keep shipping weight and bulk down. These designs offer a more unique and high-end look than portable options, but are still easy to set up and are ideal for mounting AV equipment.

Have you considered Rental?

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The Exhibit Resources team is at the Exhibitor Show in Las Vegas this week. Among the hot new products we’ve seen so far is the Glide – a new display from Exponents that is so eye catching and flexible that it is a true game-changer. In addition to the versatility of acting as an AV kiosk, backwall and standalone attention-grabber, the new display can showcase product samples on a wide range of shelving and rack hardware. The display features an ultra-compact design thanks to fabric graphic “wings” and a clever flat-packing center column. LED lighting is another low-impact feature that ensures that this display meets emerging corporate sustainability sourcing goals.

We’ve also visited the new Vegas rental and design command post of vendor partner Nomadic. We extend our national and global reach through strategic partnerships such as the one we have with Nomadic, and it’s been great to see the enhanced rental facility and meet with the rental designers that are like extended ER family.

More to come!

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