Exhibitions are a great way to gain exposure and work towards sales and marketing objectives, providing an interesting, welcoming space for potential customers to get a feel for an artist, brand, company or product. The great thing about exhibitions compared to other forms of advertising is that interested people come to you, rather than you having to go to them. The audience is targeted by who is interested enough to attend and salespeople have an opportunity to build a face-to-face relationship with a customer.

Organising an exhibition is a daunting task, particularly for first-timers, so how can you ensure that your exhibition goes well and secures the results you're looking for?

Obviously the key is planning, and drawing up a written exhibition plan is a good way of ensuring that you haven't forgotten any important elements. The exhibition plan would likely include stand size and design considerations, timescales, budget, staffing and promotions.

Key decisions and tasks should be documented and responsibility allocated for implementation and completion. Ensure that everyone involved in organising the exhibition receives a copy of the exhibition plan so that all the parties involved are in the loop.

Budget
To work out the budget for your exhibition, make a list of all major expenses and try to ensure that they are realistic and unlikely to balloon upon the day of the event. Some of the things you should include:

Cost of space
Stand design & construction
Linked promotions (printing, stationary)
Power, water, waste
Furniture (portable staging, folding chairs)
Staffing (accommodation, expenses, travel)
Catering
Transport
The Venue

Book the venue early, as it can be catastrophic when a venue change needs to be made at the last minute. Leaving the booking of space until the last possible minute could provide you with some significant savings, but it will be hard to secure attendees if you can't be sure where the exhibition will actually take place. There are a variety of factors to consider when choosing a venue for an exhibition.

Transport
How will attendees get to your conference? Sometimes it will mean providing ample parking space, at other times providing useful information about public transport and if the exhibition took place in a very rural or hard to find destination then you might want to consider laying on your own transport such as mini-buses.

Facilities
The facilities required will be entirely unique to your exhibition and objectives, so ensure that the venue can fulfil your requirements. It can be a good idea to have a run-through beforehand, so any technological problems can be resolved before the big day.

About the author:
John Mce writes on a number of subjects including exhibitions and conferences. http://www.articlesnatch.com