The marketers’ role has changed in recent years as they have had to become more technology, web and digital savvy. They must get to grips with a far more complex set of solutions; compare and contrast various pros and cons; and meet with the teams that will provide support.
When faced with finding the best suppliers for CRM, data, marketing analytics and campaign management software, through to content management and search optimisation, an exhibition is the best place to do it. Plus it can be done in the most time efficient.
Many involved in traditional DM will still have to source print, fulfilment and mailing solutions, and with the increasing demands and capability to carry out complex segmentation and targeted messaging, marketers can’t rely on a preferred supplier list to source solutions.
So do marketing trade fairs still play an essential role in the buying process for new marketing products and services? Yes, absolutely. The demands placed on the marketing department to source such a variety of complex solutions and the vast choice of available suppliers would suggest it is the only way to source new products and services.
And if visitor numbers, vibrancy and exhibitor feedback is anything to go by for the 2008 Technology For Marketing & Advertising and Internet World exhibitions which offer a host of marketing solutions this is certainly the case.
John Lord
Short answer is no, but as with most things it isn’t quite as straightforward. In its heyday, the IDMF was one of the first things marked on the calendar for client decision-makers and suppliers alike. It offered a healthy audience, giving suppliers an opportunity not only to sell their products and wares, but a chance to network with other senior people.
Client-side marketers could rest assured they would be able to doorstep more or less every potential supplier, and it was typically the place where new products were unveiled.
But times change. Exhibitions are not what they once were. On the whole attendee figures have been in free fall. This is a result of not only the increasing demands on client-side marketers’ time, but also, why should they wait to go to a show, when the show can come to them? Why should they wait 12 months to make decisions on partner companies? Supplier marketing and customer acquisition is a much more intelligent science in today’s environment.
Suppliers want more customers now and at a lower cost of acquisition than shows deliver they will develop complex and integrated comms programmess that deliver more targeted messages to the right audience suiting both parties in an ideal world.
Shows still have a place as long as they understand that they will only do so if they provide an information and marketing platform 365 days a year and not simply for the two or three days that people can choose to visit them on.
