If exhibitions have a place in your marketing plan, and like most other potential media they will not be right for every franchise opportunity, you will need to develop a strategy that will ensure you get best value out of them. They represent an opportunity for a short burst of face-to-face marketing activity to a self-selected target audience. This in itself presents particular problems and requires careful planning if those problems are to be converted into opportunities.

THE DECISION TO EXHIBIT

The decision to exhibit, like the decision to use any other media, should be the result of careful appraisal of the opportunity and an analysis of the role to be played by an exhibition in your marketing mix. Information is available from exhibition organisers on the numbers of visitors who have attended previous similar exhibitions and they also have information collected from registration data that can be used to gain a clear idea of the number of visitors that might potentially match your profile. Perhaps one of the clearest indicators here will be the amount of money individual visitors have available for their investment. It would not be surprising to discover that there will be relatively large numbers of visitors looking to invest up to £20,000 and relatively small numbers with the ability to invest, say, £200,000 plus.

In deciding whether franchise exhibitions ought to form part of your marketing media portfolio, consideration should be given to a number of issues:

• Are there likely to be a sufficient number of visitors who might match your franchisee profile?
• Are your direct competitors likely to be there?
• Is an exhibition environment suitable for you to deliver your marketing messages to potential franchisees?
• Are you able to take full advantage of the additional opportunities offered by exhibiting?
• Is your offer sufficiently strong to stand out among the highly concentrated grouping of other franchises?
• Have you the personnel, and have they got the skills, to make the most of what could be a large number of five-minute encounters with potential franchisees?
• Are there any other benefits to be derived from a franchise exhibition that might help justify the decision to exhibit?
• In comparison with other activities is it likely to be cost-effective?

Let’s consider each of these issues in more detail and see how they might influence your decision on whether or not to exhibit.

• You have developed your franchisee profile in which you have identified the skills, experience and other attributes that you will be seeking in your potential franchisees. Research into the information available from the exhibition organisers will give you the opportunity to match the profile of visitors to the franchisee profile. If there appears to be little match in the two profiles you should seriously consider whether the exhibition fits into your marketing plan. If there is a good degree of match you should continue your decision-making process by considering other criteria. A study in the late 1990s suggested that about 75 per cent of visitors to franchise exhibitions were first-timers but that people who visited more than one exhibition were more likely ultimately to buy a franchise. This was said to suggest that franchise exhibitions featured strongly in the early stages of potential franchisees’ investigations into franchising.
• If your direct competitors will be there will your offer stand up to side-by-side scrutiny? Will your presentation be dwarfed by big-spending competitors or will your message shine through? Remember big is not always beautiful but in an exhibition environment it is more easily noticed. Getting noticed, however, is only a small part of the story. What matters is how you deal with the attention that you create.
• Will your chosen marketing message benefit from the bustle of an exhibition or will that bustle make it difficult for your message to come across to visitors as they pass your stand?
• Many of the benefits to be derived from exhibiting come from activities outside the exhibition hall. Are you in a position to take full advantage of these add-ons? During the period running up to the franchise exhibitions the exhibition organisers and organisations like the British Franchise Association (BFA) will mount a PR campaign aimed at raising awareness not only of the exhibition itself but also of franchising. Riding piggyback on this PR activity by providing these organisations with interesting and usable articles about your franchise can substantially improve your market visibility if any of the press choose to feature your press release. Virtually every element of the franchise-specific press will have exhibition features that will concentrate on the franchises taking part in the exhibition. Whether dedicated magazines or simply part of the business section of newspapers they all provide an opportunity for additional exposure at little or no cost. If you are to get the full benefit of exhibiting you should be prepared to make what extra effort is needed to provide press release material to the relevant organisations.
• The exhibition will feature perhaps hundreds of stands, which will be offering franchises, or services to franchisees or franchisors. You will need to consider whether your franchise offer will be able to stand out among the competition. This will, very often, depend on the budget that you have available for both the exhibition space and the stand that you present in that space, but it will also depend on the attractiveness of your offer in comparison with the other franchises. If you have a clearly unique product or service, or if you are the best-established or leader in your sector then your offer should happily stand alongside the rest of the exhibitors. If, however, you are the most recent newcomer into an already well-established sector, with little to differentiate you from the competition, then giving potential franchisees the opportunity for direct comparison with others may be counter-productive.
• If your stand and your franchise offer is attractive you may well generate a large number of enquiries from visitors to your stand. It is important therefore that you should have sufficient staff to deal with these or you risk part of your marketing spend being wasted. Equally the staff need to have the ability to appraise the enquirer quickly and judge whether they are worthy of an extended conversation or a brief discussion with the potential for a later follow-up.
• Your presence at a franchise exhibition may have additional benefits for your business over and above that of recruiting franchisees. If your franchise provides a product or service direct to the consumer your stand may raise awareness of that to all the visitors, irrespective of whether they are interested in your business as a franchise opportunity. There is little doubt that many of the visitors seen watching a demonstration of a product or service are interested not in the franchise but in what it offers. This may therefore generate additional business for you and your franchisees and thus make a direct contribution to the cost of exhibiting.
• As with any marketing activity you will need to make a judgement on the cost-effectiveness of the proposal to exhibit in comparison to other alternative media. This may be difficult to do in theory and it may only be after you have exhibited at least once that you can make an informed decision on cost-effectiveness.

