Trade Visitor Insights

10 – 14 March 2014Hannover ▪ Germany

Whitepaper November 2013

cebit.com

New Perspectives in IT Business.

Ready forlead

success!

For all marketing and trade fair professionals:

But what persuades trade visitors to attend? Why and when do they decide to visit CeBIT? And how do they prepare for their visit to the trade show?

Trade visitors are the most important factor in your success at a trade show. The concrete number and quality of technical discussions that occurred at the display stands were repeatedly mentioned to the event organizers as the most important indicator of success when participating in a trade fair.

All the bestExecutive summary

You can find the answers to these and other questions here in this whitepaper. Use the figures, facts and know-ledge to individually optimize your communications before, during and after CeBIT and maximize your success at the trade fair. The trade visitor insights published in this whitepaper are based on a representative survey of thousands of CeBIT trade visitors in 2012 and 2013. This whitepaper summa-rizes the most useful information to you found in these surveys, which were carried out on behalf of Deutsche Messe AG by Wissler & Partner, Trade Fair Marketing Basel and IfaD (Institute for Applied Data Analysis) in Hamburg.

We hope you can gain many interesting insights and wish you all the best at CeBIT 2014 in Hanover.

Your CeBIT Team

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■ Why do people attend CeBIT?

■ When is the best time to send an invitation?

■ What factors influence a trade show visit?

■ How to trade visitors get information on exhibitors and trade fair themes?

■ What services can one expect?

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The successful trade fair approach: Commercial challenges

Trade visitors use trade shows to find suggestions and solutions to increase their business success. A profitable trade fair visit therefore depends on whether or not exhibitors and topic areas can help visitors master their business challenges. Here, trade visitors to CeBIT from Germany and abroad agree on one thing: their attention is on technological innovations and trends. However, networking also carries great weight.

Trade visitors from Germany and abroad are primarily interested in new tech-nologies and trends at trade shows to solve their business challenges.

Opportunity for marketing and trade fair professionals: Plan your trade show participation and corresponding marketing activities around the following question: How can my company help its customers achieve their commercial goals?

Qualitative Besucherbefragung CeBIT 2012, n = 6.112

M&AInternetMarket entry

Skills shortageReputation

New markets safeguard/preserve jobs

e-commerce strategyCo

mpe

titiv

e ab

ility

Generate revenueCompetitive advantage Recognize trends

Product developmentreduction in staff Increase exports

Financing/liquidityN

ew

busi

ness

se

gmen

tsExpansion/internationalizationNetwork design and maintenance

New technologies

Integrate decentralized international IT solutions

Founding new companies/branches

Mobile BusinessStandardization

Bran

ding

/m

arke

ting

stra

tegy

Rais

e aw

aren

ess

Dat

a m

anag

emen

t/cl

oud

man

agem

ent

Lack of resources

Data managementIT security

Cost reduction

Return/earnings

New customers

Leadership and management qualities

Customer loyalty

Boost customer databaseCustomer satisfaction

Digital business unit / virtualization

Manage financial crises

Cheap productspricing strategy

Ensuring survival Founding a company

Price competition Reorganization

Contractor safety

Social Netw

orking

Migration of new

technologies

OutsourcingCustomer consulting

Jobs/recruiting

When it comes to concrete reasons for attending a trade show, visitors from Germany and those from other countries have different answers. German trade visitors are interested in gaining a comprehensive overview of the market and in trying out innovations on site. Trade visitors from abroad attend CeBIT primarily to seek out new trends and find new suppliers.

Networking is not everything: Reasons to attend a trade show

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Opportunity for marketing and trade fair professionals: Address the reasons your target group is attending the trade fair in your trade show communications – highlight what your customers can expect at your booth. This enhances your relevance and therefore your opportunities for more contacts.

German trade visitors want innovations they can ‘touch’; international trade visitors are looking for technologies of the future.

€“Market Observation &

Innovation”

“Trends &

Suppliers”

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German and international trade visitors turn their interest into concrete action at different times. International trade visitors decide to attend on average 8 weeks before the fair begins. Germany trade visitors on the other hand decide to attend CeBIT on shorter notice – on average 4 weeks beforehand.

Now is a good time: Deciding to attend

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Opportunity for marketing and trade fair professionals: Organize your marketing activities to coincide with the optimum window of 12 to 4 weeks before the trade show starts. Your communication measures will have a maximum effect.

4 weeks 12 weeks

The best window to invite your customers and other interested parties from Germany and abroad is 12 to 4 weeks before the trade show begins.

An invitation please: Factors that influence attendance

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Opportunity for marketing and trade fair professionals: The way you manage your invitations is the best lever you have to increase the number of your contacts – and thereby the success of the trade fair: Always invite your (potential) contacts personally and let them know about the innovations that you will be displaying at your booth.

