Professional Development

Price includes refreshments, lunch and course materials.

Level: Foundation

Key issues:

An exhibition is perhaps the most powerful environment for meeting your market face-to-face. It’s an expensive business – space, design, people, time – so you need to be sure that you are extracting maximum value. What’s the point, if you don’t really know what you want to achieve? Do you have measurable objectives and the means to measure them? Are your people letting you down? Does spending more guarantee better results?

The purpose of this course:

This course will enable you to get the best from exhibitions through a step-by-step process covering selection, objective-setting, delivery, and basic evaluation. It will equip you to think creatively about your activities within a disciplined framework, and to optimise the impact of your presence.

Who this course is for:

This course is suitable for first-time exhibitors and managers with some experience. Marketing and event administrators, product and brand managers or marketing and event managers undertaking the task for the first time or others who are more experienced will also find the workshop of use.

Benefits for your organisation:

Your organisation will be represented at exhibitions closely aligned to your marketing strategy and communications mix, by sharpening your attendance objectives and evaluating their overall performance (including post event). You will be able to introduce new and refreshingly simple techniques that have worked for many other organisations. There will be other systems, ideas and concepts that can be adopted to consistently achieve results.

Benefits for you as an individual:

You will plan your events more efficiently and effectively by checking your current approach against the methods being recommended, gaining alternative ideas and procedures from your fellow delegates.

You will learn how to:

• Plan your approach more effectively by identifying, qualifying and selecting the right exhibitions for your company
• Prepare in advance by clarifying real exhibition objectives and establishing appropriate checklists and timetables
• Present a stand by confirming the principles and concepts of venue and stand hall layouts
• Promote attendance by identifying tactics and ideas designed to increase stand visitor numbers
• Sell at exhibitions by understanding the basics of selling on an exhibition stand
• Follow up exhibitions more effectively by adopting a proven method to qualify, prioritise, chase and manage leads, and evaluate their overall company performance

Course content:

• Planning - how to choose the shows that are right for you and address your objectives
• Presentation - the basics of design and layout; tools and ideas for making an impact
• Promotion - making sure the right people come, and how to entice them
• People - how to select, brief and train your stand staff
• Sales - techniques to get results before, during and after the show
• Follow-up - the part that really matters; getting it right when you’re worn out!

Pre and post learning support:

You will be asked to complete a brief, pre-course questionnaire relating to your experience, responsibilities and expertise. This will help us to ensure that the course is appropriately tailored for you. You will also be invited to bring examples of your own exhibition activities (documents, pictures, challenges) for discussion in the group.

To take away from the course:

You will leave the course with a set of comprehensive notes for reference, and further handouts tailored to the needs of the group.

Professional Standards

All of our marketing courses are based on CIM's Professional Marketing Standards, ensuring that marketers at all levels of seniority gain the practical skills that employers require to improve business performance. Review our Professional Marketing Standards framework