What is exhibition management?
Exhibition management refers to the process of developing, planning, and operating exhibitions while offering a seamless experience for sponsors, exhibitors, attendees, and clients. Exhibition management planning involves exhibition floor planning, exhibitor promotion, artist collaboration, sponsorship planning, and exhibition strategy development. Other areas requiring attention include logistics, operations management, and on-site exhibition installation.
Event management software comes with exhibition management capabilities and helps exhibitors:
- Design and share exhibition floor plan
- Streamline venue operations and logistics
- Manage exhibitor and sponsor applications
- Upload, retrieve, and manage documents and forms
- Manage staff and schedule itineraries for the entire team
- Increase order volume with a dedicated e-commerce module
- Manage sales and partnerships with a customer relationship management (CRM) module
Types of exhibitions
Both commercial and non-commercial exhibitions require strong exhibition management skills to reach the right audience, create brand awareness, improve brand image, and sell products. Depending on the type of audience, organizers categorize exhibitions into the following types:
- Trade exhibition: A platform for industry-specific manufacturers to showcase and demonstrate products and services to industry members and investors. These exhibitions are also known as commercial exhibitions.
- Consumer exhibition: Allows different industries to exhibit their products, prototypes, and inventions to potential buyers and the general public. Consumer exhibitions are also known as Expos.
- Art exhibition: Presents art objects, new media art, interactive art, performance, or sculptures for the public and artists. It usually takes place in galleries or museums.
- Interpretive exhibition: Displays scientific and historical items that require visitor interaction and involvement for interpretation.
- Digital exhibition: Digital viewing of physical exhibits, art galleries, museums, and other cultural venues for online, interactive, and multimedia experiences.
Exhibition management considerations
Exhibition planners have a lot to consider depending on an exhibition’s nature, capacity, safety, setup style, and mode. Some key considerations when planning and managing exhibitions are:
- Logistics: Consider space requirements, interactive technology, signage, and health and safety procedures before planning an exhibition
- Timing: Determine the right timing, such as days of a week or months of a year
- Audiovisual (AV) requirements: Assess microphone, laptop, easel, teleconferencing, presentation screen, and monitor needs
- Speaker management: Connect with exhibition speakers and panelists
- Marketing: Oversee the production of promotional and communication materials
Exhibition management best practices
Holding well-planned exhibitions requires exhibition managers to prepare ahead of time, establish a dialogue with all the parties, and follow the best practices essential for improving the visitor experience.
- Goal setting and budget tracking: Aligning exhibition goals with business objectives sets the foundation for exhibition planning and performance measurement benchmarks. Planning a budget and event goals helps exhibition managers track expenses and calculate return on investment (ROI).
- Leveraging automation tools: Organizing large exhibitions requires exhibition managers to juggle multiple tasks. Choosing the right event management tools helps them automate manual tasks and boost productivity. These tools can handle different aspects of exhibition planning such as ticketing, webinars, live streaming, marketing, attendee management, check-in, networking, analytics, and exhibition feedback.
- Delighting attendees: Finding ways to boost audience engagement and satisfaction is key to a successful show. Exhibitions use polling, Q&A, live chat, and gamification to engage the visitors.
- Creating personalized and memorable experiences: Personalizing end-to-end journeys delights attendees and compels them to attend upcoming exhibitions. Curated agendas, meetups, and themed networking sessions are great ways to personalize exhibitions and create memories.
Exhibition management vs. event management
It's common to confuse exhibition management with event management, but the two terms are different.
Exhibition management involves planning and executing a specific type of event, i.e., an exhibition. Managing exhibitions requires handling an exhibition’s creative, logistics, and technical elements.
Event management refers to planning an event regardless of its type. Often known as event planning, event management involves managing logistics, handling projects, and coordinating with different stakeholders. An event manager or planner designs, sets up, and executes an event.