Exhibitor Focus: Making the Most of the Show

If you’re exhibiting at the Property Investor Show for the first time this year, you’ll have lots of questions about how to make the most of the event. Kelly O’Sullivan is our Operations Director and has seven tips for first-timers to ensure you have a cracking show.

A good rule of thumb is to allow for 3sqm per person, based on how many staff you will have working the stand. This is a great starting point when planning your space and will ensure there is ample room for staff to work comfortably and engage with visitors. If you book too small a stand, it creates a negative experience for your staff and visitors.

The most important thing is to be comfortable, whilst looking professional and approachable. We recommend flat shoes rather than heels as you will be on your feet all day, even a few changes of footwear can really help tired feet!

Formal suits often feel too formal in this environment and whilst we recommend not wearing jeans, chinos and polo shirts tend to strike just the right balance. For women, again we’d avoid restrictive and overly formal suits. Be comfortable, professional and approachable in your attire.

Make sure your staff are standing up and interacting with visitors. Sitting down doesn’t encourage people to approach your stand and won’t represent your business in the best way.

We recommend a print run of about 300 and keep the item lightweight. Visitors are given a carrier bag on entry with their show guide enclosed and use this for literature they collect on the day. Brochures become too heavy for people to easily carry so you’ll have much more uptake if it’s lightweight.

We really recommend having a small giveaway item on your stand but as with the marketing literature, keep it small and lightweight.  Keyrings, pens, USBs, small note pads, mini torches etc all work really well and are easy for visitors to slip into their bag.

For exhibitors that like to have refreshments or food on the stand, a simple bowl of wrapped sweets or chocolates works much better than cakes and coffee, with far less clearing up as well!

Everyone asks about wifi and it’s important that your staff can work in the way they need to at a busy live event. There is a free wifi service at ExCeL London but to give your staff a more reliable and faster service, we’d recommend bringing a dongle or similar. The paid-for wifi is very expensive and you’ll find that a dongle works really well.

To make the most of all the interactions and visitors to your stand, many exhibitors are keen to collect their visitor data. We’d recommend keeping this really simple and light touch, business cards in a bowl to win a prize for example, still works really well as a method of data capture.

We often get asked about data scanners but these are not ideal at non-badged events like ours. They work best when visitors are wearing badges with bar codes which they won’t be at the Property Investors Show.

And that wraps up our tips for first-time exhibitors. Follow these simple steps and you’ll have a great experience, and the visitors will really enjoy engaging with your business. For the latest health & safety guidelines relating to COVID-19, please read our FAQs or visit ExCeL London.