It goes without saying that each visitor’s personal interest and the direction of their company are decisive factors in whether a visitor will attend a particular exhibition or not. However, there are several other factors that have a po-sitive impact on whether trade visitors will attend CeBIT that you can influence: 60% of all trade visitors say that a personal invitation from an exhibitor was an important factor that swayed their decision. That means that those receiving an invitation will most likely come – to CeBIT and to their host’s booth.

In addition, almost 70% of trade visitors from Germany and abroad say that a recommendation by friends, part-ners and colleagues was extremely important.

Personal invitations and recommendations to visit the trade fair and the booth are the best ways to reach the right customers and interested parties.

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Around 40% of German trade visitors will not respond to a personal invitation if it is not accompanied by a trade visitor ticket. For international trade visitors this expec-tation is shared by more than a quarter of trade visitors (26%).

Did you know that the ticket makes a significant contribution to the lead manage-ment of your business? You can retrieve the data of the trade visitors who accept your invitation 5 weeks before, during and after CeBIT in OBS and enter it into your CRM system. This enormously facilitates gathering and post-processing your trade fair contact data.

More than an incentive: Importance of trade visitor tickets

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Opportunity for marketing and trade fair professionals: Use your allotment of free trade visitor tickets and other promotional material to increase the value of your CeBIT invitation. We provide a whole line-up of services to support your invitation management. Take a look and then contact us: www.obs.messe.de/en/content/service/index.html

Personal invitations should be accompanied by a trade visitor ticket.

€

TICKET TICKETTICKET

CRM

Increase the frequency: Planning trade fair and exhibitor visits

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Opportunity for marketing and trade fair professionals: You should also plan your communication measures before the trade show begins and time your invitations, media information, press releases and product announcements to call attention to your company.

Around two-thirds of all trade visitors organize more than just their travel and accommodation when attending a trade show. They prepare extensively for CeBIT in general and for exhibitors in particular. There is significant diffe-rence between German and international trade visitors regarding the number of booths they visit. On average, German trade visitors visit 16 booths – but internatio-nal visitor stop in at 42. Both German and international visitors stated that they primarily visit those booths from whom they had received an invitation or other relevant information in the run up to the trade fair.

hall 2booth Z32

hall 2booth Z32

66% of all trade visitors plan their trade fair visits in advance.

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The CeBIT website 2013 was the number one source of information for trade visitors with a utilization rate of 92%. The site’s most important service was the exhibitor and product search function where your company and product information, among other things, is displayed. 80% of trade visitors to CeBIT used this search engine before the trade fair began. Three quarters of all visitors got information on topics and trends at CeBIT in the daily and business press and 50% through online portals. YouTube was used for CeBIT 2013 by around 30% and 16% of visitors got their information through social media channels, primarily to gather opinions and recommendations

There’s no going without: The infor-mation source when planning a visit

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Opportunity for marketing and trade fair professionals: From media service to search engine marketing to full-video formats on YouTube – make a plan in advance for which channels you can best use to focus the attention of trade visitors on your company. www.cebit.de/en/information-for/exhibitors/exhibitor-services/advertising-marketing-pr

92% of all trade visitors used the CeBIT website and stated that it was the most important source of information when planning their visit.

www.cebit.com

A service that’s worth it: The importance of Match & Meet

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Opportunity for marketing and trade fair professionals: Register with Match & Meet and link up with over 16,000 active users… and counting. Find out about more lead management services provided by Deutsche Messe AG. www.cebit.de/en/information-for/exhibitors/exhibitor-services/lead-services

Match & Meet is a service provided by Deutsche Messe AG that gives exhibitors the opportunity to approach relevant target groups and contacts before, during and after the trade show. Currently around 16,000 people from more than 130 countries actively use this service. 65% of all German trade visitors find Match & Meet helpful – especially before the trade show; 78% of international visitors give it the highest marks for its ability to make appointments at the trade show at short notice.

Around 16,000 people actively use the contact initiation platform “Match & Meet”.

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Figures, facts and knowledge are only effective if they can be implemented as concrete measures.

This whitepaper makes one thing clear: You as an exhibitor, and especially your marketing and trade fair professionals, have great opportunities to proactively influence a successful trade show presentation

In particular you need a well thought-out distribution of marketing and commu-nication measures in those areas in which you can gain the greatest amount of attention. The insights presented here can help you decide what the best measures and channels to use are and the best moment to implement them. We would be glad to demonstrate the additional services and solutions you can use to increase the success of your appearance at the trade show. Consult with us personally – just give us a call at: +49 (0)511 89-3 555 0, or write to us.

We look forward to supporting your trade show presentation.

Your CeBIT Team

You can plan a successful trade fair: Executive conclusion

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