The Government of India recently gave nod to organize B2B exhibitions after 15th Oct. A few days ago, Government released the guidelines and SOP for organisers to ensure the health and safety of all stakeholders. This is a welcome decision and by differentiating B2B tradefairs from other events, the Government recognizes the fact that B2B exhibitions are organized gatherings that play an important role in economic revival of our country.
Organizers in India have been waiting since a long time to get back on the exhibitions floor but by no means it is going to be a cakewalk for stakeholders to the exhibition floor. With cost of production surely going to rise due to new safety protocols, it will add to the already stretched P&L of the organizers especially in current scenario.
A lot has changed in the behavioral traits of customer across industry in last six months and the same will be going to be true for the B2B exhibition industry. For sure, it’s not going to be the same as old days. Attendees will have their priority cut out for more important KPI’s.
In all three parameters is going to be the most important and will define the resurgence of B2B exhibitions in this testing times –
- Quality– While focus on quality has gone up in last few years; in the current scenario exhibitors will surely demand more. They will wish to meet a smaller number of people but quality visitors. In simple terms, they will wish to meet qualified leads. No one likes half-filled aisles but now attendees should be fine with it. Exhibitors will want to see higher conversion from the meetings. This is going to help the Exhibition organizers as they will focus on relatively smaller sets of targeted data. By doing virtual events in constrained budgets, marketers have learned the art of achieving quality numbers in limited budgets. This will come in handy to them for the next 6 months to a year atleast. Since spending will be limited, they must spend qualitatively. This will lead to innovations and better conversions in lesser costs – a great news for the organizers in the longer run. Important to note here is that visitors will also have their priorities. They will identify exhibitors even before landing on the exhibition floor and to spend time wisely attendees will prefer pre-scheduled meetings, so advanced meeting schedulers tool are going to be a must for all exhibitions.
- Experience – B2B exhibitions organizers have mastered the art of mapping customer journey. Since the last few years, leading organizers have been focusing particularly on customer experience on each point of the journey. With Covid restrictions, providing excellent experience to its attendees should be the priority of the organizers. Attendees are not visiting the expos just for generating leads, Expos provide them the opportunity to learn, network, find recognition among industry colleagues and much more. It’s the experience because of which they keep coming again and again in the same exhibitions. So, like quality attendees will look for a great experience at each point of his journey in the exhibitions. It’s going to be challenging this time considering the SOP and safety guidelines but within these regulations, organizers must try to provide a hassle free and enjoyable experience to remember.
- Health and Safety (H&S)- This is one of the areas that most organizers have made huge progress in the last few years, but due to Covid crises they have left with no choice to accelerate the implementation of H&S. Suddenly making the rules stringent may affect customer experience but organizers will have to fight this duel battle of implementing SOPs and also improving experience. A simple example – there could be multiple check points and it may add to the attendee’s discomfort. Here organizers must be very clear in communication with all stakeholders so that all including attendees knows their responsibilities while visiting the expo. Any communication gap will lead to misunderstanding and result in a poor experience. Most importantly organizers must convince attendees on H&S and convince that they are completely safe in the venue. This can be done by implementing H&S practices as per SOPs and fine-tuning agendas for better customer experience and of course top of the line communication.
The next six to nine months are going to be very important for Brand Owners because by providing quality with excellent experience, they can establish a life-long relationship with customers. If you can support them and can come out with flying colors in the times of crises, you will always be their first stop for doing business.
What you promise for the future is strengthened by what you have done in the past and surely those organizers will find easy to connect with Exhibitors/Visitors who despite less regulatory requirements pioneered in implementing H&S in the B2B exhibition industry.