One of the most frequently requested services from my clients is assistance with exhibiting at key scientific sessions.  These sessions may be the venue for a product launch, or simply a large, important meeting for the client company and they want to maximize their marketing and sales impact.  Before we go charging off into the logistics of exhibiting, we need to ask:

What is our purpose, what are our objectives in exhibiting at this meeting?  Responses include:

• Increase awareness of our company and products among the attendees
• Introduce a new product
• Build on previous attendance (much like advertising)
• Maximize marketing potential of clinical presentations, posters or workshops on our product
• Foster clinical and social relationships with current Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs), or find new ones
• Generate sales leads from clinical presentations, exhibit activities and promotions
• Identify marketing partner candidates from the exhibitors
• Conduct primary market research
  

EXHIBIT THEME

The answers may well determine how high a profile we wish to present, which in turn determines the logistics and how much we may be willing to spend on this exhibit.  Next, we need to consider a theme for our attendance.  While not essential, a theme provides a coherence and consistent look and feel for the exhibit and our exhibit activities and promotions. If we are not introducing an important new product, the theme can often be driven by the clinical activities at the meeting, use them as the focus of our exhibit.  Or if there are few clinical presentations, we may wish to use such themes as “clinically proven”.

If a new product is to be introduced, it will probably be the theme of the exhibit.  If so, we will also need to think about positioning for the new product, probably one of the most important factors in a successful product introduction.  Al Ries and Jack Trout in their classic book, Positioning, the Battle for Your Mind, tell us, “Positioning is not what you do to the product.  Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.”  Some key considerations in crafting the positioning statement include:

• Unique product attributes
• Attributes of the target market
• Unique customer benefits – value proposition
• Clinical usage
• Relationship to accepted products or techniques (Gold Standard?)
• Strength of the Gold Standard
• Should we position our new product towards or away from the Gold Standard?
• Think outside-in, not inside-out
  
  In Part 2 of this blog series we'll discuss pre-show marketing activiies.  What are your thoughts?