The Exhibitor's Resource – Trade Show Marketing Blog

As the holiday season got underway last week with Thanksgiving, you might not have been thinking about budgets and business taxes. But the following year-end planning tips for businesses and marketing departments can help you make the most of your year-end financial situation.

1. Get a Marketing Budget Update from Accounting: As part of your year-end strategy, you should have a good idea of your company’s financial picture and how that relates to your marketing effort. Now is a good time to sit down with the CFO for year-end advice, particularly regarding any remaining monies allocated for marketing activities that will expire at the end of the year.

2. Pay Expenses Now: Pay for things your business or marketing department will need in the near future to possibly maximize the deductions for this year. If you can justify the need for new equipment or other items in the first quarter of next year, buy them now. Some possibilities include:

• Trade Show Displays and Equipment: If you will be purchasing a new trade show display, consider doing that now. Check with your accounting department to make sure that doing this now will reduce your tax burden and fits with your company structure and circumstances. Your new trade show display may have to be officially received or even physically be at your facility by the end of the year, so build that into your timeline. The sooner you get the ball rolling, the more likely your exhibit agency will be able to design, produce and deliver your new trade show display in time.

• Literature & Giveaways: Stock up on trade show related collateral such as brochures and giveaway items.

• Recurring Billing: If you can, try to pay recurring bills such as trade show display storage fees, software license agreements, publication subscriptions, and organization memberships in advance before the end of the year.

• Other Items: Try to pre-pay travel expenses, repairs to equipment, or maintenance costs that you know will occur early in the new year.

3. Postpone Income if Necessary: Coordinate with your sales department to delay the collection of payments until the first part of January instead of the end of December if this reduces your tax bill. Cash that remains on the books at the end of the year may be taxable for that year. Keep in mind that different strategies apply to your particular situation (profit/loss position, company structure, etc.), but it could make sense to get the cash on hand as close to zero as possible at the end of the year.

4. Check Inventory: If you have product that was used at a trade show and is now considered “refurbished” inventory or has otherwise experienced a drop in value, be sure to find out if your accounting methods allow deductions for this. And consider offering remaining inventory at special terms during any December trade shows or special events to further reduce your inventory tax obligation.

As mentioned above, the strategy for applying these tips will depend on the individual business circumstances and accounting methods. Be sure to review your company’s strategy with your accounting department, CFO, or professional tax accounting professional. But if you plan carefully, any taxes you save can be put towards face-to-face marketing initiatives for next year.

Popularity: 8% [?]

When experienced trade show coordinators hear the words “Custom Trade Show Display,” they may think of the heavy wood construction of traditional trade show display designs. Similarly, when they hear the phrase “Portable Display” they no doubt think of the convenient, but generic looking curved pop-up trade show display that has become a staple on the show floor. Although each of those still has its place in the broad trade show marketing world, there are exciting new alternatives that are combining the benefits of each type of display into new options for exhibitors.

Case in point: the Custom Portable trade show display. “But wait,” you may say “how can a display be custom AND portable?” Great question. It starts with the foundation – a new innovation from Nomadic Displays. The foundation platform is what elevates a basic pop-up display into a custom solution and supports the shelving, monitor mounts, demo stations and other accessories that give exhibitors the custom functionality they need. Custom portable trade show displays are easy to reconfigure from show to show and allow for a custom-tailored style depending on the audience and the floor space. They pack down small, avoiding the need to ship in crates, and require no tools or a simple allen key for setup. They provide the same wonderful graphic impact of pop-up back walls plus the scalability of a custom modular hybrid display.

Check out what you can do with a portable display, customized by Exhibit Resources:

Popularity: 15% [?]