PREPARING TO EXHIBIT

You will need to make careful and extensive preparations if you are to get the full benefit from the exhibition.

• Having taken the decision to exhibit, the first step in the process is to decide on the size of stand that you will need and to book the space with the organiser. You will need to decide whether you wish simply to buy space on which you will erect your own stand or whether you will need a ‘shell’, i.e. space enclosed by walls separating you from the adjacent stands. These walls can then carry your marketing messages or act as a backdrop to other marketing materials and structures.
• The marketing messages that you will choose to convey to the exhibition visitors will need to be carefully thought through. On the basis that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, seek to make use of photographs of franchisees at work that will quickly convey to the passing visitor what the franchise offers. These, linked with short messages, will make the best use of the five or ten seconds that a potential franchisee will spend looking at your stand. The messages should both grab the visitors’ attention and also convey the benefits to be gained by joining your franchise. These benefits should be selected to attract those visitors who will best match your franchisee profile. Demonstrations of the product or service offered by the franchise will always generate interest. The size and configuration of your stand will dictate whether these can be actual demonstrations or video presentations. You should consider carefully whether you wish to make any marketing materials available for distribution to potential franchisees at the exhibition. Those who have exhibited already will know that, in the same way that there are people who collect stamps or train numbers, there are also people who collect brochures and other marketing materials and will wander from stand to stand picking up anything that looks as though it might be free, whether it is of interest to them or not. These collectors are most easily recognised by the number of carrier bags they are carrying and a listing gait as they lean towards the side with the heaviest bag. You may find the cost of the exhibition rising by hundreds of pounds if your expensive marketing materials are simply left on a stand at the mercy of these collectors.
• Allow yourself plenty of time to have your stand materials designed and produced. When developing the materials try to avoid anything that might date them and thus mean that they cannot be reused for subsequent exhibitions. Equally consider whether there might be future occasions when your franchisees might want to use some of the materials locally to promote their services. By making them multi-purpose you will get more value from what can be a considerable production cost.
• Developing a clear exhibition strategy and communicating it to everyone who may be working on the stand will ensure that you get best value from the exhibition. The target visitors identified by your franchisee profile and the number of enquiries you hope to generate will dictate how you deal with visitors to the stand. If you have a low-entry-cost franchise that could appeal to a very broad cross-section of the population you will need to be able to deal with a large number of enquiries. This may result in your deciding to take contact details of everyone who comes onto the stand so that you can follow up with marketing materials and a personal contact at a later time. There may be little time available to qualify these enquirers at the exhibition so decide what the key qualifiers are, then confirm that the enquirer may have an interest, take contact details and explain the follow-up procedure. Do not assume that if the enquirer is serious they will subsequently contact you. Those that are very seriously interested might, but experience tells us that you will need to drive the recruitment process for the vast majority of potential franchisees. If your franchise requires a substantial investment or is likely by its nature to generate only a few enquiries you may choose to have a strategy that allows for more detailed discussions with the visitors to the stand. If this is the case the stand management team must clearly understand what subjects can be discussed in those initial conversations and what subjects will only be discussed at a later formal meeting. There may be an opportunity to collect some of the information normally sought on an application form or, where an enquirer seems particularly suitable and interested, they can be encouraged to complete a full application form at that stage prior to arranging an initial meeting.
• To maintain the impetus of the enquiry process you may wish to arrange ‘open days’ or group presentations within, say, two weeks of the exhibition and encourage potential franchisees to book a place on one of them. Those who are seriously interested will find a way of making themselves available for such a presentation and will, therefore, self-prioritise themselves for your interest. This is not to say that you should then ignore the other enquirers but it will allow you to focus your attention on the hottest prospects.
• Can you drive people to your stand? By their very nature exhibition layouts can be confusing, with the aisle grids not always following through lines from one end of the exhibition to the other. It is possible that a proportion of the visitors might never find themselves passing your stand. Among these could be potential franchisees who may never have the opportunity to seek your marketing messages. You may wish, therefore, to consider using additional means to raise interest in your stand and cause visitors to seek it out. These methods might include some form of additional sponsorship that ensures that every visitor receives a leaflet about your franchise in their ‘welcome bag’, or the use of high-level banner advertising in the roof area of the hall, or leaflet distribution by a team inside the hall. You should check with the exhibition organisers which of these possibilities are available and allowable.
• Inviting existing franchisees to help man the stand can be a powerful confidence builder for potential franchisees. Having the opportunity to discuss the business with someone who has already taken the plunge can do much to reinforce a potential franchisee’s belief in the franchise system. Clearly you will need to choose carefully the franchisees you invite to help in this way, ensure that they will give an articulate and positive view of the franchise while not misrepresenting it in any way.
• Maintain a to-do/ideas list from the day you first decide to exhibit. Give everyone associated with the project open access to this list so that they can add to it as ideas come to them. Having such a list and then cross-checking against it will ensure that you are arrive at the exhibition with all the equipment and information that you need.
• Whether this is your first exhibition or the latest of a long series consider whether you and your team might benefit from some training in exhibition stand management. There are, undoubtedly, specific skills related to getting the best from the short period that you are exposed to your potential franchisees, whether these relate to interpersonal communication or simply sound stand management/etiquette.

