CEIR Report: How to Attract and Retain Young Professionals

CEIR’s “Best Practices by Exhibition Organizers to Attract and Retain Young Professional Attendees” offers insights on how to effectively market to and retain young professionals who attend business-to-business exhibitions.

“The feedback from exhibition organizers tells us that appealing to the young professional attendee is a growing priority,” said CEIR President and CEO Brian Casey, CEM. “How organizers are attracting young professionals, and the results they are realizing is a key focus of this report. We can see that regardless of show size, the information in this report will definitely be of interest to any exhibition organizer.”

A few insights from the report:

• Two thirds of surveyed executives say their organizations invest resources to attract and retain young professionals. These efforts are more likely to be decentralized rather than initiatives that are run from the top of an organization.
• Among organizations that have efforts in place, the primary areas of focus are education, 53 percent; onsite communication approaches, 52 percent; and marketing approach, 50 percent.
• Despite efforts targeting young professionals, 64 percent of exhibition organizers do not capture information on age when a professional registers to attend. This omission creates challenges when evaluating the outcome of marketing and programming efforts.
• Two of the top-ranked approaches are social media and email.

Additionally, 11 case studies provide real world examples of how key trends are converted into programs and approaches by current exhibition organizers.

Click here to access the full report. IAEE members can access the CEIR library and reports at no cost – a benefit of IAEE membership.

www.ceir.org