I4MS Road to Market Workshop

Although sometimes companies are not seizing correctly the importance of attending to events and trade shows, they have become an important part of their marketing and communications strategy. For this reason, SMEs and Start-ups need a fairs and events strategy that is consistent with their own commercial strategies and the innovation ecosystems, but for small companies it may be also a challenge to draw a cost-effective efficient strategy.

Having identified this, I4MS programmed a workshop to guide SMEs in their road to market, facilitating their event strategy. Marta Portalés and Juan Antonio Pavón Losada,  Mobile World Capital Communication Project Executives who have an extensive experience in world class events, gave their impressions to a selected audience.

In this online workshop, the learning goals defined where the following:

1. Setting goals, design a Budget, Consortium building, Picking up the right events.
2. How to build a booth, how to organise promotional giveaways, Activities to be organised at the trade event and what should be avoided, but in fact are common habits.
3. Media Frameworks, Analysis, Creating press content, How to build a press toolkit.
4. Marketing strategies for Connecting with the existing ecosystem and how to expand it.
5. How to connect with actors and stakeholders through social media. Media tools
6. How to evaluate and identify best practices, lessons learned, and the importance of the following up.

Many strategies, resources and tools were showcased to be able to produce an effective trade  show and events strategy in an autonomous way, having the less possible impact in companies’ budget.

On the one hand, one of the key messages on behalf Marta Portalés, was the necessity of partnership when the budget does not allow great expenditures. Also, she advocated for reinforcing  selection criteria, defining the right size of the events SMEs needs to go. By choosing appropriately the size of the events, effort can be effectively aimed to the target audience that SMEs has previously defined.

On the other hand, Juan Antonio Pavón put the emphasis in the ability to relax and making  contacts, postponing the final action of presenting the product/service to a post event scenario.

“There is a human dimension that cannot be forgotten. People is away from their offices, there are tired, eat bad and had to travel back. The less you can offer is a relaxed chat, be friendly and not putting pressure on anyone. This way, contact is already made opening a window for future business that can be done in hardcore office time”, said Juan Antonio Pavón.

Further, it was highlighted that organizations should be aware of a minimum of  marketing techniques or tools to be efficient, define who they want to reach and know how to communicate with them. Thus, the importance of the PR strategy and the Media strategy. It is really a key. It is needed to be prepared beforehand to maximize the impact during the participation in the event.

All in all, the workshop was a great experience for all participants, since it could be understood the importance of marketing and communications in trade shows, how to overcome and take advantage of them, and took more knowledge for their projects through a few key messages, that hopefully they will keep in mind.