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!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Trade show displays used to be restricted in one way or another by graphics, either by dimension constraints or other limitations the graphic output option being used. Creative trade show display designers figured out how to work around many of those issues, but there was always a limit to how wide a continuous graphic panel could be or how vivid certain colors could be printed. However, in the past 10 years, large format printing has come a long way, baby. Whether it’s advances in graphic output resolution (how many dots per inch could be crammed into an inch), or it’s dramatic increases in continuous media width, there have been some very exciting improvements in trade show display graphics even in just the last few years. And without a doubt, THE biggest game-changer for trade show display design is fabric printing technology. It’s the new textiles and other woven media, plus the ink technology that goes with it that has turned fabric into stunning graphic murals, back lit display structure, and whimsical other-worldly exhibit forms. Very often now, a printed fabric skin is a viable alternative to just about any other trade show display material. Fabric printing technology for trade show displays has gotten so good that it really is the case that the graphics and the message are all that the audience sees. And of course, the ability to print on fabric has made modular displays even more lightweight and manageable. Best of all, even as the quality of the graphic output improves, the overall cost of exhibiting comes down, in large part due to the savings that are realized with lightweight, fabric-based trade show display architecture.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Trade show marketing professionals know that life on the road can be draining and take it out of you. Sometimes you’ll need to take a personal day to go to the spa and rejuvenate the mind and body (with an emphasis on those feet). The same goes for the trade show display you’ve been shipping all over the country or the world. If possible, you’ll want your exhibit house to inspect your display when it comes back from each show, taking care of any minor adjustments or fixes to make it ready for the next trade show or event. But beyond those regular inspections, sometimes more extensive display cleaning and even reconstructive work to your exhibit is in order. Be sure to build routine trade show display refurbishment into your budget and your schedule, especially for frequently used display properties. The protective shipping container, whether it’s a wood crate or a plastic case or tub, may need to be repaired. Display materials need to be periodically spot-cleaned and any damage fixed. Fabric graphics are incredibly durable, but may eventually need to be professionally cleaned and ironed according to manufacturer specifications, as well as have any necessary sewing repairs made. An exhibit agency like Exhibit Resources will keep your trade show display in like-new condition for each new show, ensuring that you and your business maintain the polished presence you’ve worked hard to achieve.

Popularity: 7% [?]

The creative, technical and project management expertise that Exhibit Resources has become known for is frequently tapped for projects other than just trade show displays and exhibits. We regularly design custom corporate interiors, retail spaces, showrooms, and welcome centers as well.

But we have a great idea for exhibitors who might want to bring the impact of large format graphics to the office right now: Why not set up your trade show display in the lobby of your corporate headquarters? After all, even though our custom modular displays are engineered to be light weight and compact for shipping, they are also designed to reflect a high-end and refined aesthetic. Displays like the Lumiture based one shown below can help with interior space definition while vibrantly welcoming your guests and introducing your brand. If your trade show display features integrated AV presentations or shows off product samples in display cases, even better.

Just keep in mind that as your trade show calendar fills up, perhaps with more vertical market or niche trade shows, you may decide to have a second display produced specifically for your lobby. And although it’s true that for more permanent lobby displays you have even more flexibility in how elements are integrated with the existing interior architecture, there is still good reason to keep lobby display structure at least somewhat mobile. With all of the strategic trade show marketing you’ve been doing, along with the positive impression you’ve made on visitors to your facility, you’ll be moving to a larger office space soon, and you’ll be able to bring your lobby display with you.

Popularity: 17% [?]

As a trade show display designer, and now as a trade show marketing consultant, I have been an advocate of having an initial meeting with a client to learn their specific marketing objectives, understand their unique place in their market, and establish the budget, time line and other factors that affect a new trade show display, before the design process is started.

But there is another approach: giving exhibitors the resources to develop trade show display ideas along with their agency. One of the most popular and effective resources is a gallery of work that the exhibit design agency has done for other clients that the new exhibitor can browse through in order stimulate creativity. Not only can a trade show display portfolio provide ideas to discuss, it can also help instill trust in the exhibitor that the exhibit house has the experience to pull off the project.

Another way to generate trade show display ideas and establish the overall direction of the design is for an exhibitor to flip through a set of images that represent different – often contrasting – design styles, and identify the look and feel that is most congruent with their brand, their corporate aesthetic, and their message. This type of process can ensure that both the exhibitor and their exhibit design firm understand what subjective words, such as “high-tech” or “established,” look like when translated into a trade show display design.

