More Than Sales: How To Define Event Objectives For Exhibition Success

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As you plan your exhibition, you need to know exactly what you are working towards every step of the way. Nowadays, many exhibitors struggle with setting their objectives or don’t bother setting any at all; you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that these same exhibitors are the ones struggling to make an impact at trade show events!

What’s worse is that there are many exhibitors who go about setting their event objectives incorrectly, leading to post-event confusion and wasted investment. Indeed, vague and generalised objectives are still embraced by companies around the world, rather than specific ones that are much more useful.

With all this in mind, let’s explore what it really means to define your event objectives, what they should look like, and why it’s useful to take a little extra time to set them properly. If you’re a marketing manager, CEO, or event planner, this guide could be exactly what you need to boost your exhibition performance!

Goals And Objectives

Before we get into the objectives themselves, it’s crucial to differentiate between event goals and objectives. Though some might be quick to write these terms off as interchangeable, this would be a mistake and most successful exhibitors would agree.

An event goal represents the ultimate result you want to achieve through your event. It’s the-big picture outcome you’re aiming for, like expanding your market reach or increasing brand awareness.

While goals represent your destination, objectives are the specific milestones you ought to achieve along the way. Just as a journey consists of multiple steps, reaching your event goal requires completing several smaller, measurable objectives. You’ll need to define event goals for your exhibitions throughout the year, along with the associated objectives for each one.

To illustrate: Let’s say your event goal is to strengthen your brand’s visibility in the market. One objective supporting this goal might be to boost registration numbers by implementing targeted social media marketing campaigns.

When asked about their event objectives, many exhibitors tend to say “getting lots of sales” or “getting lots of leads”. While this shows enthusiasm and ambition, these “objectives” are clearly more in the realm of goals. They are too broad and vague to have any value in the event planning process.

Adopting SMART Objectives

SMART is a helpful acronym you can use to create new event objectives and check if your existing ones are going to be helpful to you (or not). Let’s break it down:

Specific:

Make sure your objectives are specific and not vague. Broad aims should be your goals, which you can reach with a variety of specific objectives.

Measurable:

Your objectives should be tied to numbers to make them measurable. For example, a 20% increase in registrations is a measurable objective. You can easily measure and see if you reach 20%, or another percentage figure.

Achievable:

It’s vital to set objectives that are realistically achievable by your team. A 600% increase in your exhibition event ROI is unlikely to happen just like that, but a smaller percentage increase may be possible depending on your performance at previous events.

Relevant:

Each objective should tie into your broader exhibition goals and attendee’s expectations. Trying to chase objectives that aren’t relevant to your overall plans will just waste your time and investment.

Time-bound:

Deadlines give the team an operating window in which they can strive to meet their objectives. One by one, each deadline helps you work toward your final goal.

By setting your event objectives according to the SMART criteria, you’ll be able to maintain and assess your progress better for a more successful event. That’s an incredible advantage as an exhibitor, especially if you’re new to the industry.

Choosing And Tracking Your Event Objectives

Which objectives you choose are up to you, but you should aim to have several at each event. Remember that business success will always be defined by achieving many things at once; just because you set one objective and failed to meet it, doesn’t mean you weren’t successful in other areas. This is why setting a few objectives for an event is important.

But how exactly can these objectives be measured? When it comes to B2B exhibitions, many exhibitors find success using key performance indicators (KPIs) as objectives to track their progress.

Here are a few KPIs you can try implementing to measure your success at exhibitions:

  • Social media engagement (likes, shares, tags, and so on)
  • Virtual event platform engagement (new visitors, clicks, and so on)
  • Number of event registrations
  • New vs. returning registrations
  • Products sold
  • Gross revenue
  • Total qualified leads obtained
  • Quantitative results from attendee satisfaction surveys
  • Cost to revenue ratio
  • Total new leads obtained

Notice how each KPI connects with a specific broader goal, like attendee engagement, event attendance, attendee experience, and brand awareness.

