The 5 Ws for Planning Effective Meetings and Trade Shows
There’s no perfect answer or magic bullet to putting on a perfect, effective meeting or trade show. But finding the answers to five familiar questions early on will help you get started. The 5 Ws for planning effective meetings and trade shows are:
Why?
Define your purpose, right from the beginning. Why are you participating? What do you hope to accomplish? What’s the end result — your goal? Make your objectives straightforward and easy to measure, quantify them wherever you can so you can report on your results later on.
What?
Once you know your objectives, you can decide how you want to accomplish them. Are you better served by participating in one or more industry trade shows, putting on your own private event at a hotel or conference center, sponsoring a conference — or all three? What will you need for each to connect with the audience and be successful? This may be a great time to engage a professional advertising agency to help you create a display, prepare handout materials, create a pre-show marketing program to get customers and prospects to your booth, and a post-show program to ensure timely follow-up with prospects.
Who?
Now define your audience. Who do you most want to attend? As you create your meeting agendas or booth displays, remember who’s talking — and who’s listening. Speak to them, not to yourself or your board members (unless they’re the audience, of course). Make a promise your audience can relate to, one that addresses their needs.
Where?
It’s important to learn everything you can about your exhibit space long before your event begins. Read the exhibitor’s rules and regulations before you commit because what you’re planning to do at your event may not be allowed by the venue or the organizer. Make sure your display will fit. If it’s too tall, you may have to take it down. If you need electric at your booth and don’t arrange for it beforehand, you may violate union rules at the venue if you plug in to someone else’s power. Get caught and you might get shut down.
If you’re planning your own meeting, make sure your venue has the appropriate capacity for your anticipated audience. If your venue offers food, sample several menu items before your event to ensure they meet your expectations. If it doesn’t cater, ensure your contract allows you to bring in food from the outside. And plan to bring in extra staff to assist guests. It can be easy for event participants to quickly overwhelm staff and become dissatisfied if event staff is undermanned. A little conservative overestimating upfront on the size of your potential audience and staff will pay dividends later.
If you’re pulling attendees from across the country, you’ll also need to consider travel costs. It can be complicated to arrange travel schedules for people coming from all corners of the USA and beyond — but many times, you can also expect to have a more productive, focused meeting if people are away from the home office.
When?
The question of when to hold your event is a matter of logistics as much as it is psychology or practicality. Of course, in many cases you may be bound by an existing trade show schedule. If you’re offering product demos or performances, be sure those don’t conflict with what the organizer has already planned for keynote speakers, social functions or special events.
If you’re planning a larger, sponsored event of your own, you’ll want to consider several factors that could impact attendance. The first consideration, of course, is to avoid weeks around major holidays. If your industry has any seasonality considerations — for example, the fourth quarter in retail or March and April for CPAs — you’ll generally want to avoid those periods. And while you’re in the planning stage, call other hotels and events in the city where you’re going to host. Find out who else will be hosting events at the same time as yours. If you avoid conflicts with other events (including sporting events), you’ll increase your chances to get the people you most want to attend.
In addition to the season, pay attention to days of the week. Research has shown that Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays are generally not the best for attendance or attention. Wednesdays and Thursdays are the most popular — which means they’re traditionally the most effective, but you may also have some competition.
Plan, Plan, Plan.
Of course, securing solid answers to the five Ws doesn’t guarantee your event will be a success. But it does give you a solid start for success.
Contributor: Mark Travers
