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Pricing Strategy for Exhibition Organizers: What to Include in Exhibitor Packages

Pricing Strategies for Exhibition Organizers

If you attended Tokyo Game Show 2017, you paid $800 for a 10ft x 10ft booth per day. The cost of a same sized booth at The Optical Networking and Communication Conference & Exhibition 2018 was over $4000 for. How come there’s a huge price gap? Let’s explore exhibition pricing tactics.

What are the factors that influence pricing?

Imagine you decide to buy a new coat. Most likely, there are some primary and secondary factors you take to consideration when making the final decision. Let’s say you have two coats that both cost around $100, but one of them is warmer. The second one fits you better. In this case, your decision is based on your priorities. If you focus on choosing the most comfortable coat for your climate, you go for the first one; if a style is king for you, you buy the second. What if we’ll change the price variable? For instance, your priority is style, but the coat that fits you better costs much more than the first one. Thus, you have to decide what you’re ready to pay for. The aim of every exhibition organizer is to set prices that match the value perceptions of buyers.

Building exhibition pricing strategies

There are three principal factors which shape pricing strategy for exhibitions: cost, value, and competition. While competition and cost can be perceived subjectively, value is the lifeblood of decision making. Therefore, a value-based strategy that drives exhibitors’ value perceptions in the right way is vital to your success.

Analyze the factors that influence value perceptions including booth positioning and design, the quality and number of leads, the quality of interaction, and alternatives. Then tap into the preferences of your exhibitors, find out how they build their value standards, and price exhibition services accordingly. The use of automated online tools helps accelerate the process of event management including exhibition pricing.

What to offer to exhibitors

There’s no standard checklist of what to include into an exhibitor package. This fully depends on your value offer, the budget, and technical/organizational support your event provides. What you can’t avoid as an exhibition organizer is offering the options of exhibit space and the services of booth/stand construction. Here’s the example of the traditional stand construction offer exhibitors at the upcoming International Fuel Fair 2018 in Wroclaw have:

What to offer to exhibitors

To get the most bang for their buck, exhibitors often expect to receive a “freebie” off the top. Check out the special offers your exhibition package may include:

  • Free tickets. You can provide a specific number of free tickets exhibitors are at liberty to distribute as they wish. Since exhibitors most likely want to invite their family and friends to the event, free tickets are a great bonus.
  • Promo codes. For exhibitors who strive to promote their products/services online and attract a whole herd of fans to the exhibition, promo codes have exceptional value. If you run ads or have a blog, an email list or a newsletter, you can market the event where you’re going to exhibit offering special promo codes to reduce the admission cost for the exhibitor’s special invitees. Usually, an exhibitor receives the free promo codes at his email once an online registration is completed.
  • Free admission letters. Everyone who buys an exhibitor package for the Salt Lake Home Show gets the chance to offer free admission to an unlimited number of vendors, friends, customers, etc. The only condition is downloading an official event template from the Exhibitor Kit found on the official website.
  • Accommodation offers. Unless it’s a one-day exhibition, consider helping exhibitors choose the most convenient accommodations close to the event venue. Here’s how the organizers of The International Symposium on Myelodysplastic Syndromes add an accommodation bonus to an exhibitor’s package:

Accommodation offers.

  • International contacts & networking. Some exhibitor packages include the possibility to attend company’s seminars and post-event parties. LASYS organizers, for instance, assist exhibitors feed their contact bases and acquire relevant expertise by inviting them to “LASYS meets…,” trade fair planning seminars, etc.

Tips on how to set optimal prices for exhibition

To build an exhibition pricing strategy to match exhibitors’ value perceptions, consider the following tips:

  • See the whole picture. Building a pricing strategy is the first step. Much of your success depends on the right implementation. Think about when it is the right time to provide special offers and whether your sales team needs special training. Once you have the whole picture in mind, start budgeting your exhibition value offer.
  • Sell an exhibitor package to your team first. To successfully market your exhibition packages, you should communicate the pricing strategy to your team before introducing it to the exhibitors. Ensure they understand the whole model correctly and are able to serve up tasty value perceptions.
  • Be flexible. See how your competitors attract exhibitors. Your pricing strategy, as well as the value add-ons, should always be more flexible than those implemented by your rivals.
  • Make a smart choice of a tech provider. Choose reliable technology to help you automate onsite processes including promo code use.

Why Gevme?

GEVME is an all-in-one event management software with robust solutions for onsite & online registration processes, email marketing, and more. As the leading tech provider in Asia, Gevme is used to power the largest events, like FinTech Festival, facilitating smart exhibition offers. The benefit of Gevme is its flexibility in terms of promo code assignment and use. With Gevme, exhibition organizers need only to add a discount field to their selected group of tickets and key in the discount amount:

Why Gevme?

Conclusion

To develop a clever pricing strategy for exhibition organizers, you have to understand the value perceptions of your target audience. Analyze the factors that can influence the decisions of your exhibitors, set prices, educate your team, and pick a reliable tech vendor to help you implement special offers.

Level up your events with Gevme’s omnichannel event platform

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