Two Times Tech Equals Easier

Tradeshow managers and exhibitors now have the chance to take advantage of two technologies at once.

BDMetrics, which offers ROI and matchmaking, and A.C.T./Expocad, which has an interactive online floorplan, have formed a strategic partnership and agreed to integrate their products for shared tradeshow clients.

Show managers will be able to give potential exhibitors more information to determine whether their shows are the right ones for them to be exhibiting in. Exhibitors will be able to see what kind of buyers may be on a showfloor, helping them with decisions about booth size and location. At space selection and during shows, exhibit sales staffs will be able to more effectively quantify ROI for exhibitors in real time.

There is no extra cost for shared clients that now have the existing programs, but in the future, new clients would have to buy both the Expocad and BDMetrics products in order to use the integrated program.

"(Having them) come together does make perfect sense because of the way we view the world," said Chris Brown, Natl. Assn. of Broadcasters vice president of conventions and business operations. "It's the two key systems our data sits in, so it saves a lot of pain in the process. It's a huge deal for us."

At the recent NAB show, held April 16¨C19 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Brown's show management team used the integrated technologies throughout the three-day space selection process. Exhibitors and exhibit sales staff met in a room with an Expocad floorplan of the show beamed onto a screen. Exhibit sales personnel could scroll over the booths and demonstrate to exhibitors through BDMetrics' ROI program exactly how many buyers that attended the show the year before did a keyword search for something the exhibitors sold. Sales people were able to prove there were bodies on the showfloor that could have come to the exhibitors' booths had, for instance, the booths been bigger.

"(Exhibitors) are able to go through everything with salespeople on what their needs are, look at the live master floorplan and book and reserve a space right there," Brown said.

Exhibitors have the ability to create very detailed profiles of the kinds of buyer they are looking for, he added, then match them against information available about prospective buyers. "Let's say the exhibitor wants to reach CEOs of large TV companies," Brown explained. "We can say, 'Based on the last show, you had the opportunity to reach 4,000 of them. You only had a 20¡ä¡Á20¡ä, so let's look at the number of leads you were able to do. And if you got 1,000 leads, you could have gotten more if you took more space.'"

Rich Stone, CEO of A.C.T./Expocad, said he and Rick Geritz, CEO of BDMetrics, talked for a year about collaborating. "Here at Expocad our mantra is 'best in class,' and we wanted to offer the right tool to do the best job," Stone said. "There are folks trying to do it all themselves, and they don't end up doing anything well."

Expocad had the ideal platform for BDMetrics to plug in its matchmaking and ROI technology. "We wanted our clients to have the best possible plan for matchmaking, and (BDMetrics) wanted the best possible floorplan program," Stone added.

Geritz said, "Now there's a conversion from selling real estate to selling ROI."

Seventy percent of his company's customers use Expocad, he added.

Besides NAB, Semicon West, a tradeshow for the semiconductor industry, also did an early try-out of the enhanced program at its show last July in San Francisco's Moscone Center. Because of the detailed data that was collected, Geritz said, salespeople were able to communicate the value of exhibiting at the show to exhibitors. "It provided sales teams with detailed reports on what exhibitors got out of it," he added.

The Intl. Sign Assn.'s Intl. Sign Expo, held April 11¨C14 at Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, also took the combined product on a test run, according to Geritz. "They were able to drive all matchmaking through the (floorplan) drawing as well," he said.

Both Stone and Geritz expect more of their joint tradeshow clients, such as Intl. CES, the No. 1 show in the 2007 TSW 200, to also adopt the technology for their shows next year.