THE RUN-UP TO THE EXHIBITION

• Make the most of pre-exhibition PR opportunities by both supplying the organisers and the bfa with suitable information about your franchise and also making your own PR approaches to the media. Prepare a press pack to be made available in the exhibition press office, ensuring that it includes information about the franchise, some human interest stories including photographs, and contact details should a feature writer wish to follow up for further information.
• You will receive clear instructions from the stand organisers regarding set-up and knock-down times prior to and following the exhibition. You will need to make sure that you have sufficient staff and transport available to ensure that you can get this work done within the parameters laid down by the organisers. The existence of a check-list for all the equipment you need will make these final days and hours easier for all concerned and make sure that you arrive at the exhibition fully prepared.

ON THE DAY

• Exhibitions are hard work! They are also an activity in which your stand team will have had very little experience or practice. If you are to get the most out of the exhibition everyone associated with the stand needs to be alert, fresh, well-informed as to strategy and committed to the cause. A ‘liquid’ team-building event the night before is therefore ill-advised!
• Ensure that you have sufficient team members to be able to allow rest periods throughout the day without leaving the stand undermanned. This will ensure that the team can get a coffee or a bite to eat without having to eat and drink on the stand.
• Maintain an ‘open stand’ by ensuring that team members are welcoming to potential enquirers. Even if everyone is already committed to an enquirer make sure that new visitors are at least acknowledged, if only with a smile. Avoid passers-by being confronted by a wall of backs as the stand team holds discussions between themselves or with other visitors – even when in conversation with a visitor aim to remain outward facing. If you are seeking a large number of enquiries (see exhibition strategy above) develop tactics to encourage passers-by at least to stop and consider your offer.
• Safeguard the fruits of your work. Make sure that contact information is collected from all enquirers and that it is then kept securely, ready for further action after the exhibition.
• Take time to view the other stands. Look for ideas on how you might improve your own stand for subsequent exhibitions. Has another franchise got a great idea for delivering a message that you could adapt to your own use? Watch the visitor-flow. Could you have been in a better location? Take the opportunity during quiet periods for networking with others in the franchise community, whether suppliers or other franchisors, but avoid taking up precious time if they are busy, even if you aren’t.

AFTER THE EXHIBITION

• Have an early review of successes and failures with the stand team. What worked well? What could be improved or altered? At this stage it will probably be too early to determine whether the exhibition has been a successful recruitment medium although you may have some raw criteria to assess, such as the number of enquiries generated. Review the total spend, including the cost of the exhibition itself, all materials used, travel and accommodation costs for the stand team and the time–cost implications. You will then be able to use this information to generate a cost per enquiry figure and also, eventually, a cost per sign-up. This can then be compared to other marketing media to assist in the decision about whether to attend future exhibitions.
• Set the recruitment process in chain. Make sure that full use is made of every lead. If you have generated a large number of leads this may involve drafting additional staff onto the process or using the services of a lead follow-up service provider. Make every lead count.