The enormous importance of personal encounters has become even clearer to many during the coronavirus pandemic with its contact restrictions. People need direct dialogue. It has also become clear that good ideas need marketplaces - both virtual and real. Building trust usually starts with personal encounters. And: the changing global political situation shows that trade fairs offer solutions to challenges: Sustainability, energy supply and nutrition are just a few examples. The best way to find new partners for this is in person, to strengthen long-term relationships at trade fairs and, just as importantly, to keep a close eye on the competition there.
Trade fairs have not lost any of their importance due to the online turbo in recent years, quite the opposite. In fact, many exhibitors are now pursuing more trade fair objectives than they did years ago. Digital extensions ensure greater reach.
You will achieve maximum trade fair success if you optimise your preparations and select the right trade fairs, i.e. those that best meet your business objectives. The strong competition in many sectors is particularly evident at German trade fairs, as the global market is present here like nowhere else.
Functions of trade fairs
Of all marketing instruments, trade fairs have by far the broadest range of functions. It encompasses the areas of business management, economics and society.
Business management functions
Trade fairs serve to build and maintain customer relationships, to find partners and personnel and to position the company as a whole. Trade fairs are test markets for new products and therefore also market research instruments. Trade fairs can be used to raise awareness of your own company, analyse the competitive situation and prepare the sale of products and services. This is why it can be worthwhile for a young company to attend a trade fair if it is at an early stage of market development, for example.
Trade fair as a communication tool
For companies that exhibit at trade fairs, trade fair participation is the most important instrument of their B2B communication. A few months before the coronavirus pandemic, in November 2019, 500 representative German companies that primarily exhibit at B2B trade fairs were surveyed. The results once again impressively demonstrated the fundamentally strong anchoring of trade fairs as an instrument in German companies.
Accordingly, German companies are frequently represented at trade fairs with their own stands. As companies' turnover increases, so does the number of trade fair participations: a company with an annual turnover of over 125 million euros participates in an average of 31 trade fairs in two years.
Over a quarter of German exhibiting companies (29 per cent) wanted to invest more money in trade fair participations at home and abroad in 2020 and 2021. 53 per cent of companies planned the same level of expenditure and only 17 per cent wanted to reduce their trade fair budget.
Overall economic functions
The organisation of trade fairs benefits the exhibitors and visitors involved, but also the economy in the catchment area of the trade fair city and in the country as a whole. Hotels, restaurants and transport companies in particular benefit from this secondary effect. The same also applies to service companies that provide valuable services for trade fair organisers and exhibitors, such as stand construction, trade fair logistics, interpreter and hostess services.
The regional economic effects at trade fair venues with a strong international focus amount to five to seven times the turnover generated by the organisers. Trade fairs thus secure many regional jobs, especially in medium-sized companies.
Social functions
Trade fairs have always been centres of knowledge - processed, refined information placed in the right context. In today's knowledge-based society, information has become a crucial resource. The production, selection, filtering and channelling of this information has thus become one of the most important activities in an economy. For this reason, trade fair-accompanying congresses and congress-accompanying exhibitions are being organised more and more frequently as fast-reacting and vivid forms of knowledge transfer.
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