AusRAIL is the meeting place for anyone operating in, or looking to do business within the Australian rail sector.

Timken, the leading authority on tapered roller bearings, will be one of the exhibitors to demonstrate their technologies and quality products. Our long standing relationship with Timken will continue, fabricating & installing their display stand at this year’s event.

The quality of your product & brand based display’s should form a critical aspect of your overall marketing strategy in the same way digital marketing & advertising form an essential part of any good B2C or B2B strategy.

Visual and physical product, service & brand display’s appear nearly everywhere; think not only of retail & trade outlets, but showrooms, selection centers, foyers, board rooms, conferences, trade shows, road shows and exhibitions for product or service displays.  When combined with knowledgeable and competent sales representation, and the right overall marketing strategy, the value of “touch & feel” situations in B2C and B2B buying decision making processes are still extremely high.

Brand displays can also be represented in all of the aforementioned situations, as well as including signage of all descriptions.  Every piece of signage represents your brand and its image; the quality and condition of that signage should not only catch the eye, but should also re-enforce the perceived value of your product, service or brand.  Critically, it can just as easily detract from the brands value, or simply get lost or overlooked in the crowd.

When considering product or brand strategy in relation to physical displays, remember to carefully consider the following whilst planning the display or campaign:

• What
  • exactly what is it you are wanting to achieve? e.g. grow sales of product ABC123, increase brand awareness, communicate a new product or service offer, grow profit margins on a given line of products, etc

• Target Audience
  • the who, why and how you will be targeting.  e.g. Achieve a greater share of wallet from the existing client base in a given geographical area via a new sales rep and product sample suite.

• Features vs benefits
  • what type of content should be included & how should it be presented?  e.g. your product is bright yellow and 50% smaller and lighter than the previous model are product features.  Benefits (for a given audience) could be: reduced incident downtime through improved visibility to operators; Drag and fuel consumption savings of up to 20% through size and weight reductions.  Of course, if you can cite specific testing or actual client results, benefits will stand out to prospects even more.

• Value Adding
  • how will my product/service or brand add value to my client and how do I communicate this?  This at least partially, relates to the benefits of your product, service or brand, and most commonly are additional to the core benefits.  This might include things like a quality or green certification, an industry accreditation, warranty’s, product or spare part support, training, etc.

• WIIFM (What’s in it for me)
  • Place yourself in your clients shoes and ask this question (It can be good to draw on your own buying experiences during this step as well).  This step may cause you to re-think any or all of the previous considerations.  Sometimes overlooked or under-estimated, placing yourself in your prospective clients position can be a real eye-opener during the planning process for any marketing strategy.  There are plenty of examples of organisation’s large and small who have operated in a “top-down” manner in regards to what they think customers want and need from their product or service.  Some are visionary, many others failed, or wasted significant amounts of money because they did not adequately place themselves in their customers shoes at any stage during the marketing planning process.

These are some fairly common marketing considerations, however using them effectively to achieve a higher marketing ROI can be challenging for any number of reasons.  There are way to many marketing, advertising and sales acronyms, techniques and processes around to list here, but in short and whatever acronym, technique or process you use, the more defined you can be with these considerations from the outset, the better your overall result will be.

How does this relate to your product, service or brand display?  Your overall marketing or business strategy should provide guidance on, and feed into each of your campaigns or marketing actions that include physical display’s or representations of your brand.  How you physically and visually present yourself will have an influence on the outcome and ROI of each of those campaigns or actions, whether positive or negative.  Poor presentation or poor execution will not only return a lower ROI for an individual campaign or action, but they risk damaging the overall perceived value that product or brand has in the marketplace.

Displayrite Resources are a Melbourne based provider of product and brand related display solutions to organisations small & large, as well as providing various production and installation services to marketing & advertising agency’s.

The 72m2 stand and it’s accompanying overhead signage could be seen from most of the exhibition floor, creating a magnificent focal point and destination for a large number of visitors to the show.  Proudly designed and built by Displayrite Resources, the stand featured meeting/storage rooms, overhead structures and signage, a large custom built counter, multiple product display gondolas and a number of product display plinths.  Naturally, the numerous gas displays were a major drawcard to the stand, attracting a significant amount of interest from industry focused attendee’s.

Supagas exhibition stand at NMW 2015 – stand proper and overhead signage

The large counter, built in the Supagas corporate colours, included themed prints and concealed LED lighting for additional eye-catching effect.

Supagas exhibition stand at NMW2015. Main counter and meeting room.

Utilising what would have otherwise been a blank wall, the Supagas value-add banner gained great exposure for the company and it’s products.  Facing towards a cafe/lounge area, a large number of prospective customers became further exposed to not only the Supagas gas range, but also a hint of the additional product and service range offered by Supagas.

Supagas exhibition stand wall branding banner & window frosting – NMW2015

Custom made Supagas gondolas displayed a large range of complimentary industrial products, aimed at a number of market segments.  Acrylic header boards, with applied prints added the finishing touches to the gondolas.

