Virtual Exhibitions: How to Plan Your Trade Fair Stand with InLoox

The future of trade fairs

In the B2B sector, trade fairs and congresses have always been an important instrument for image building and sales support. Depending on their size and duration, even recurring expo participations rank among the larger projects in companies. In addition, we often hear: "Before the fair is after the fair". Once the trade fair has been successfully completed, the planning and preparation for the next participation continues directly. The reasons for this are very long preparation phases as well as high organizational and bureaucratic efforts. Modern formats have now been offered and tested as an alternative or complement for several years.

Virtual exhibitions seem to be part of the future trade fair business. Every year, more and more virtual exhibitions are created on a wide variety of topics like marketing, MICE or digitisation. Digital conferences are regarded as a good complement to classic trade fair presentations and are characterized in particular by lower costs and organizational effort. This is due to the fact that stand personnel is not as busy here as with a "real" trade fair. Arrival and departure times are eliminated, as the stand can be easily managed from the office. Other preparatory work, such as packing and shipping trade fair materials, is also not necessary. But of course there are also other tasks that do not exist the other way round at a classic trade fair.

How to plan your stand with InLoox

This year we are also taking part in a virtual expo for the first time. We are looking forward to being represented at the DiMitEx, the user congress for digitisation in medium-sized businesses, from 7th to 9th October. We regularly take part in several trade fairs and exhibitions and already have routine in the handling of our trade fair participations. In comparison, the organisation of our exhibition stand was something completely new for DiMitEx. We would like to give you a little insight into this experience and give those who may soon be planning a virtual expo stand an InLoox planning template for the organisation of their virtual appearance.

Create a new project

The first thing you need is an appropriate project, through which you coordinate all tasks, keep deadlines in view and create the project plan. In InLoox for Outlook, click on the InLoox now! or InLoox PM tab and then on the Projects button. Once in the project overview, click on New Project in the Start tab. Your new InLoox project opens and you enter all relevant information about the expo on the support page: Project name, project manager, team, status, start and end, etc.

^{Project for the organization of the virtual expo stand in InLoox for Outlook}

The next step is to create the project plan. If you are working with InLoox, we now explain step by step how you can create a suitable Gantt plan:

Define acitivities

The first step is to determine the relevant activities:

• Exhibition concept
• Design visual for stand
• Prepare marketing materials
• Stand filling
• Preparations
• Prepare presentation for conference stage
• Event implementation
• Wrap-up

Define milestones

Important milestones are added to the tasks (inserted in bold below). These can be, for example, different deadlines that you set yourself within the organization or that are set by the organizer:

• Exhibition conecpt
• MS: Exhibition concept is defined
• MS: Stand booked & confirmed
• Design visual for stand
• MS: Visual for stand is finalized
• Prepare marketing materials
• MS: Marketing materials are finalized
• Stand filling
• MS: Stand is filled
• Preparations
• Prepare presentation for conference stage
• MS: All preparations are done
• Event implementation
• MS: End of expo
• Wrap-up
• MS: Final meeting of team members

Create tasks

For the activities you have just created, define the corresponding tasks to be completed here (highlighted in italics below):

• Exhibition concept
  • Responsibilities
  • Define slogan/claim/gist
  • Develop rough concept
• MS: Exhibition concept is defined
• MS: Stand booked & confirmed
• Design visual for stand
  • Select template
  • Create visual or assign to agency
• MS: Visual for stand is finalized
• Prepare marketing paterials
  • Documents
  • Pictures
  • Videos
• MS: Marketing materials are finalized
• Stand filling
  • Description and contact details
  • Visual
  • Documents
  • Pictures
  • Videos
  • Integrate live chat
• MS: Stand is filled
• Preparations
  • Select/produce videos for pre-scheduled webinars
  • Create schedule for webinars
  • Forward webinars including schedule
  • Define live chat support
  • Prepare presentation for conference stage
  • Concept & topic
  • Select speaker
  • Short description for programme
  • Presentation slides
  • Technical check
  • Final rehearsal
• MS: All preparations are done
• Event implementation
• MS: End of expo
• Wrap-up
  • Complete lead capture
  • Evaluation of new contacts
  • After-Sales campaign
• MS: Final meeting of team members

 

 

Please remember

After you have created the individual elements, be careful not to forget the last and most important step. Relate the activities and milestones to each other to create a timely schedule. Schedule all elements for which you already have deadlines & data and set the duration for tasks. For all other elements, set the restriction to Start - As early as possible.

^{Project plan for virtual expo in InLoox for Outlook}

Free planning template "Virtual Expo"

Our free InLoox planning template guides you step by step through all important phases of the virtual trade fair. Download the template for virtual trade fair participations, add any important points of the respective trade fair for which you are currently planning and simply work your way through.

Download the InLoox planning template for your virtual expo stand here:

>> Download Planning Template Virtual Expo <<

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