Exhibiting on a Budget

How To Exhibit Your Stand On A Budget

Exhibiting can be a brilliant way to meet new clients and suppliers, and to get the word out about your company, but if you’re a small business on a budget, the costs can begin to add up very quickly. You need to pay for your stand space, which may or may not include all the extras you need, exhibition stand designs, marketing materials, transport to and from the venue, hotels, swag… the list goes on.

So does that mean you can’t exhibit until you do have a bigger budget? Absolutely not! We’ve got some great ideas to save you money and get you exhibiting, even with a tiny budget. As with most aspects of exhibiting, it all comes to carefully planning and conserving your funds where possible. The following tips will give you an insight into how you can not only save money on both event and exhibition stand costs, but also how you can achieve a quicker ROI on your stand compared to if you weren’t counting the pounds:

Start local

If you choose exhibitions in your local area initially, you’ll immediately cut any costs for transport to the minimum, and you won’t have to find any money for staff to stay in hotels.

Choose your exhibitions carefully

If you’ve never exhibited before, part 1 of our Ultimate Exhibitions Guide is all about choosing the best places to exhibit.

One other thing to consider is that there are exhibitions out there where you only pay one fixed fee and everything is included, including your power. The Biz Expos for example does this very well, with one relatively small fee for your stand space. And when you’re able to afford it and can go further afield, they also offer discounts if you want to exhibit at multiple shows.

Look out for offers like that and you could save hundreds of pounds over a year.

Plan ahead

If you do need to travel to attend your exhibition, work out in advance how you are going to do it. Buy train tickets early when prices are cheaper, and use price comparison sites for hotels, such as Trivago, where they do the hard work of searching for a good hotel at the cheapest price.

Think about solutions such as hiring a minibus to take everyone from the train station to the venue, rather than having everyone arrive individually in more expensive taxis.

You can also save money by booking your exhibition space early and grabbing an ‘early bird’ offer.

Re-use what you can

Exhibition stand designs and builds can be some of your largest expenses, but take a look at what you can re-use next time. Yes, it’s nice to be able to have a fresh new exhibition stand every time, but could you have pop-up banners that will work for all of your exhibitions this year, rather than being specifically printed just for one exhibition? Is there any part of your stand you can adapt and re-use next time, or next year?

Think about printing standard marketing materials that will work for many different occasions rather than just one exhibition or try digital materials that people access with a QR code.