Exhibitions highly valued to help meet Marketing & Sales Objectives.

The Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) announces the results from The 2011 Changing Environment of Exhibitions Study, which explores how the exhibition industry is evolving and provides key market insights on opportunities and threats.

The findings explore the current and planned use of the full array of available marketing, communications and sales tactics; positioning of business-to-business exhibitions in this mix; current, high-priority marketing and sales objectives and perceived value of using business-to-business exhibitions to achieve them; as well as the factors that drive the decision to exhibit or pull out of an exhibition.

The top five, current high-priority marketing objectives for companies are building or expanding brand awareness (83 percent), new product or service promotions or launches (63 percent), reinforcing brand awareness (63 percent), promotions targeting specific business sectors (58 percent) and existing product service promotions (45 percent). For executives identifying these objectives as high priority, most (73 percent or more) rate exhibitions as highly valuable in helping their companies achieve these goals.

The top five, current high-priority sales objectives for companies are existing customer relationship management/engagement (73 percent), relationship management/engagement with key accounts (67 percent), relationship management/engagement with prospective customers (64 percent), generating new sales orders with existing customers (57 percent) and generating new sales leads in general (56 percent). For executives identifying these objectives collectively as high priority, most (77 percent or more) rate exhibitions as highly valuable in helping their companies achieve these goals, with the exception of generating new sales orders with existing customers, where over one-half (57 percent) assign high value to using exhibitions to achieve this objective

The second fact sheet, Marketers Intend to Maintain or Expand Number of Exhibitions, reveals that the use of business-to-business exhibitions remains constant and is projected to grow modestly, even as companies adopt a broader array of marketing, communications and sales tactics.

Four out of 10 executives indicate they are participating in the same number of exhibitions today as they did several years ago. Looking out to the next several years, 85 percent of executives say the number of exhibitions will hold to current levels (60 percent) or will increase (25 percent).

For more information at http://www.ceir.org>