An additional resource is the case study, which can help fill in the functional or engineering details behind the visual impact of the trade show display. An explanation of why or how a designer’s ideas met an exhibitor’s marketing goals or solved a shipping logistics problem can trigger new ideas and ways of thinking about the trade show display design process.

Popularity: 17% [?]

If you’re starting your search for a pop-up trade show display, you may be finding it hard to compare one display to another during your initial search, in part because the differences are most apparent in person. Therefore, you may be looking for some guidance on which specifications to insist on, and which might not matter as much. Well, we have one piece of initial advice: Avoid Velcro.

Veteran trade show marketing professionals will tell you that using “hook and loop” (the generic name for Velcro) to attach graphic mural panels to a pop-up display frame isn’t the way to go. While Velcro has its place in the trade show exhibit world for certain applications, such as attaching temporary graphics to fabric panels, the best way to attach full-size graphic mural panels to a pop-up display frame is with magnetic strips. Even for someone installing graphics for the first time, a magnet-to-magnet connection is quick and easy, and the result is a perfectly-aligned graphic. The polarization of the magnetic strip helps guide the graphic panel into place. By contrast, Velcro-applied graphics can be a struggle to install and align properly. Velcro can attach too early or too strongly, making adjustments difficult. And even when Velcro panels are finally aligned, the result isn’t usually a smooth and clean joint, but often a wrinkled gap between the two panels. A display with magnetic graphic panels, however, appears to be a single continuous graphic backwall, with seams that are only visible if one looks really closely.

Our second piece of advice for the new pop-up purchaser: Visit a trade show exhibit showroom to verify that the fit and finish of the display you are considering meets your quality standards. Get a demonstration of the setup of the display and test it out for yourself. Will this display be something that you and your staff will be able to manage the setup of? Will the presentation be clean and professional and reflect your company’s values? While there are more options and quality specs to consider than just how the graphics attach, insisting on a pop-up display that uses magnets is a good start to getting something that will work for you, your team and your business.

Popularity: 16% [?]

When preparing yourself or your booth staff for an upcoming trade show, it is important to consider what questions you should be asking visitors when they enter your space. Here are some tips to help you prepare:

• Come up with several direct, but open-ended questions to ask of booth visitors that will first qualify them, and then engage them if they’re your target.
• Encourage qualified visitors to tell you what’s on their minds and ask them what business problems they have that your offering could address.
• Stay away from opening questions like “May I help you?” “How is the show treating you?” and “What do you do?”
• Ask good follow-up or probing questions to find out more.
• Make sure your answers to attendee questions intrigue and feed the conversation. A conversation is about getting information as well as giving information.
• Rehearse your booth presence with some role playing with your colleagues, you’ll be surprised how much better-prepared you’ll be after a dry run.

Popularity: 14% [?]

There is a new gadget in the seasoned exhibitor’s toolbox – the Digital Media Display. For several years now, it has been very common to see LCD screens running demos and video clips within trade show display spaces. However, until now, these eye-catching bursts of color and movement have been difficult to integrate into the trade show display architecture because they need to be attached to a DVD player or computer. Housing that equipment in a hidden or attractive, yet secure location hasn’t been easy. But now there are Digital Media players built right into LCD display units, providing exhibitors with an easy to manage AV display option. These integrated systems contain firmware that allows an exhibit marketing pro to upload their content, whether a slideshow of still images, a video clip, or another presentation, to the unit and configure the playback settings. No more worrying about shipping both the display screen and the computer or DVD player, no more worries about hiding cables between the display and the unit. The “brain” of the units is built-in, and a lock secures your content and prevents you from being the victim of high-end AV theft. The most sophisticated Digital Media Displays even allow remote content updates, eliminating a laborious manual content change in large trade show exhibits with many demo units.

Exhibit Resources has partnered with a Digital Media Display expert to deliver turn-key AV solutions to our clients. Let us know if you need creative help with building this type of technology into your new or existing trade show display.

Popularity: 45% [?]