While it may seem like a good idea to go after as many of these KPIs as possible, this would be a big event planning mistake. Having too many objectives puts you at risk of losing grasp on your primary exhibition goal and confusing your exhibition team!

Example Event Goal: Increasing Attendee Engagement X%

Key Objectives:

  1. Have attendees spend X more minutes at your booth during product demonstrations.
  2. Have X more attendees at product demonstrations.
  3. Have X% more social media posts of your demo shared with relevant hashtags.

Working With Funnels

When thinking about your broader event strategy and goals, it’s quite helpful to classify them according to their position in your overall marketing funnel for exhibitions and events. Try to identify where you’re attendees will be in the funnel, and select your goals and objectives accordingly.

Top-Funnel Goals

Top-of-the-funnel goals are goals catered to getting your name out there among potential clients and establishing a connection. This is an important first step as you’ll struggle to make sales if attendees don’t know who you are. Some goals and objectives that fall under this category include:

  • Brand awareness (social media shares and tags, increased traffic averages)
  • Increasing global reach (geographical registration data)
  • Thought leadership (resources downloaded, questions asked)

Mid-Funnel Goals

Once attendees are aware of who you are and have engaged with you at the top of the funnel, it’s time to push them down the funnel and enter the evaluation stage. When you plan to attend an exhibition to interact with attendees at this level, some goals and objectives you can consider are:

  • Lead generation (number of registrations recorded, marketing qualified lead rate)
  • Productive sales discussions (number of conversations had)
  • Product demonstrations (tracking demo booth attendance, time spent watching)

Bottom-Funnel Goals

You should now have a core group of leads at your disposal, meaning it’s time to seal the deal for exhibition success. Some relevant bottom-funnel goal examples are:

  • Sales (revenue collected, closed sales qualified leads)
  • ROI (total event revenue divided by event expenses)
  • Faster funnel velocity (percentage of sales qualified leads closed in less time)

Analysing Your Progress

With your goals and objectives planning complete, the only thing left to do is analyse your progress and report back; this can offer you insights on how to improve for future events.

Certain objectives can be analysed live during the event, while others can only be dealt with after the show. For example, if you’re exhibiting at a trade event across multiple days, some final totals and percentages will only be available once the last event attendees leave on the final show day.

Using Digital Tools To Check Your Results

Trade show lead capture software is but one digital tool exhibitors can leverage to measure their performance at trade show events. You’ll be able to see post-event reports and track your objectives in real-time, making your trade show participation much more straightforward.

Above all else, make sure the software you choose is reliable and easy to use. Your exhibition staff should be aware of how to leverage it properly for maximum rewards.

What To Do If You Didn’t Succeed

Assessing where you went wrong can be difficult, especially if you worked hard and had a strong event team behind you. Still, identifying where you slipped up is the only way you’ll be able to move forward again.

There are multiple potential reasons why exhibitors fail to meet their event objectives. Sometimes your planning and/or execution can be insufficient. On other occasions, you may find the exhibition was not promoted enough to your target audience. Alternatively, your event objectives, business goals, and/or marketing objectives may be out of sync.

Collecting feedback from attendees is a simple yet productive strategy to learn why you went wrong. Asking them where you might be able to improve will help you set better objectives for your future exhibitions, no matter whether they’re in-person or online events.

Grow Your Business By Setting Key Objectives

Many companies try to approach the B2B events industry with one objective in mind: sales. Return on investment is a major concern for every business, but approaching exhibitions with this mindset has left many an exhibitor stranded with worse results than anticipated. Changing your focus and choosing to plan your exhibitions around goals and objectives is a proven tactic for victory on the trade show floor, giving you more control of your investment at each event.

At Booth Exhibits™, we know how exhausting it can be trying to succeed at exhibitions. That’s why we’re here to help! As leading London exhibition stand builders, we’ll do whatever it takes to help you realise your dream trade show stand. Book a call with us today!

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