Playbook: How to Attract Exhibitors to Your Virtual Event

Your event is like an ecosystem, made up of exhibitors and attendees. In order to make sure that your event turns into a smashing success, you need to have the best quality sponsors on board. Believe it or not, exhibitors are the entities that make or break your event.

In this playbook, we’re providing you with helpful tips to attract great exhibitors and upgrade your virtual event.

Demonstrate the target audience at your event

Inform exhibitors about the sort of audience that will be attending your event and interacting with your exhibitors. Knowing that your virtual event will increase their reach and will display their product or service to the relevant audience will give them an incentive to participate in your event and generate more leads. 

Talk about creative ways for them to promote their brand

Explain the tools and features that will help attendees find exhibitors and connect in an efficient and meaningful manner. Some of the valuable features you must talk about include:  

• Networking Opportunities: Live chat tools to engage with a global audience on a single online platform
• Lead Generation: Exhibitors can search profiles that fit their target audience and request to set up a meeting during the event
• Marketing Tools: Long-lasting content decked up in their virtual booths in the form of pdf, documents, videos, slide decks, and so on
• Product Listing: Opportunity to showcase an endless list of products without additional shelving costs
• Online Sales: In case of virtual trade shows, embedded online store to help attendees book products in real time, shortening the sales cycle

Speaking opportunities for exhibitors

In addition to participating in 1:1 and group conversations, you can allow exhibitors to be present at the webinar sessions at your virtual event. You can offer a full presentation slot, keynote opportunity, or a spot on a live panel to help them increase their visibility at the event. This will enhance their reach and let their presenters influence the masses and host Q&A sessions. Thought leadership is always a great catch, after all.

Show how previous exhibitors have benefited

Social proof is a compelling way to entice exhibitors and build their confidence about participating in your virtual event. Share use cases with your prospects and show them the benefits and the value that they can achieve from your event.

Help them sell more

vFairs offers a shopping cart function in order to entice attendees to submit orders right through the platform. The virtual event will therefore expedite the process of placing orders that exhibitors can easily follow up on and take forward. 

Offer marketing and sales consultation

The success of your event depends upon the success of your exhibitors. This might be beyond the standard scope of work sometimes, but going beyond what’s expected usually produces the best results. Some of the ways in which you can do include:

• Gamifying your event and linking exciting prizes with certain booths
• Integrating with an online store to convert maximum leads to sales
• Creating compelling offers

In addition, vFairs offers a number of tools to empower exhibitors. Click here to read about the self-service booth builder that most organizers and exhibitors are crazy about. This allows them to stack up all kinds of marketing material, set up banners, and experience more control than ever.

Discuss various packages

Flexible options with different benefits and varying visibility can help exhibitors plan their strategy. This allows premium level exhibitors to understand the ways they can separate themselves from others and make the most out of additional benefits as compared to other participants. Not just that, but for those who have a smaller budget, you can provide them with options that would best work for them as well. Being completely transparent with your exhibitors is key to attracting them and bringing them on board.

Boost brand awareness

If your attendees aren’t hyped to check out your sponsors, your sponsors would not be hyped about partnering with you. How about cross promotion with your exhibitors? They need to market themselves as much as you need to market your event. Therefore, talk to your exhibitor about establishing a strategy whereby you can showcase them on your promotional channels, telling your audience how proud you are to be working with this company. While they may promote your event on their promotional channels – multiplying leads collectively.

Provide measurable results

Exhibitors need evidence of their event ROI. Inform them about all the additional aspects they can now track at your virtual event. From booth visits, to downloaded content, or even the number of interactions with company representatives – everything can be compiled in the form of reports and shared with your exhibitors.

While keeping in mind the tips mentioned above, you also need to ensure that you provide your exhibitors with a seamless experience, not only before the event, but also during the event. After all, you’d want to retain them for future events to come. Here’s a quick roundup of the things that might let your exhibitors down and not partner with you in the future: 

• High cost of participation
• Irrelevant attendees and low-quality leads
• Not getting the expected visibility
• Technical issues in the event
• Insufficient record of data

Good news is, experts at vFairs can help you avoid potential issues and attract sponsors at your next virtual event.

Key takeaways

Exhibitors are the backbone of your event. Taking the right measures while attracting leading companies is absolutely essential. However, the story doesn’t just end at that. Their pre-event experience is as important as the one during the event. So, make sure you partner with a trustworthy platform in order to retain your exhibitors for future events. 

You might be interested in: The Ultimate Guide to Planning a Virtual Event