Supagas gondola – Pferd products

Supagas gondola acrylic header board – Fabricators Favourite

Designing and building for 3 of the leading suppliers in their categories, the 3 stands each varied in size and complexity.  Between the three stands, all of our skills and expertise were put to the test, including design, project management, carpentry, cabinetmaking, lighting, audio visual connectivity, large format digital printing, banner production and product displays.

Building the Meritor and Timken stands from the ground up, and utilising the existing walling for the ITW AAMTech stand, each delivered an outstanding result, attracting a large range of existing clients and new prospects for the exhibitors.  See below for a snapshot of each of the stands.

Meritor – 100m2 exhibit stand

The Meritor exhibition stand at the recent Brisbane Truck Show 2015

For more information on Meritor and its products, please visit www.meritor.com or www.meritorpartsonline.com.au

Timken – 40m2 exhibit stand

The Timken Exhibition Stand at the recent Brisbane Truck Show 2015

For more information on Timken bearings and associated products please visit www.timken.com

ITW AAMTech – 27m2 exhibit stand

Wall print detail from the ITW AAMTech exhibition stand at the recent Brisbane Truck Show 2015

Print and acrylic display detail from the ITW AAMTech exhibition stand at the recent Brisbane Truck Show 2015

For more information on ITW AAMTech and it’s range of products, please visit www.aamtech.com.au

A. They don’t! Well not directly anyway.

Let me explain. Visual Merchandising in the B2B sector is different to the retail sector in that the goods or services are generally displayed in different environments. B2B environments may include a clients office, a company showroom or foyer, or an exhibition or trade event, amongst others.

Providing a relevant & meaningful measurement of the ROI from these environments is often both extremely difficult and un-reliable. Visual merchandising measures in the retail environment are generally fairly straight forward, measuring things like direct product sales and pedestrian traffic flows.

While definitely not a hard and fast rule, displaying B2B related products and services in a general sense should be considered a straight forward cost of doing business. This directly relates to the strategic positioning, and subsequent value perceptions of your brand and/or its related products.

Remember though, that the value in your brand or products is in the eye of the beholder. The question is, how do you get your prospective customers to see the same value that you are asking for? A significant part of achieving this value is via your visual merchandising.

Other inputs that assist in achieving additional value (i.e. a higher average sell price), may include some or all of the following:

• the knowledge, demeanor & attitude of all leaders & employee’s
• the overall customer experience
• the quality of marketing collateral
• digital presence & useability
• product or service quality
• environmental & social considerations.

Depending on the business, product or service, there is un-doubtedly many more too.

Visual Merchandising in the traditional sense relates to floor plans and 3D displays, don’t forget about other visual representations of your brand and products such as building or vehicle signage and livery, uniforms, samples, banners, packaging, etc…. consistency across all visual presentations is critical.

Back to the original question, if you try to directly and reliably measure ROI on visual merchandising in a B2B context, you would probably end up doing very little, or none at all. Just as a digital presence is essential to the marketing mix for most businesses (and is often difficult to achieve a true ROI), physical presentations of your brand, product or service offer otherwise un-rivalled networking, referral, and direct business opportunities.

Speaking of target audiences, another critical aspect of any display space, whether an event, trade show, exhibition, reception/foyer area, retail space or B2B targetted displays, is to set a clear objective from the very start of the creative design process.  Your objective should clearly outline what will be achieved in terms of what the target audience will take away with them after laying eyes on the particular display space.

The old adage “a picture say’s a thousand words” is also extremely relevant to any visual representation of your brand, products or business.  The level of attention to detail and the quality of the finishes that make up your display make an impression both at the conscious and unconscious level of a prospect.  Be sure that your display does not detract in any way from the image your company, brand or products otherwise aspire to in the marketplace.

Have a look at the PDF below for a couple of examples of recent stands designed and built for targetted B2B audiences.  Space, lighting, signage, standout product displays, and an un-cluttered look all contributed to two display spaces that worked to leave a specific impression on both current and prospective buyers.

DR 25 Aug 2014

Welcome to Displayrite Resources brand new website.  It’s only early days, but we will be constantly updating the website with new information, ideas & examples of product and exhibition displays, links to relevent and interesting articles and blogs, and of course information on building the hands-on and visual aspect of your product’s and brand’s.

Check in regularly for updates, follow our RSS feed, or follow us on LinkedIn to stay up to date.

To allow you to stay focussed on your products, services, and brand’s, let us do the hard work for you whenever you need product/POS display materials, exhibition or event co-ordination, shopfitting/display shelving, or large format printing.  Our expertise is in ensuring you receive the best possible ROI for your marketing dollar in terms of getting your product and brand to physically stand out from the pack.  Digital and on-line marketing can and are very effective tools in getting your brand and product information to prospective clients however, whether you play in B2B or B2C markets, or both, the value of human interactivity via the physical aspects of touching, feeling, seeing, handling and discussing your products in person should never be discounted as a critical part of the buying process.

Our focus is quality over quantity, ensuring all of our clients receive personal based, market leading service, all of the time.  If you’re serious about receiving a great return on how your products, services and brands are publicly presented, then the Displayrite Resources team are ready to go to work for you.  Just give us a call….