PFERD Innovation Days - Review

With the Innovation Days, PFERD has replaced the hardware fair in Cologne, which was postponed to 2021. PFERD CSO Jörg Hesse on the response to this campaign and the findings from it.

 

With the cancellation of the Hardware Fair 2020, not only PFERD, the Marienheid manufacturer of tools for surface processing and cutting, was faced with the task of communicating the product premieres and messages planned for the trade fair appearance differently. "After this platform was discontinued this year, we had to find other ways to inform our target groups about our innovations and our world premiere," says Jörg Hesse, Managing Director Sales and Marketing at PFERD, describing the situation a few days before the planned start of the trade fair. "Good ideas had to be found quickly, because we wanted to use the industry's attention during this period."

 

The idea of ​​the "PFERD Innovation Days" was then developed internally, a product presentation on a specially created website. An innovation was published here every day for the duration of the hardware fair, followed by ten new products from the PFERD 2020 range by the end of March Show tools in use.

 

“We worked for the hardware fair for two years. This is where we traditionally present our new products and innovations, ”says Jörg Hesse. “After the hardware fair was canceled, a solution had to be found that would close the communication gap that had arisen as a result of the failure. We wanted to ensure that those who would have visited us at our booth, but also those who would have been reached via the digital and print media, received all the relevant information. ”The customers that PFERD had previously invited to visit the booth were received Written again and referred to the PFERD Innovation Days. At the same time, the family company from Oberberg distributed this information via its social media channels.

 

And the response was surprisingly positive, confirms Jörg Hesse: “The number of hits on the Innovation Days website during the campaign period from the end of February to the end of March was more than twice as high as the average hits on our website! Above all, however, we were pleased about the numerous clicks on the following pages, because it documents the deeper interest of the visitors in the topics. ”Jörg Hesse cannot yet believe that a digital presentation like the PFERD Innovation Days can replace a trade fair appearance introduce: “These two types of presentations can hardly be compared. While we can gain very clear impressions of the needs from the direct and bidirectional exchange with our customers at the fair, With the digital presentation we are able to achieve a range that we can never generate in analog form. However, there is no direct feedback here. ”In the future, however, a combination of both communication channels is conceivable: event-related media support for a trade fair presence on the Internet in order to make the on-site presentation accessible to a broader target group. The PFERD Innovation Days showed that this can work.

 

“But we also recognized that this format generates very good reach. We reach target groups who definitely would not have come to the trade fair, who may not have bought anything from the B2B trade or who we have not yet been able to reach through our usual communication channels, ”states the PFERD CSO. "So the question arises as to how we can continue to use the reach of such campaigns in our communication in the future?"

 

PFERD will again take part in the 2021 Hardware Fair. In future, however, PFERD expects more than before that trade fairs will develop with the needs and demands of trade fair visitors. In addition to questions of content, digitization models played a major role here: “Trade fairs must also be able to be experienced via the internet, the messages of the exhibitors must be perceptible beyond the exhibition space and the requirements of the target groups must be met digitally. The Innovation Days showed us that there is definitely interest in it. "