Trade Shows Still Strong Performers in Digital Age

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10 October 2013

Trade Shows Still Strong Performers in Digital Age

Social media and online technology may be considered the leader in modern sales and marketing, but trade shows are enjoying a strong resurgence and generating hundreds of millions dollars in trade, says Auckland-based company XPO Exhibitions.

It is so confident of their ability to perform that the company will stage a number of new major trade shows over the next year with its major acquisition of HAYLEYMEDIA’s trade exhibition division, including The National Safety Show, the MHL (Materials Handling & Logistics) Show, SouthMACH and the South Island Hospitality Show.

“People tend to have a preconceived idea that New Zealand is too small to host quality industry exhibitions, but that’s just not true,” says XPO managing director Brent Spillane.

“Many world first innovations are launched at our existing industry events and we estimate hundreds of millions of dollars in trade is happening onsite each year.”

XPO’s acquisition will see the four large scale shows added to the company’s current line-up which includes the New Zealand Gift & Homewares Fairs, Engineering Machinery & Electronics Exhibition (EMEX), Foodtech Packtech, BuildNZ, Designex and MyBiz Expo.

 “We continue to receive serious attention from local and central government who consider our ten existing B2B Trade events as prime ways to communicate with industry and encourage export growth.  One example was an ATEED-supported New Zealand Food Innovation Showcase which took place at our last Foodtech Packtech show’” says Spillane.

“XPO has a growing database containing more than 140,000 unique (mostly SME) business visitors who have attended our shows in the past three years. These numbers have been authenticated by the Circulations Audit Board of Australasia who verifies the attendance at each show.

“This surge in attendance is attracting growing marketing budgets from many hundreds of business exhibitors.  Businesses are seeing value in selling their business products face-to-face with target industry customers.

“No sensible B2B marketer would argue the conversion rate statistics from selling face-to-face versus a Google ad.”

Adding even more gunpowder to XPO’s planned growth and expansion is the recent appointment of Tony Waite, former GM Sales at TVNZ.

“Tony is our new National Events and Sales Director and his appointment is a big statement about where our events business is heading,” says Spillane.

“Tony is leading our new five-year plan which includes a new major events strategy for the company. We’re on a mission right now to create meaningful exhibitions for growing trade sectors across New Zealand.

“The HAYLEYMEDIA team have worked tirelessly to create strong show brands. We plan to build and further grow the shows – cross selling the new shows to our existing customers, as well as giving new customers reasons to consider our event format.

“XPO will be rolling out our bespoke visitor registration technology to the newly acquired shows. This allows exhibitors to better qualify and follow up leads via permission-based scanning to retain visitor contact details. The acquisition also allows XPO to extend value to our growing list of event sponsors who are offering products and services tailored to each industry.”

Sponsors include Ford, BNZ and 2 Degrees Mobile who are all enjoying exclusive engagement in their respective fields with industry visitors at events. “Ford Motor Company of New Zealand recently reaffirmed its belief in the power of XPO by extending another two years of sponsorship deals, including many more car giveaways at the shows,” says Spillane.

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